I Hit My Husband

[Bedbug]

For the past six weeks I have been really struggling. I was sexually abused by a family member as a child but was only really hit with the full truth of it after something happened six weeks ago that triggered a lot of memories. Initially I got very depressed and barely got out of bed for a couple of weeks. I took annual leave at work until my husband got so worried about me that he arranged for my family doctor to come to the house. The doctor visited a few times before the Christmas holidays and I told him about the abuse and how I was feeling. The depression seemed to lift a bit but I began to have periods of memory loss, terrifying flashbacks, panic attacks and had gone from sleeping all day long to barely sleeping at all. I felt scared and anxious all the time. My doctor suggested that I may have delayed onset PTSD and signed me off work.

I was very reluctant to speak to anyone else and begged my doctor to let me try to "self help" instead. My parents had taken me to see a psychiatrist at the time the abuse was going on because it must have been obvious that something was wrong. But I had not revealed what was happening and got labelled as "possibly schizoid" instead of a victim of abuse (I don't think I was meant to have heard that). I think I lost trust in psychiatrists at a very young age as a result of that. So, my doctor agreed to give me a little while to see what I could do for myself (and a prescription for diazepam which I took for a week to help my anxiety).

I read as much as I could and tried so many different techniques for managing the symptoms. Slowly, I began to feel less overwhelmed and even gained the confidence to leave the house to take my dogs for short walks with my husband.

However, things were still far from perfect. I would have panic attacks most days and was still getting flashbacks and remembering long-forgotten aspects of the abuse which upset me. However, I was coping with it better. Now that I was not totally preoccupied with thinking about what had happened at every moment of every day I began to feel awful for what I was putting my husband through. I had tried to explain as much as I could and he has been amazingly supportive, but doesn't really understand. He often told me that he wants me to get professional help but I am still resisting it. I'm not saying it's no help for anyone, but I don't believe it will help me.

Two days before Christmas I had a horrible flashback and ended up lashing out at what I was seeing. My husband had been standing in front of me and I hit him several times. When I came out if it I thought I had broken my wrist from banging my hands on the floor and my husband took me to hospital. Luckily it wasn't broken, but it frightened me that I had been so out of control.

We talked about what had happened and I tried to make him understand that it hadn't been him I was hitting. However, I still felt so ashamed of myself. He is a big, strong man and I am tiny compared to him, but he was still frightened of me and told me that he was scared that I would attack him in his sleep and kill him. That devastated me. I am not a violent person at all.

Fast forward to New Year's Eve and I had been doing a little better, for the most part. I told him to go out with friends and have a good time for a few hours. I knew he needed some time away from me and needed to have some fun back in his life. Of course, I didn't really want him to leave me alone so I was very pleased when he told me later in the evening that he wouldn't go out. We had a few drinks together and it got close to midnight. I was trying so hard to be "normal" but had been feeling really jittery all day. He was clearly angry and resentful at having to stay at home and miss all the parties but was doing his best to hide it.

At ten minutes to midnight he suddenly said he wanted to go out after all and needed my blessing. I got angry and upset, because I had been telling him to go out all day. With just ten minutes to the bells he started making me feel horrible for not letting him go out and I burst into tears. We had both had a few drinks by then and he was letting out all his frustrations that had been building up for the last six weeks. I didn't blame him, after what I have put him through, but I wasn't strong enough to hear it. We saw in the New Year with me crying my eyes out.

After about half an hour I had calmed down a bit, but he was still angry. He was also quite drunk. Suddenly he went into an angry rant that seemed to go on forever and affected me so badly that I stopped crying, stopped shaking, just stared at him in a stunned silence. I don't think I was even breathing. Everything he was saying made me feel so shameful, so guilty. I was just a horrible person who is making his life a misery. And then this overwhelming memory of being a child who was so disgusting that she deserved the vile abuse rushed back.

