Brad Schipke explains why caregivers can't fix PTSD for someone else. Taking on the survivor's responsibility enables them instead of helping. Real support means setting boundaries, staying healthy yourself, and letting them do their own healing work.
How can you help somebody with PTSD? Now, this is a challenging question. I'm going to give some answers that you probably do not want to hear, but one is that you can't really help them. You can help them, but you can't take the journey for them. It's a journey that they must take, and you must accept that for yourself, because as somebody who loves somebody with PTSD, it's very easy to take on the responsibility of their problems and try to solve all of their problems for them. But really what that does is just enable them to stay the way that they are. It's an independent journey, and knowing that fundamentally, knowing that they have to go through and they need to do the work themselves, allows you to actually focus on the most important thing for you, which is taking care of yourself so that you can actually help them in the way that you can, which is by being supportive, being loving, and even providing resources and knowledge that can actually help them on their journey as well. But one of the biggest mistakes I see is the enabling, where the caregiver or the loved one tries to take on all of the responsibility to heal the person who has PTSD. It's an independent journey. They need to heal themselves, and you need to focus on yourself to make sure that you're not dragged down into the dark abyss with them, because that is a very common, common thing. Make sure to take care of yourself.
