Oh, how I relate with you all. I am new here but have been dealing with my combat vet husbands PTSD for 8 years now. The first 7 were horrible. My husband saw everyone else as the problem and he was perfectly fine. I would talk, cry, plead, and beg him to get help but all it ever seemed to do was make him angrier and push him farther away. The kids and i dealt with SGT Butthead quite often. There were even times that he would rage and those times scared the heck out of me because when I looked in his eyes, I did not see anyone I knew.
I can tell you that what has helped my husband deal with his PTSD is having a great counselor who is knowledgeable with PTSD but does not work for the VA. I also made my husband go in for a full physical and found that he had other health issues that could heighten his PTSD. Quiet times and places are key to recovery for your combat vet. Do not take them to Wal Mart on a payday and expect their mood to be great then or the rest of the day. Make time for your self to revive so you can be more understanding of what your vet is dealing with. If we are going somewhere there will be heavy traffic, I drive.
Help your combat vet find a place that is calming for him. My husband and his fellow vet buddies go down to the river behinds a friends place. I have yet to see them bring home a fish but my husband is smiling and stress free when he returns. The hardest thing for me to do was to add back intimacy in our marriage and I am not talking sex but other things that promote closeness. going for a walk in a park and holding their hand, going to a local pub and sharing a beer and small talk. packing a picnic and going fishing somewhere quiet, taking a weekend to the beach. We became so wrapped up in raising our children that we lost sight of us as a couple. We now do these things as a couple without our children. At first it was hard, We both felt very guilty but it time the guilt left and we looked forward to our quiet time together.
Another thing that I found that troubled my husband is that he could never shut down his mind and had very hard time sleeping. He was lucky to get a few hours a night. I had found that with dealing with his PTSD and other things, we had put off many things that we needed to get done and this weighed heavy on his mind so we sat down and made a list of these things from most important to what could wait. Slowly but surely we have done these things and as they get done, I see the stress leave my husband even more.
I can't say that this will work for every combat vet but I know that by relieving a few stresses in my husbands life it has opened him up to being able to heal some and make for a much better home life.
