The "Safety" Factor...Surviving

       Every organism, from the single cell creature to the multi-cell, complex human, is propelled by the most elemental need: to survive and to be safe.  All needs derive from safety and survival.  To eat and drink, to love and be loved, to understand and to be understood, to possess...these are all higher order needs which insure the safety and survival of the person.
       Parents of children with severe disabilities, brothers and sisters of disabled siblings, parent-caretakers of the elderly live is a state of constant imbalance because they are consumed about issues of safety for their charges and themselves.  Can I do enough?  Can I do what is necessary?  Can I muster the needed resources to make myself and the other safe?  Can I endure this role for months? for years? for a lifetime?  What do we need to do to keep our loved one safe...safe from those who don't care, safe from predators, safe from the crippling downward spiral of nursing homes and residential facilities.  We have  primal need to be safe to survive and we assume the role of ensuring the safety of those few for whom we really care...we would go to every conceivable extreme to insure the safety and survival of those for whom we care.

Wounded Healers....Parents and Caregivers of the Disabled

                       

                                             A traumatic injury occurs at birth, or three years later, or twenty years later to your child...there is no magic formula which predicts what happens to you.  The reality of your child's trauma fills ever cell of your body; your soul is helpless; you make promises to always be there for him/her.  You are only as worthwhile as your word.

       A parent of a young or adult disabled child experiences every conceivable emotion.  You are at once hopeful, optimistic, caring and always looking for ways to heal.   At the same time, you are hyper vigilant, quite capable of catastrophic thinking, chronically anxious and always in fear of not being "safe."
This is the world of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).  In most cases, the trauma is focused on a single event (death),  or a series of similar events (war); in the case of parents of severely disabled children, the trauma is a continuing event.  It is not a past event which you can deal with in a number of therapeutic ways.
       So for parents of very disabled children, life is about survival...your survival and that of your son/daughter.  Life consists of avoiding everything which could impinge on that need to survive.  You do whatever it takes, at whatever expense.   There is no therapy nor medication to remove that imperative....you survive and out of this quest you slowly thrive.  The road is dark, has many curves and the journey is always in the quest of the light...the quest does not end.