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Thanks! I never saw that pattern before. It feels right.

You've raised a lot of topics, and I want to try to address them. (My PTSD diagnosis was revised to DID after 12 years of therapy.) Previous therapist: OMG what a frustrating and painful experience! The ones who think that supportive listening is enough should not be practicing. Argh! The day...

You've been given great advice. The way to resolve this horrible mess is to follow it. I want to acknowledge that the way you got into this (current) horrible mess is by being a kind and considerate person who fought hard to give him what he needs. He's been asking you to act like his mother...

Dissociating (disconnecting from things) comes in many many many varieties. Disconnecting from your feelings is something that men have been routinely trained to do for a very long time (it seems to be changing in the last 20 years or so). Aircraft pilots routinely dissociate from their feelings...

Powerlessness is a toxic feeling. You can't control his behaviour, but you can influence it: If you take good care of yourself and find ways to be happy, you weaken his fear that he will ruin your life. If you avoid chasing after him when he withdraws, he will learn that if he wants contact...

Thank you for talking about this difficult, painful feeling. Please talk about it as much as you feel able, or talk about anything else that you want to say.

The smell of fish makes me gag, although I don't have any negative emotions or memories linked to it. What does trigger me is decision-making processes around food. Deciding what I want to eat is very difficult. Deciding to cook something is something that I do twice a month, if I'm having a...

*hugs*

An apology can only ever be offered. If someone met all 3 of my criteria, I might not accept their apology, depending on how hurt I was, and how effective I thought they were going to be regarding point 3. If a person doesn't accept a sincere apology, the message they are effectively sending...

OK, so it sounds like there is reasonable doubt, and he shouldn't be treated like a criminal. That's a relief. It's normal for a PTSD sufferer to avoid therapy, but I wouldn't negotiate on whether he goes or not. You're right, improvements won't last without therapy.

Not necessarily- a trigger can be specific to a class of people. And 'wife' is a class of person. It doesn't justify the behaviour, and it doesn't mean that the behaviour can be tolerated. It does mean that PTSD is a potentially valid explanation. That said... Presenting fabrications to your...

I'm really fussy about what an apology means, because the words "I'm sorry, but" were a warning that things were about to get scary. In my mind, an apology means: 1) A bad thing happened 2) I accept (some measure of) responsibility for the bad thing 3) I intend to address the problem of the...

Effective therapy tends to be quite tiring and stressful. The period where you're learning how to be in therapy and haven't fixed anything yet (where he is now) can be extremely difficult. I'd be really impressed with anyone who manages to make a visible improvement in the first 3-4 sessions...

Oh yeah. Lost contact with one of my best friends for two years because I didn't return his calls for a week & then couldn't work out how to call him without dying of shame. Bumped into him on the street and we had lunch & sorted it all out.

I get floaters and tinnitus a lot, but I don't experience changed in my vision (I guess sometimes, it's a bit blurry). Could eye movement or focus changes explain what you're seeing, or could it be something like a hallucination?

The MHFA suicide guidelines might also be useful Mental Health First Aid Guidelines | Mental Health First Aid

The most painful trauma I ever experienced was not something that was done to me as a kid, it's something I did as a father and husband. I'd like to share in that apology, if I may. I'm also sorry, and I think that @Deadman chose some wonderful words that express this important thing really well.

The brain prioritizes the memories that will make a difference to survival. These are the strong negative emotions (as in 'Ouch! Fire hurts!') and the strong positive emotions ('I learned how to track an animal, and got a nice meal!'). A brain that is working at 100% efficiency will remember...

That sounds like 'potentially normal confusion' instead of 'forgetting'. You remember that there was a fight. Details (potentially important details) can easily go missing in a complicated, stressful situation (like a three-way fight). I do like the words 'collective breakdown', there's a subtle...

Is it possible for you to go with him? Is there someone else who can do that? Encouraging people to go into therapy can be tricky (as you know). If there is Mental Health First Aid training near you, then it's essentially a two-day course in 'how to gently suggest to someone that they should...

OK, but still, the facts of the events in your life are not, in themselves, reasons to go to a therapist. It's like going to a doctor because you were outside all day yesterday when it was raining really hard. Yes, you might have caught a cold. Or you might not. The reason to go to a doctor is...

I didn't do daily sessions, but I did wiggle my eyes around unsupervised the next day. In hindsight, I probably would have been better off having a proper session.

It's hard. But they do have reasons for loving us. I suspect they vary from person to person, but I'm learning to accept that those reasons exist.

I've been engaging with the supporter forum. It's nice to practice talking about PTSD with people who don't have it, and they're particularly motivated to understand. A small step, but a useful one.

This is something that we (as sufferers in this sub forum) need to acknowledge from time to time. After all, the Bad Thing very clearly happened because we deserved it, we are horrible people, and it's impossible to tolerate us without massive effort. (Except when we go to the opposite extreme...