That was when I hit him again. Three or four times I rushed at him, trying to punch him, hurt him. All the emotions I had been struggling to deal with for such a long time just exploded. I was like a crazed animal. He pinned me to the sofa until I calmed down but when he let me up I went for him again. I was out of control. This time it was definitely him I was hitting and I have no excuse.

Shocked and horrified at what I had done, I ran out of the house, up the street and hid behind some garages until I calmed down enough to go home. He was sitting with his head in his hands in utter despair when I got back.

We talked a bit for the next couple of hours, but mostly I just cried and begged him to forgive me. He kept drinking and told me very frankly how the last six weeks have affected him. He didn't want to hear my side anymore. He said that he doesn't care anymore and he can't cope with it and has often wished he would have a heart attack or get cancer (he has taken up smoking again) or die naturally somehow that wouldn't be suicide. He said that he still loves me, and will stay with me but he doesn't trust me anymore after I attacked him again. I just didn't know what to say. I was so ashamed. Devastated.

After a while I noticed his wedding ring lying on a table and ran to pick it up. He said I had torn it off his finger and broken his necklace which was also lying on the table. I have no memory of doing that. I know I hit him, but I don't remember pulling his wedding ring off or breaking his necklace. That made me feel even worse.

He asked at one point what I would do if I was him. That is to say, if I was a battered wife. That shocked me. Up until then I hadn't thought about what I had done in those terms. To me, it had been part of the PTSD. But he was right. Hitting is hitting, no matter what the reasons for it are. If I had been him, would I have called the police? Should he have done? I don't know.

The whole time we were talking he flinched every time I moved and when we finally came to bed he wouldn't let me touch him at all. We lay stiffly side by side all night and neither of us slept hardly at all.

Now it's the next day and I don't know what to do. I am in pieces. I feel so guilty for having done this to him. I just don't know how we will get through this. I was aware of the effect my behaviour over the past six weeks has been having on him, I just wasn't strong enough to deal with it. I think I was just hoping that he was strong enough to cope with his own feelings and would still be there for me when I got better. Now I am scared that he won't.

We haven't spoken a word to each other today. I don't know where to begin. I can't promise I'll never hit him again. I hope I won't, more than anything, but I can't promise. What if I get angry again? What if I have another flashback or a nightmare and attack him in his sleep, like he fears? What if I really do hurt him? I have already apologised a thousand times and I will keep on apologising but those words don't change what happened.

Can anyone relate to any of this? I feel like the worst person in the world right now. Please help.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

If you want your marriage to have a prayer of lasting, you need professional help now.

I will be honest. If your husband posted his side of the story in the supporter forums and said that his wife refuses to get help, I'm pretty sure that most of us would say that he should leave you. You are a safety risk and need a higher level of care.

I hope for your sake that you give up drinking. Alcohol and PTSD don't mix. It very well could have been the booze that pushed you over the edge last night.

And it isn't the fault of your past doctors for not diagnosing you. My parents took me to a shrink or two as a kid and I didn't disclose my abuse either. It's not fair to blame them when they can only make a determination based on what they know. I was mad for awhile, but in the end it did no good. You are allowing your anger to prevent proper medical treatment. The anger is understandable but the thought pattern behind the anger is a little off. At this point you have a choice. Make a leap of faith and seek help or let it destroy you. As bad as this is, it may not be your rock bottom. It may not be your time to heal.

 

[Abstract]

I think the two instances where he was assaulted are different even though are not going to feel different for him. You can't help what you do if you in a proper flashback and can't see your present surroundings. You can stop yourself from the second type though and you can get treatment to deal with your flashbacks. Yes it will take work but it can be done.

He often told me that he wants me to get professional help but I am still resisting it.

I don't mean to be unkind but I would be advising him to leave unless you get proper treatment. I would probably advise him to move out initially anyway and until you show you are committed to getting the treatment you need and have started to make some changes.

It is just the same for a men when they are assaulted as it is for a woman. He is flinching as he is afraid and it will take time and you demonstrating that you have changed for him to get his trust back in you. We are not to blame for the trauma and it's effects but we are responsible for any harm we do to others because of it.

