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Do sufferers know they are being hurtful?

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Gese

Full disclosure: I am writing in regards to my ex-girlfriend, so I suppose I don't qualify as a supporter anymore. I'm sorry if this offends anyone on here - I understand these forums are sacred and you don't want them crowded with posts by non-supporters.

My question is if sufferers can truly comprehend the pain they are inflicting on their loved ones while symptomatic. I've never fully been able to get my head around the "they can't help it" concept, especially when I see so many sufferers on here fighting back against the idea that they have no free will and can still make choices.

I had the familiar soulmate, intense, love of each other's lives story that I read on here quite a bit. And it is one thing for for my loving, compassionate ex to go emotionally numb and push me away. When she first confided in me about her PTSD from sexual abuse, I did a lot of research to understand her illness and her pain. What I struggle to understand is her lack of remorse.

She knows full well that she is the first woman in a long, long time who I opened myself up to and trusted. Who I allowed myself to love with an open heart, and she played a big part in encouraging me to do that by making me feel safe. So when she broke up with me and started talking to me as if I was a stranger she barely knew, I was (and am) really hurt. I feel betrayed and I can only imagine what trust issues this will create long-term. And the thing is, she KNOWS that. She knows exactly what something like this would do to me and how shocking and traumatic this sudden loss of love and basic decency would be for me.

If she's not healthy enough to be in a relationship right now, I would never make her. I also understand the importance of giving a sufferer space when she needs it. To this I did not object or fight, except for a little loving encouragement that she lean on me for support if she felt comfortable rather than pushing me away. But why not be decent about it and treat me with respect? Like someone who you called your dream man just days before the switch occurred? I understand when emotionally numb you don't feel anything, so I'm not expecting her to be overly kind or anything, but she really acted like this was no big deal. She acknowledged how selfish she's being, but she kind of just shrugged her shoulders and had an attitude of "get over it," which if you knew my ex and our relationship, would blow you away.

If there's not an emotional awareness, is there not at least an intellectual awareness of, "Whoa, I'm being really awful right now and what I'm doing must be tearing him apart. I still need to be alone but I'll at least try and act like everything we had mattered, rather than talk like it was no big deal."
 
She might have emotional splitting as a symptom. I don't know, Gese... it's difficult to describe how I've done this to other people. Sometimes I work hard to fake feeling broken up when I actually just feel completely and utterly numb toward someone I loved so so much right before shit went bad. I've only had one break up where I didn't just immediately feel completely numb toward the person I'd left or who left me. It's like I had this gushing fountain of love and emotion for someone and then we part ways and something in my brain just flips the valve that pumps that water and it runs immediately and completely dry--total nothingness. Maybe a better analogy is that a property can be elaborately lit with the most spectacular Christmas lights, but if the breaker gets flipped, the lights are still there but they instantly lose their glow and may as well not be there at all.

I have felt guilty about this, but the numbness is intense, so it's like I'm feeling guilt through a thick layer of glass.

For myself, I think when this happens it's because I can't handle relationship grief until I've had an enormous amount of space away from those feelings and that person. About 6 months to a year is when I can start flicking the Christmas lights back on one by one and contemplating what those feelings meant to me and how I feel about them being gone.
 
I'm sorry she broke it off like that.

We aren't helpless against our symptoms and reactions IF we have had proper counciling and have developed skills to help us with impulsivity. If she isn't in therapy, she will need it regardless.

In the heat of the moment, I can 100% say that I know I'm being hurtful and thats the point. I am in total defense mode and I will fight anyone at anytime like a wild cat stuck in a corner trying to get myself out. That's because when PTSD fight or flight is activated, we immediately get into another mindset, our PTSD affected brains are rewired from trauma, so we are not totally ourselves... just an overactivated defensive version. Not an excuse, just a truth.

Afterward, I 100% REGRET everything I said and did. I'm often embarassed and shamed and feel intense guilt not just about what I said and did, but guilt about who I am. I've said and did things I can never take back and I live with that guilt.

