Emotional Numbess

[Steph_F]

You can't love him back to normal, but you can love and continue to support him as he goes throught the process of learning to live with ptsd. He needs to know you are there, a sorce of unconditional support, when his passing moods let him acknowledge that feeling. Sometimes his feelings for you will trigger emotional numbing, some times other stuff, sometimes even more or less normal stuff. Your love and support may eventually motivate him to commit to learning to live better with ptsd. At least that's kind of how it worked for me.

Can you (anyone) talk to more about this?? I don't know how to act or what to do or say when he is acting distant and his affect is so...flat, you can just hear the "blah-ness" in his voice. I finally got a second to talk to him yesterday morning, and I told him just that. I told him how I felt so lost and helpless because I never know what to say or do when he gets like this...His response was actaully just what I needed "don't worry, you'll get it". It may not have been very helpful to let me know what he needs or doesn't need, but it told me that he is looking into the future with me. I told him that unless he makes it very clear to me, that every time his numbness takes over that I am going to think that it's me or something I did so he needs to be more open and communicate with me more. I said that I know he loves me and that I was sorry that I am so insecure and self-centered but he needs to let me know when the problem is with him, or I will think its me. I told him that the more I know about what is going on with him, the easier it will be for me to cope and deal and therefore the better off he will be. He understood and I although he didn't say it, I know my guy's voice to know there was an appology there as well. I feel kinda of selfish by turning everything around to ME, like "here's what YOU need to do to make ME happy"...but I just needed to get under his skin enough to make him talk. The other thing I did tell him was that no matter what, I was staying by his side and will help him in any way.

ok...back to what I was saying...how can his feelings for me trigger numbness within him? Sometimes HE gets smushy enough that I feel a bit smothered with his attention and affection, but I just take it and store it away for the times like now that even though I think he wants to tell me he loves me and cares for me, he just can't. We just had ourselves an amazing weekend, mostly just the 2 of us. He took me to the Armory where he has his National Guard drill weekends and let me sit in all the trucks that he drives, the Humvees and the 5 tons and the skid loaders and told me stories of things that happened in Iraq when he was there in those trucks we stayed in a nice hotel and went out to eat and watched movies and spent some time with his parents and friends at his camp, went to his daughter's dance recital and went out and played darts with friends. Anyway so after this awesome weekend, for no apparent reason the shit hit the fan and he pulled away and basically just ignored me all week. What the heck happened? He says "nothing" is different but he didn't return my calls, I got lectured for being too clingy and nosy, he ignored my texts.

One more thing, I know that he a big appt coming up when they are going to run all the tests and do assesments and (hopefully) start therapy...and I am so worried that he will not go, I want to encourage him and tell him how proud I am that he is taking care of himself so well, but I am afraid that I will come off pushy. Any suggestions?

Thank you so much for helping me with this.

 

[Jimmy1]

I can't help right now. Doing some adjusting in my own head. Maybe Anthony, Fargo, or Ted can help you out. They always blow me away by their responses.

Jimmy

 

[Steph_F]

I can't help right now. Doing some adjusting in my own head. Maybe Anthony, Fargo, or Ted can help you out. They always blow me away by their responses.

Jimmy

I know...they are awesome about being able to put feelings into words, it's a gift, that's for sure.

I know you are going through a rough time right now and I hope it gets better soon and I really appricate the fact that you are smart enough to know when you need to conserve your resources for yourself and the problems that you are personally facing...that is also a gift. Keep plugging away and know that I support you and believe in you! :)

Take care friend! :)

 

[Fargo1]

Hey Steph,

For me the numbing effect comes whenever I get overwhelmed. That can be an argument over an invoice with a client, a bad letter from the IRS, or me feeling "too much love" for T. As for that last one, as I have said before somewhere here, when I start feeling all smooshy wooshy with T, sometimes I get a 2x4 of guilt smacked across my face. I feel as if I don't deserve her love, I feel like she is making a big mistake by being with me a dealing with my huge, stinky pile of poo, of a life. She deserves better than me. That overwhelms me and even though I "know how to deal with it" intellectually, my Lizard brain does not and when I am overwhelmed, Lizard is running the show.