Can you use this as a wake up call? I sympathise with not trusting treatment but really when your symptoms mean you are acting out like this you don't have a choice. You are not your actions. You in trouble and deserve and need treatment. The actions were very wrong.

I also want to say something about this:

told me very frankly how the last six weeks have affected him. He didn't want to hear my side anymore.

I think as hard as it is he has a right to say how things are affecting him without anyone attempting to disqualify the legitimacy of those feelings. I know it is hard but he has his own experiences and him feeling they are important too and that he is heard, is important. What you don't want is to be so caught up in the agony that you are living in that his feelings and thoughts are no longer important or that he feels they aren't.

Communication is really important. You don't want it to get to the point where he needs to be drunk and fed up before he feels able to be heard and before you are listening.

Well done for discussing this here. I think it takes a lot of bravery to face up to these things.

 

[Echo]

@Bedbug, I can't advise you in any other way except to ask you, please, for both of your sakes, to seek professional help. I know, because I have had to, that it is very scary to find the courage to go for the first time, but when you get the right help, it will be such a relief. If your husband, who also needs help, I would have thought, sees you getting help for yourself, it might make all the difference to your marriage. You can't do this on your own; no-one can. I understand your experience as a child with medical professionals was not good and was frightening to you, justifiably, but you weren't able to explain what was really going on, and they were unable to see it, for whatever reason. Now you can explain better and a really good therapist can help you and your husband to understand what is going on and do whatever you need. I wish you masses of luck. Keep talking to us here.

 

[Venusian]

Hi Bedbug,

You are not a bad person, you are a person going through overwhelming emotional stress. You are right that PTSD is not an excuse for abuse and now you have to learn how to handle yourself when you feel overwhelmed, a situation that you are acknowledging.

I am not sure how much I can help. It sounds like you are trying to do everything to help yourself. There comes a point when talking to someone who can help you sort out your thoughts is the only solution. A therapist has helped me so much, several of them in fact. Being able to talk to someone who you are not worrying you are going to hurt emotionally, who has the training and understanding of what you are going through helps so much. I know you don't have a good history with therapy but that was when you were a child and you were not ready or able to talk about the abuse. You are now and it may be time to look into it. In the short term there are sexual abuse hotlines you can call. Your situation isn't uncommon for things to bubble up and explode years later. It happened to me a couple of years ago, over 40 years later. It has been a roller coaster ever since but it does get better. It could also be helpful for your husband to talk to someone, either with you or by himself. It could help him understand what you are going through and how best to help you now.

 

[Abstract]

I had not revealed what was happening and got labelled as "possibly schizoid" instead of a victim of abuse

I just wanted to add that I think there are many of us who have trust issues with professionals because of being misdiagnosed or misunderstood. It is very hard to get past. You do have a proper diagnose now which will make all of the difference.

You have a good resource here too. You can look at your options and discuss them here and get input. The work you have done already is going to help a lot too. I find everything is much easier if I can be in a calmer state to start. You have managed that and it propbably wasn't the best idea to see a t at the beginning when you were highly destabilised if you have trust issues.

Do you understand about the fight, flight, freeze response that comes with PTSD? We all tend to have different defaults and tendencies but what we need to do is control how those are expressed and to use the different responses more appropriately. There are lots of ways to do that.

What first step can you take to get help? If you are really honest with yourself then do you think your husband needs to move out for his safety until you have made some steps forward or do you feel that can manage this short term, in general, until you get help? An anger management course is another option to start as it will give techniques to manage the PTSD anger if it comes up again.

 

[Leah123]

I hope you'll try and imagine the most perfect therapist, and then seek them out. Try and imagine someone who is caring, very smart, down to earth, experienced, comforting, can help you make sense of absolutely everything you're going through, and has helped lots of people with very very similar issues and histories as you. Don't think of that child psychologist, pessimistically, think of yourself as an adult with an illness who's going to find an excellent helper to get you feeling better as soon as possible.

