Parents Losing Weight for Your Kids - Obesity and PTSD

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You really can’t lose weight for your kids, but they are one of the reasons you should. Having a sick and obese parent is very hard on children.

I did not realize my son had PTSD when I made this video.

He had been diagnosed with it a few years before as a young teen. He couldn’t sleep and had a lot of nightmares. He was always angry with me. I was told to get him counseling. This consisted of a counselor weekly and a few psychiatrist visits to test him and see about getting my son on drugs.

The psychiatrist he saw told me he was just another kid going through the rebellion stage. It was too bad my son was not sleeping, but he would not take medication for it and it would not help anyway. Every kid had problems and I just needed to stay out of the way and let him grow up.

Years later my son told me he lied to that doctor with every single word. He knew he had a terrible problem and he was afraid they would lock him up if he told the truth.

The counselor who saw him more often told me my son hated me and that I should see if I could find another place for him to live. Well, where would that be?

So we stopped that counseling and just lived together a few hard years more.

This video was made a couple of years after I lost weight and got healthy for the first time ever. My son was 20 and I still did not know he had PTSD. That knowledge did not come until he was 24. Now he is 25 and lost. when he tries self help and bonding with fellow sufferers, it helps, but this is not easy to do.

Everything stems from the fear I caused during his childhood, when he was 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and on and on until he finally gave up. His sick, fat mother near death all the time, caused the injuries he lives with today.

PTSD is a traumatic brain injury – not a mental illness.

Most people do not understand that difference.

For Christmas this year, I spent a lot of time in ptsd support groups. I tell people I am a mom who doesn’t have ptsd, but my son does. I try to give them my point of view, so maybe they can understand what their family is thinking as they look on. The people in the groups often cannot talk to their own families and sometimes talking to me helps. I can’t talk to my own son, and talking to them helps me.

One man posted that he went to a doctor’s appointment last week and the doctor told him:

“You need to stop living in the past, or you will never to get over this. You sound like a child when you talk about the things that happened to you so long ago, and this shows you are your real problem.”

So the guys says, “I’m so glad I went to that doctor. Now I am cured. I’m just going to forget about seeing my mom’s arm in the road when she was run over and killed by a car. And all the stuff that happened in the foster care later is completely off my mind now. This is a great relief.”

At least 10 people chimed in to talk about similar things that happened to them with medical professionals.

I think everyone felt better to know they were not alone.

Everything I have read and seen about ptsd says drugs and doctors rarely help. It's self care and working together with others that make the difference for people who do better and start to heal. I've seen this progress in my own son when he reaches out to others who share his pain.

I regret my obesity caused my son's ptsd, The only thing I can do it try to help others avoid the same mistake.

Production Note:
I was sitting in the wreckage of my son's room making videos in fear. I knew I had to do them to reach people with weight loss coaching, and this is one of the second group I managed. This room was the quietest place I had to film. If you wait until everything is perfect, you will never get anything done.

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