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Anonymous46969
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Default Jul 13, 2019 at 09:08 PM
  #1
New awakening!!! Never was actually told directly about CEN. I started complaining how people are complaining almost my T. Just take a deep breath and deal with it!! My T started saying 'soldier on'. Finally I said yeah. This started the discussion. Thinking some of it is jealousy that they can complain. I know they are not whimps! So wonder if others are around who were taught to *soldier on*.
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Default Jul 28, 2019 at 02:49 PM
  #2
Not a military brat but was formerly active duty and now a reservist. Was never told to "soldier on" because I never told people my issues.

Does "T" mean therapist? If so, you need a new therapist. That's not his/her job to tell you to deal with it and "soldier on." It's their job to help you work through these issues. This sounds like an on-base therapist for some reason. You're better off with a therapist with no military affiliation.
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Default Sep 05, 2019 at 11:32 AM
  #3
I was told to 'soldier on' when little and not speak of any anxiety or other things..

I'm a bit confused about your T (just from this post)

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Default Oct 05, 2019 at 08:02 PM
  #4
I'm a veteran. I'm not really a military brat, though my father was a merchant marine in WWII and had suffered from the after-effects of trauma he had experienced during that time in service.

I was never allowed to express emotion, was always told to be strong, and rarely received hugs. My mother wasn't that affectionate or warm. In fact, both of my parents lacked warmth.

I've had other traumas in my life, apart from CEN, but it's the lack of parental warmth and love that truly messed me up. We moved most of the time, but not for deployment reasons; my parents would fight all the time, so we had to move a lot. I lost many friends and had many other ecological losses when I moved frequently. So, I wasn't able to have any long-term emotional bonding with even friends to make up for CEN. I learned to care for myself a lot.

Parentification and adultification tend to come with the territory, especially if you have younger siblings and you are the eldest. Everything becomes about your performance and ability to hide emotions, as opposed to your needs, your dreams, your feelings, and your authenticity.

I agree with one of the persons who said that "soldier on" is an inappropriate statement. Your therapist sounds insensitive! CEN affects our abilities to feel, expression, and respond to emotions. There's this longing and heartache that never go away, and this feeling of distrust when we are presented with warmth, love, etc. - especially if any physical or sexual abuse was also experienced in childhood or young adulthood. Emotions get confusing because we were taught it wasn't something we showed, responded to, utilized, or deserved. All of those things we learned and experienced were traumatic. It changed us, but we can heal from it by being able to learn how to express our emotions again, reach out to others who feel safe enough to express their emotions with us, and to genuinely feel care and love from safe people (not necessarily in romantic relationships, but in true friendships or from a professional who, within ethical boundaries, can show what kindness and unconditional positive regard for another looks like, feels like).

We have a right to our feelings, and to express what we felt and thought about a given situation or memory - in therapeutic settings. Maybe this isn't always appropriate or safe with others in the community, but a therapist should be able to work with that, instead of undermining and dismissing it.

As a veteran and CEN survivor, among other things, I can tell you that it is more damaging to stuff emotions through "soldiering on" than it is to actually find validation through genuine active listening that takes place from a trained therapist. I'd find a different therapist who is more warm, approachable, validating, and helpful in terms of understanding emotional neglect, the complexities of military life when being a child, the complexities of ecological losses that occur when frequently moving, the complexities of parentification and adultification that often take place among youth in military families, the complexities of a lack of conservation of resources, the complexities of a lack of compensatory relationships among military families, etc. I've done some research on the topic of childhood trauma, which includes parentification, adultification, military families, conservation of resources theory, betrayal trauma theory, compensatory relationships among non-family or extended family members, protective factors (e.g., strengths, resilience, social support, adaptive coping, optimism), military families, divorced/separated families, foster kids, and minority families. In adulthood, or in merging adulthood (18 to 25 years old), the effects of CEN (as well as any childhood trauma) linger, which affect our ability to relate to the world. Our ontological development was stunted in some areas.

If you look up any of those terms on PsychCentral or online, you will find evidence to support the need for better treatments for adult survivors of CEN, and different treatment options based on different symptoms that stem from CEN alone.

Not everyone who has experienced CEN have the same symptoms (or diagnoses), but many of us have been effected well into our adult lives. "Soldiering on" or (as my mother would tell me) "picking yourself up by your bootstraps) is never a therapeutic solution. That's just stuffing emotions and retraumatizing because it reinforces the idea that your feelings, thoughts, and responses are invalid, unworthy, etc. You are valid, and so are your emotions. They need to be processed - not ruminated, not dismissed, not undermined. They need to be heard, acknowledged, revisited, and connected to the symptoms you feel now. They need some sort of resolve, or perhaps narrative to make sense of it all. They also need solutions apart from therapy, such as finding safe and healthy friends to connect with, even though that in no way will ever make up for the losses from having experienced CEN.

I hope this helps in some way.

Lillib
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Default Oct 12, 2019 at 12:03 PM
  #5
As an adult raised in a military home
And veteran, I actually felt
Rootless, and foreign, and it
Has an affect, too many drill instructors fear and tormentors.
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