Taking on other people’s issues while ignoring my own.

I(38m) recently had a near breakdown at work.

A bit of background about my situation, this might be a bit long. I had a rough childhood, watched my bio drug addicted mother cut herself because I was trying to run away from her house to my father’s, when I discovered that she was a drug user. Watched my step-mother cut herself while in an argument with my father while drunk, I still feel the blood splatter on my face to this day. These both took place while I was still in the single digits age wise.

My father, while doing everything he could to raise me properly, had a temper and little education on how to raise a child by himself (he gave my mother the ultimatum that she could give him full custody of me without the courts or he would drag her through them to get custody of my after she cut herself. Through out the years afterwards he did a lot to try to help her get sober but nothing ever worked). I would endure, what today’s society considers physical and mental abuse. Some of it was warranted on my part but other times I would get hit with his temper for things I absolutely didn’t do.

At 19, I joined the military and that’s when all hell broke loose in my mind. For transparency I was in a combat zone but never in combat. My first life changing incident dealt with losing my 1st pregnancy. Whether or not I was the cause is unknown, but I harbor the guilt. Before my partner at the time and I had any thought that she might be pregnant, we were playfully wrestling on my bed and I ended up landing on her stomach. We thought nothing of it as she wasn’t hurt and we knew nothing else at that point. A few days later she missed her period and took a test which was positive, I was on an FTX, when this occurred. I had a happy guy cry that day. Within 72 hours I got the call that she was in the hospital bleeding, my company got me off the FTX and to the hospital immediately. We had lost our child.

After all that happened in my life this is when the Universe decided it was gonna start having me deal with other people’s life ending issues,21 years old at the time. I’ve have been through too many phone calls late at night talking friends out of ending it all. I never denied any of them help and did my best to calm their thinking. They all still have a 24/7 open door policy to me to this day.

This all lead up to last week, after dealing with another friends call on my birthday weekend two weeks ago. I was talking to a friend at work and brought up the situation on helping somebody out through their crises the week before, I didn’t disclose who or any details other than it was a crisis call. And I just broke down in the middle of my sentence. I don’t cry much at all and never have as an adult in public, but that was the end of that streak on that day.

I suffer from officially diagnosed PTSD, and I have so many of my own depression issues I struggle with then I end up in situations dealing with others depression. Because I know how heavy the weight is I rarely ever share my own issues with others. This all finally just crashed down on me. I came to the realization that “I’m helping everyone else, when I’m the one that needs the help”.

Has anybody else gone through this type of “weight of the world on your shoulders” situation and found a solution to it for the betterment of your health and everyone else’s? I won’t ever deny help for anyone seeking it from me, but I need help myself.