Does that help?
 
Hivuk, I just want you to know how much a simple message board post like this means to me. Thank you so much for sharing what it is you are feeling when you experience this -- it is so hard for us non-sufferers to know what it is like!

Your water and Christmas light analogies were really illuminating (heh) as well. It's interesting to learn that you need an extended period of time with those lights off before you can turn them back on to see if they are bright and beautiful and something you want in your life, or dim and broken and don't feel one way or the other about them....... Sorry if I mucked up your analogy :)
 
I'm sorry she broke it off like that.

We aren't helpless against our symptoms and reactions IF we have had proper council...

Aba, it helps so much and thank you for sharing. I'm sorry that you experience that fight or flight pain. I hope you can understand that my ignorance is not based on a lack of research and will to understand, I just can't seem to make my brain even guess what it must feel like - even with my powerful imagination. Whenever I try to, I always imagine myself having the self-awareness at the time to say, "This is my PTSD acting up."

And I'll note, with regret, that no, my ex is not in treatment. She has knowingly avoided it for years and this recent bout of extreme stress in her life along with some fairly big life changes exposed the fact that she has never developed the skills to manage her PTSD. She was suicidal, had panic attacks, the works. When she came down from the worst of it, she was just numb - like an alien had taken over her body. She started drinking excessively, broke up with me, quit her job and moved to her home town to be with mom and has been radio silent ever since (we were best friends who talked every day before this). When this all started she had more of a will to be proactive about it and did start seeing a therapist, but she concluded that the therapist "wasn't very good" and stopped. I hope she has tried to find someone else, but given her propensity for avoidance I'm not so sure she has.
 
How much of that "wow, I was really rude" response is intellectual though? I think a lot of those types of reactions are emotional in origin. We see we hurt somebody's feelings and feel empathy, then it dawns on us that we were rude.

Think Sheldon Cooper... intellect vs. emotional intelligence. If somebody is emotionally numbing things may not immediately dawn on them.
 
I think she knows and that's why she broke it off with you. If she isn't in treatment...there's nothing you can do.

Read about the stress cup.

Sorry it didn't work out for you.
 
If somebody is emotionally numbing things may not immediately dawn on them.

I'd never really thought about it this way. Thank you. I guess I still don't fully understand what being emotionally numb feels like, and what faculties you have access to when this symptom is present.

I think she knows and that's why she broke it off with you. If she isn't in treatment...there's nothing you can do.

Thank you for your support. It is really difficult to see someone who is such a perfect match when healthy throw it all away. Especially when I have always been willing to accept her as she is, including her pain, and be willing to be patient and support her through this. But there was something inside her that screamed for her to be fully alone. "Alone," I must have heard her use that word a hundred times. I wish I could just show her a movie of our relationship, and explain to her that her illness is causing her to misperceive things, but I know it's hardly that simple with PTSD. It's a horrible illness, and I hope you sufferers know how much the people who love you wish they could get through to you.
 
My sufferer doesn't seem to realize until after he is done lashing out and is regulated again -- sometimes a day or two later. If he was better managing his PTSD (active in therapy, consistent medication, making use of good coping skills), it might be a different story.
 
Emotional numbness-----

I literally don't care about anything.

If I die? I don't care.

If my death hurts others? I don't care.

If my actions hurt others? I don't care.

If something bad happens to someone I love? I don't care.

(Can you see the pattern here?)

I can't even fathom that I could hurt someone.

All emotional facilities are completely flatlined.
 
The above describes very well how my veteran is affected. Its very hard for me to feel loved and cared for when he regularly flips into "don't give a f*ck about anything' mode. When he says he loves me part of me says to myself "so what? In 5 mins time you may not." Its very hard on a relationship.
 
Aware my symptoms can be difficult for the people around me?
Totally.

Does that feel painful to me?
Sure.

Continually trying to be a better person?
Oh yeah.

Should I add feeling 'remorse' about things that are symptoms?
Nope. Can't see how that helps anyone.
 
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