I Hit My Husband

[Hashi]

All it takes is one flashback in public and you'll find yourself in jail if you lash out at the wrong person.

I tried to kill someone who touched me inappropriately in the street. I'm not exaggerating.

I'm female. It took several men to pull me off him, and if they hadn't stopped me I'm sure I would have gone to prison for grevious bodily harm, or worse. As it was, I was lucky that this was in my neighbourhood so they knew me and didn't call the police.

 

[scout86]

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?

Would you accept "yes and yes" as the answers to your questions?

Actually, no, you don't HAVE to see a therapist. For many years, I thought I had this handled, I didn't need any help. I was "fine". Most people had no idea I had any issues at all. About a year ago, I found myself playing around on the internet bouncing between sites that discuss the "best" methods of suicide, and sites that discussed "therapy". I checked for therapists in my area and I debated about methods. Thought about checking out therapy, changed my mind. One day, I hit "send", almost without meaning to (I thought) and contacted a therapist. There was a gun in the draw, right where I was sitting. I realized after my first session that pulling the trigger would have been just exactly as easy as hitting "send" and I would have done it with the same cavalier "WTH?" attitude. The difference being, I'd have been dead. At least if I was lucky enough not to just badly hurt myself. You know what? I'm glad I made the appointment! It hasn't been a cake walk since then, but it was the right thing to do and I wish I'd have done it YEARS ago. It pains me to think of how much of my life has been wasted because I avoided dealing with this as long as I did. And it scares me, just a little, to look back on all the close calls with death too.

OK, all therapists are not created equal. Neither are all heart surgeons. Doesn't mean you want to do your own bypass surgery, does it? I think "not wanting to talk to a therapist" is so common, it's practically a SYMPTOM. (Maybe it IS a symptom?) The thing is, one of the hallmarks of this condition is it affects your view of the world in ways you can't be objective about. You NEED someone who is knowledgeable, standing on the outside, with your interests at heart, to help you see things more accurately. You just DO. It's too bad, I wish it wasn't true (although, as it turned out, I actually like my therapist, a lot), but the fact remains, this is not a do it yourself project. Especially for someone who is either suicidal of homicidal.

And, supposing the next time your lose your temper with your husband, you just happen to be holding a kitchen knife in your hand? Or maybe a steak knife? Or a rolling pin, for that matter. He may be big and strong, you may be relatively small, but a weapon can be a great equalizer.

Since your GP sounds pretty great, see if he can give you a referral.

 

[Abstract]

I agree with everything that everyone has said here. In fact we see many supporters on here who are in the position your husband is in. They don't understand PTSD in just the same way your husband doesn't and when their partner convinces them how they are going to do it all themselves and it will all be OK they breathe a sigh of relief when they shouldn't until everything builds up again (very quickly) and something else happens.

I avoided the abuse word before - put it in and took it out as I thought your honesty in your first post was enough - but laying your hands one time on someone is abusive. Qualifying the where and the why is an ongoing concern.

I still hope you answer my questions about what you have done and what your plan was as I think it will give us much understanding about what you understand about the situation you are in and what you don't.

It does not sound like your dr has Oked you helping yourself. Saying it was OK to do a little adjusting for a couple of weeks is a totally different thing to saying that it is OK to not get treatment.

not wanting to talk to a therapist" is so common, it's practically a SYMPTOM. (Maybe it IS a symptom?

Scout I had to laugh a little. "Irrational" fear of everything and severe trust issues? No wonder. And others of us have never asked anyone for help ever.

 

[Abstract]

Just thought I would do this to take out all the qualifiers and lay out what you have said here. There is more but these are the key things.

The first time I hit him we have pretty much discounted,

it was him finally venting his anger that had caused my violent outburst,

Reassuringly, when we talked more about what I had done last night, my husband said that I didn't hit him hard,

I know that my husband would never hit me,... 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

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

 

[scout86]

Wow, Abstract! When you put it like THAT....... (I was kind of ROTFL, when I read it, even though it's not funny. It IS classic)

Bedbug, don't let us scare you away. Everyone is saying what they're saying from personal experience, not judgement or condemnation of you. You aren't a "bad" person and you certainly aren't the "worst person in the world". (Perhaps we need to organize a competition for that title?) You're just a person who has a problem. We all know something about the nature and seriousness of the problem and would like to see you get the help you and your husband need and deserve. But we all also know how easy it is to blow stuff off. It's EASY, but it doesn't work worth a darn!

 

[Tinyflame]

If your husband is despairing, get help for yourself, him and the marriage. It's hard to be on the receiving end. No judgment, as others have said, but the impact is severe. Therapy/ help/ anger management, to get better. Doesn't help anyone to be a target (including making yourself one). Please don't feel badly but do realize it can't be minimized.

When I have been very suicidal I avoid drinking (especially alone). As Scout said, also guns around would be, well, that would be that. Same goes for combining rage and any of the above.

 

[Lost Pup]

I just wanted to say you have nothing to feel ashamed of. As others have said, you have a profound responsibility to seek support and help in managing your behavior, and your husband has a lesser but substantial responsibility to seek support for himself and in his strategies for dealing with you. But the shame that can arise in the aftermath of abreaction, flashbacks etc. is, in and of itself, so profoundly debilitating that I hope you can take some time to actively dissolve it if it is there. If not addressed head-on, it can freeze the trauma energy ever more solidly.

