I hope this catches some of you in time - I found a SOLUTION to this (skip to the end if you dont wanna hear my story).
My husband developed PTSD at 37 years old after we lost our baby at 13 weeks gestational age. I didnt understand what was happening at first. It took me about 3 years to really figure it all out. Ive been with him for over 16 years. He has always been a calm rational person, so when we started fighting all the time, and the arguments got crazy, I thought I must be part of it. It takes 2 right?
I looked for all sorts of ways that *I* could manage it, suggested we go to marriage counselling (he refused), wondered if *I* should go by myself (that didnt seem like it would be effective).
The emotional abuse (rage attacks, I called them for a long time) just got worse. He would have "episodes," and sometimes I could see them coming, but couldnt stop them, no matter how carefully I tread. Most times I was completely blindsided by them. He would get it in his head that I said something, even when I literally said the opposite, and I could not convince him I said anything different. He would just get madder and madder at me. He would verbally attack me. One time I triggered one because I came around the doorway "wrong," when I was looking for him in the kitchen. Taking full "responsibility" for whatever he imagined I did didnt even help, he would just "loop" no matter what I said and continue attacking me all over again, though I had just apologized profusely for it a minute ago, and 3 minutes before that, and before that, etc.
Ironically, one fight, he started telling me that I "never apologized for anything" and that was the problem (du jour). There were times I had to pack up the kids and literally leave the house because I couldnt get him to stop verbally/emotionally attacking me. Luckily I had a friend whose door was always open to me. Spent the night there once, on the floor with our baby. I thought maybe it would get better after the kids (we had 2 by then) were older and there was less stress in the family. But I reached my tipping point eventually and realized that I just couldnt do this any longer.
Luckily my friend was going through something similar with her fire-fighter husband. She had done some research and explained to me that PTSD can be sort of cumulative, and it doesnt always have to be one major event, it can be a build up of many traumas. My husband had a crappy childhood, then our miscarriage, then our 2nd child was born 2 months premature... and all the while his PTSD/rage was just getting worse. I was worried that I might have to call the police and have him 51/50'ed at some point in time.
Anyways, she told me about a new therapy called EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), which literally re-programs the brain using some neurological tricks. It's MUCH faster than traditional therapy often taking only 8-10 weekly sessions. Turns out another friend of mine had already done this therapy with her husband who was a vet and also had a crappy childhood and had great and fast results.
We've completed the 8-10 weeks now. He is, I would say, 90% better. If we are not careful to monitor his stress and give him his "hour a day" (he needs this self time to destress daily after work), and other stressful things happen (like my parents visiting, after he's been trying to put the kids' play structure together all week unsuccessfully, he will have an episode again - just as bad as ever.
In hindsight, that one was completely predictable and avoidable, and we've done much better at watching out for clusters of stressful events since then. And we just make sure he get's his daily hour. Now and again he may have smaller episodes, but I have been able to make him go to his "man-cave" until he can calm down (making him leave or leave me alone simply didnt work at all before- he was way too out of control).
I wont lie, I had hoped this would 100% "fix" him back to the way he used to be, but this is totally manageable and doable as it is. In other words, rather than the DAILY walk-on-eggshells routine, with weekly or every other day horrible blow ups/abuse incidents, I get to live a totally normal, just like it used to be, life but with occasional bad days. And I hold out hope that he will continue to get better at using the techniques he learned in EMDR therapy, and that things will get better as our lives get a little less stressful.
(note, I originally had links to the scientific study abstracts, and websites for the things I am about to say, so you can check my sources, but it wouldnt let me post with links. If a moderator will let me, I would love to post sources for each item below, or you can do your own research.)
EMDR Therapy has proven to be more successful at treating PTSD than drugs by the way.
And more successful as well as faster than other kinds of "regular" therapy:
EMDR Therapy has been assigned to Category A as "strongly recommended" for the treatment of trauma by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense (2004, 2010)
You can google EMDR and view any number of FAQ pages about how it works, what a session looks like, etc:
Lastly - I have no connections at all to EMDR other than that my marriage was saved by it. I dont have any websites, nor am I a therapist (Im a high school biology teacher). Also, if the cost is prohibitive for you, in our area at least, there are EMDR trained therapists who work on a sliding scale.
I wish I had known about this 3 years and so much pain ago, but hopefully this info can reach some of you sooner than it reached me!