That is what good therapy is like. A good, listening ear, empathy, support, resources, solutions, clarity, calm, and finally, peace. Think of it as a gift to yourself and your husband.

 

[Bedbug]

Thank you all for your responses.

I have just had a very long talk with my husband and I am very glad to say that I think we are going to be ok. I am very lucky to have a man like him in my life.

We discussed whether he is in any physical danger from me and we both agreed that we don't think he is. If either of us had thought that he was then I would have been packing a bag by now.

The first time I hit him we have pretty much discounted, because I was in a flashback. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, although we are both glad that he was there to pick me up afterwards.

The second time was different. I think a lot of it was due to alcohol. I had only had a drink because it was New Year's Eve, but he had been drinking to drown his sorrows. He had bottled up his feelings for so long because he was trying to be strong for me, but after a while the bottle burst. He really needed to say all the things he did, but the alcohol probably made them come out wrong.

Even though it was him finally venting his anger that had caused my violent outburst, I don't blame him for it in any way. I take full responsibility for my reaction and I am deeply sorry for what I did. He had every right to his own feelings and every right to express himself. I should have reacted differently. I know that and I will try to learn better ways of dealing with my anger. To begin with I won't be drinking again! We have also agreed to spend more time communicating, including discussing the impact my PTSD is having on him, so that our emotions are less likely to boil over again.

Reassuringly, when we talked more about what I had done last night, my husband said that I didn't hit him hard, and didn't even seem to be trying to. Now that we are both sober and we have talked about this, he has told me that is not afraid that I will hurt him if I have another outburst of anger. (However, he is still afraid that I will lash out again during a flashback. He says I was far more violent on that occasion which is why he was so fearful last night. Now he recognises the difference between the two occasions.)

So, if I wasn't really trying to hurt him last night, what was I doing hitting him? I know that my husband would never hit me, no matter what I did to him, and I think that made me feel safe enough to let out the anger inside me in the way that I did. I used his body as a focal point, but I wasn't hitting him with all my strength (I wasn't even hitting with two hands as my right hand is still too sore to use since hurting it last week during that flashback). I know what I did was still wrong, and I have apologised to him for that, but now that we have talked about it I honestly don't think wasn't trying to cause him any real injuries. However, I did use him in a manner that was just as abusive as if I had physically hurt him. I have promised to work hard to make sure that doesn't happen again.

There is one thing I am still curious about. The overwhelming consensus of opinion seems to be that I should see a therapist. Is this really the only option? Does everyone benefit from talking face-to-face to a therapist? I am fortunate to have a family doctor who has spent hours listening to me (and reading long emails in which I have been better able to express myself) since all this started. He is the first to admit that he is not trained to deal with mental health issues, but he has been a very good listener and agreed with Abstract's opinion that seeing a therapist during those first few weeks would probably have done me more harm than good. He directed me towards a lot of resources to help myself and I have been making good progress too.

What I am trying to say is that I am not refusing help, I am just not the kind of person to accept it from a therapist face-to-face. I don't think my husband had realised quite how much work I have been doing, even though he admitted today that I have been much better over the past couple of weeks. I think he'd just thought I was getting better "by luck" rather than hard work so whenever I've had a bad moment he has panicked and thought that if only I had been seeing a therapist it would never have happened. I don't think the best therapist in the world could have prevented all the bad times from happening. Now that I've explained this to my husband, he is far more accepting of my decision.

I know I crossed a line last night, but after a lot of thought and discussion I don't think what happened was as bad as I first feared. I might yet come round to the idea of talking to a therapist but for the moment I am confident that I can manage this myself...

...with my husband's support, my doctor's support, all your support and that of many others who have written about their experiences and treatments.

Thank you, again, for being there.

 

[Abstract]

Well done. You have both handled this maturely and I am glad you have had a direct discussion about it.

I honestly don't think wasn't trying to cause him any real injuries.

n I don't think what happened was as bad as I first feared.