About 5 years ago I was similarly aggressive with a partner, though there was no actual hitting involved, and the shame I felt ultimately forced me into self-imposed isolation from the world. I would hate to see that happen to you. The way I see it is that you have just learned you have a child to care for, and an extremely emotionally disturbed one. True this child lives inside you, but the responsibility is no less. You need to both soothe her and protect the world from her outbursts. When she comes out in a grown woman's body, the world will be infinitely less forgiving of her than it might if she were still in a child's body.

I am profoundly sorry for what happened to you and how it is impacting you now. I know that going into therapy can be extremely frightening as it forces you into certain kinds of engagement, trust and intimacy. Still, you seem to have a good, wise, responsible voice in you that knows what you need to do now. Try to hear it and strengthen it. Let it have the final say over the rest of the din that will surely arise in your head. Remember how much of that din is operating from a place of fear, hurt and confusion.

I don't mean to sound preachy, btw. In writing this, I am reminding myself of all this as much as you. Good luck to you and your husband.

 

[Echo]

@Bedbug, that little you inside yourself had every right, and still does, to be absolutely furious with what HAPPENED to you. But she really does need help in managing how she expresses herself. A child's temper tantrum is one thing, but combined with blind fear, she can do so much damage potentially inside a woman's body as @Lost Pup says.

Please don't get into a situation where you regret in retrospect that you have really hurt the ones you love. Free yourself of this, safely, in a slower, gentler manner with someone around you who can protect you and your family. Please don't become the abuser, even though I know, as we all do here, that you don't want to be that person, not in a million years.

My therapist and I liken my experience to being a volcano about to erupt. I am doing everything I can with her help to stop it blowing. I don't think in terms of it hurting other people; I see it as likely to shatter me and my life; at the moment I don't feel any anger towards my abusers. Your experience helps me to see what it could also be. That my little girl may well lash out like yours.

Please allow your husband to truly feel safe and cherished, as well as loved. He is in shock and doesn't want to believe that this could be happening. Please really do listen to everyone here. See if you can give therapy just one more go; you may meet someone fantastic in the process, and you will always have the control to stop the therapeutic relationship, if you want to do so - if it doesn't work out. You didn't have that power as a child. Be the grown-up now, please.

 

[Jonnyblueyes]

Great replies. Get help immediately before it spirals out of control. It does get worse. Show him you love him but he also needs to understand what yours going through, and if he thinks the six weeks of what HE went through was bad let him be in your shoes for all those years you went through people telling you that you're messed up basically. He needs to be a man and be there for his wife. NOT GIVE UP and make it about himself. He needs to understand and be there for YOU.

 

[NukaGirl]

I can only repeat what everyone else has said and urge you to get help. Now. You may think you're alright because you had a civil discussion and admitted that you had done something wrong, but what if it happens again, and it's not your husband you hit but someone else? They won't be as understanding. You NEED to get a therapist to help you work through this and also to help your husband understand what you're going through and what he can do to help you in a situation where you flashback. Self help will not help you through this I'm afraid. You're going to have to get over your hatred of Doctors and find one that will give you to means to get better.
I know it's hard but surely it will be worth it when you can assure yourself and your husband that something like what happened will never happen again.

 

[Bedbug]

Well, that was very painful reading.

I am sitting here now in floods of tears because so many total strangers have taken the time to read my story and care enough to write such long replies. You are all very kind. So much of what you all said has really hit me hard, especially cutting passages of my own words and showing me what is written between the lines. You are all so much in agreement that I am really starting to wonder if I have been kidding myself. I don't admit to being wrong often, but there sounds like there is a lot of wisdom in what you have all written.

Some things really stood out.

What I did to my husband was abuse, no matter how I try to play it down or qualify it. Abuse, pure and simple. As Echo says, I must not become the abuser.

Hashi's description of the "fight, flight, freeze" response really hit home. I definitely froze as a child. Over the past six weeks I have run twice and fought twice, both times with incredible energy.

Solara - I have read quite a bit of the supporter forum. And, no, I don't want my husband to feel like that. I would do anything to stop him feeling like that and to keep him safe. And, after him, to keep the general public - and myself - safe.

So far I have been lucky and only had flashbacks at home, but I have barely been out of the house since this started. Although I am getting fewer flashbacks now and can usually recognise the signs of one starting, I can't guarantee that I won't have one in public when I do start venturing out more. I am terrified of what might happen if I can't ground myself again.

Abstract - you have helped me so much today and I was planning to set out everything I have been doing and my plans for the future but then I came back on here and read all the other responses since you suggested I do that and I just broke down in tears. Who am I kidding? I can't do this. Maybe I can make things a little better but I can't fix them and I can't risk dragging my husband down with me.

Lost Pup - thank you. You struck a chord too. We do now suddenly have an emotionally disturbed child to care for. And, as Echo says, I have to be the grown up. I have been seeing therapy as a giving up of control, of being put back in a childlike position, but I realise now that I will remain in control throughout the process. Also trying therapy doesn't mean I can't come out of therapy. I don't think it would have helped at the beginning but perhaps I can try it now.

So, no, you haven't all scared me away, as scout86 said, but you have scared me. I honestly didn't expect you all to be so much in agreement. I have been stuck in denial for weeks and I am ashamed of myself. I need help.

 

[Echo]

@Bedbug, please don't be ashamed of yourself. Please realise how incredibly brave it is to face yourself and reach out for help. Walking straight at that fear and taking control will release you from it. We are all having to do that all the time, and there is so much to be proud of, when you CHOSE to get help and TAKE CONTROL of your healing process. Well done, you. x