Guys living with us

[Annegirl]

We have two guys living with us, we are helping them out, one is a very longstanding friend who was adopted at two yrs old in NZ from Thailand ( he was found in a box on police doorstep when born) and one is an Afghani refugee who saw many cousins and family members etc killed in front of him by Sunni Muslims. Thankfully his parents are fine and well living in Pakistan ( where my husband is from, although my dh is not Muslim this guy is. I have been thinking about him as he definitely has CPTSD flight type and drinks quite a lot and is a workaholic too.
I really love having these guys around and feel they are a blessing from G-d as the children really love them and they are like uncles as my bros or sisters and dh bros or sisters don't visit. They are also very relaxed and love the children a lot. I thought this morning how pathetic I am trying to fix my problems when they and dh have so much worse things to try and get over, then I realised each of them have supportive parents who ring up and encourage them or they ring their parents who actually support them with their words. This made me see how much us humans can get through if only we have supportive parents. I am wondering if having anyone supportive helps just as much, I know when my T started supporting me and my dh when he supports me it helped a lot, but my T is working on that we can be at peace and happy with ourselves no matter who is there for us or not. But there is always the isolation feeling that I am not a part of my immediate family, my brother has been to visit (fly from Aussie to NZ already 4-5 times this year) and he lives 5 hrs drive from me and I haven't seen him once. Although he said he's coming for my b'day..... But then my younger bro said he's coming and then he didn't come. But he has come once so maybe I shouldn't compare. But my T said siblings should be closer to each other than parents.

[pam]

I think your observation of how much people can go through/handle when they HAVE support is true. It makes me sick to think about how little support I ever had including now. I think I have one person who gives a crap about me and that's it. That just isn't enough. It's absolutely not fair imo, to expect people to be strong and individual without a support system. Look at any strong individual and you can see. No one does anything on their own, altho some of them think they do. 

It's not really fair to yourself to compare the guys and their lives to yours. I'm sure you already know that. Try not to let the inner critic make you feel bad about it.

And I don't know what I think about your T saying siblings should be closer. Everyone is a separate person and so you never know who is going to be close with who. I wouldn't like someone saying that to me because Id feel like a total failure (my only sister and I never had a relationship due to the conditions of the house, and we are both in our 40s now, completely estranged.)

[Annegirl]

Yes, you are right Pam about the inner critic, I need to keep reminding myself Thank you. and I suppose my T wasn't meaning there was any hard and fast rule about it. She generalised and said normally it is the adult who initiates contact with their parent and the siblings generally contact one another more. But in dysfunctional families its all over the place.