I know you qualified these things by saying that it was still wrong but I just want to be sure to state what this was clearly. Putting your hands on someone is an aggressive act and is harmful just by its nature. It does not require broken bones for it to be so. Words can be an act of aggression. Any time anyone puts their hands on another person it is an act of aggressive. There is also no possible situation other then being threatened physically that can justify it. Other than it being a flashback and then you need to be getting appropriate treatment for it to be responsible.

What is your plan for self treatment? What have you done so far and what is your complete plan for recovery? Just trying to get a sense for where you are in your understanding of your situation.

 

[Leah123]

You asked if your only option was really to see a therapist.

You absolutely need psychological help pronto based on what I've read. Just because you're both sober and repentant right now, that does not mean you're through the woods. I'm not going to whitewash it. You are in for bad troubles otherwise, PTSD doesn't get better without a long term concerted effort: it's a hard road to healing, apologies and resolve to do better don't work in my experience.

I was confident I could manage it too- that was false confidence and I never behaved as violently in flashback as you have. You do not understand the complexity of your situation I don't think, or may not want to acknowledge it, which is completely understandable. I've been there. I would heed your own fears in your first post- don't minimize them- listen to them.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

You're still in denial. Your post is full of minimizing your behavior. You don't get the point that you are not safe and need a higher level of care.

Yes, you need to find a therapist, a psychiatrist, somebody who can help you. Reading books can help. Chatting in the forum can help. But I assure you that your symptoms are beyond anything that a book or chat can cure you of.

All it takes is one flashback in public and you'll find yourself in jail if you lash out at the wrong person. They're not going to care that it was due to a flashback and be as forgiving as your husband.

Please go and take a few days to read the supporter forum. Maybe then in will sink in just how hellish it can be to be a supporter. Do you want to knowingly put your husband through that? Yes he loves you but everyone has a breaking point. Refusing treatment will bring that breaking point just a little bit closer.

 

[Hashi]

I think you faced things very bravely and honestly in your first post, and now I can't help feeling that there's a lot of wishful thinking in your later one.

I'm afraid my misgivings are strong. I think it sounds like you and your husband are minimising what happened, and you're pushing away the moment of courage, honesty and awareness that you had before.

I think your husband made a very important point when he asked how this would be if it was the other way round, if this was about the actions of a husband with PTSD toward his wife. Looking at your second post from that perspective, I don't think people would accept it as adequate in terms of awareness or action. I can't imagine it would be accepted from a man that, "it was her venting her anger that caused me to be violent", and then a contradictory statement that he wasn't blaming her and was taking full responsibility. I don't think it would be accepted that self help and not drinking would be enough to fix this. I certainly don't think it would be accepted if he said, "I used her body as a focal point" and "but I wasn't hitting her with all my strength".

I think if these statements were made by a man about a woman, they'd be seen seen as unrealistic and a refusal to see the situation for what it is. They'd be seen as the likely beginning of violence, rather than the end of it. They're also the kind of things the abused partner might say, to excuse and explain things that didn't seem possible.

I don't think my husband had realised quite how much work I have been doing, even though he admitted today that I have been much better over the past couple of weeks.

But you attacked him just one or two days ago.

I am confident that I can manage this myself...

I agree with Leah and would add that I don't think you understand the kind of anger that can come out with PTSD. I don't think you understand how serious it can be.

While under attack, animals react by either fighting, fleeing or freezing. If they freeze - as so many of us do when sexually abused as a child - then we hold massive amounts of fight or flight energy under the surface, ready to use at any moment. Think of a weaker animal facing a predatory lion. It will freeze, but if the lion is distracted for a second then in a fraction of that second the animal will draw on the energy it's holding and either run or lash out and fight for its life.

We had that same response, and never got to use it and release those massive amounts of energy. The energy is still frozen in our systems. When we come out of denial and suppression of trauma, it begins to be released. Not only with flashbacks, but when anything sets off our anger and rage overtakes us. What you've experienced so far might be only the tip of the iceberg.

Please see a professional who specialises in trauma.