Reading about your situation I can make a couple of assumptions (but you know what they say about those, right?)

1. It sounds like HE does love you.
2. HE is going through a rough patch. As you said above, he is not in therapy right now...
3. HE is waiting for his assessment. The waiting is killer stress. It is a total unknown for him and he does not know what it is, much less how to deal with it. So guess what? The Lizard comes out to save the day!
4. As a soldier, he was taught not to express his feelings. As an example; you are taught never to let your troops see you sweat. Don't get emotional. Don't get angry at the enemy. Because if you do, your unit will see you as a human being. Fallible. Then they will start feeding off of that and you will lose unit cohesion. This was constantly reinforced into me as I moved my way up the ranks and responsibility. So I imagine that it is difficult for him to show you what he is feeling. As he is struggling with that, he gets overwhelmed. So guess what? The Lizard comes to save to day!

So what can you do? This my friend is what I am currently trying to work out with T. But what I can say is this: Listen to what he is saying to you, when he does say it. Don't hear what you want to hear. As I said above to Jimmy about his kids, Repeat what he said to you to make sure that you heard it right. If not, have him say it again. Then you repeat it back to him again. A military example is this: On the bridge of a ship, the Deck Officer decides what direction to steer the ship and says very loudly to the Conning Officer "Right 10 degrees rudder, Steer course 250". The Conning Officer says "Right 10 degrees rudder, Steer course 250. Aye, sir!" If the Conning Officer said it back correctly the Deck Officer says nothing. If it was repeated incorrectly, he will said it again. If it was right, the Conning Officer turns to the Helmsman and says, "Helm, Right 10 degrees rudder. Steer course 250!" The process is repeated between the Helm and the Conn. If the message was relayed correctly, the Helmsman starts turning the wheel and the ship heads off its merry way.

In the beginning it feels weird to do these things. But learning how to drive a stick shift was weird the first time too. After a bit, it comes more naturally. After a little more, it does not need to be as formal. But it really is the only way that I know of to have really clear communication without assumptions being made. And the assumptions are what kill us.

Hope that helps a bit.

 

[Ted Moen]

ok...back to what I was saying...how can his feelings for me trigger numbness within him?

Steph, the way ptsd works is sometimes things in our current situation evoke normal thoughts and feelings that are expressed in normal behaviors and sometimes things in our current situation trigger thoughts and feelings related to old stuff and those (normally intense) feelings are expressed in behaviors that are inappropriate in the current situation. You are part of his current situation. Even more so, you are an important part of his current situation. Sometimes his interactions with you will trigger normal thoughts and feelings and generate appropriate behaviors based on the current situation. Sometimes his interactions with you will trigger thoughts and feelings related to old stuff and those intense thoughts and feelings will generate behavior you would consider inappropriate to the current situation.

As you observed, sometimes the inappropriate behavior could well be "excessive" affection, related to the intensity of the intensity of the thoughts and feelings generated by old stuff as opposed to normal affection based on his thoughts and feelings toward you. Most of the time, though, when intense thoughts and feelings are triggered we experience serioux anxiety and panic because along with the intense thoughts and feelings comes the fear that we are about to lose control of our behavior and we need to get ourselves to a safe place (away from the triggering situation) and alone because if we don't something really terrible is going to happen. Something really terrible includes the feeling we might hurt someone we care about. That's the fear, even if we in fact would never do that. People who have experienced trauma have experienced things that people can do to other people that normal people can't imagine, which is the stuff that generates intense feelings and generates the fear about what we might do when we lose control of our behavior.

So, what can the supporter do? Obviously that is a huge question. When I become distant (old stuff passing through) my wife lets me be distant initially. Then she will test me with something simple to see how strong the need to be distant is. Pretty much she will let me be until she starts to get normal responses to her requests. If she really needs me to do something when I am being distant she is very direct and very specific and makes the request then leaves me alone and I usually do whatever it is then go back to being distant.

When we are being distant we are processing intense thoughts and feelings related in some way to old and very intense feelings we buried / stuffed during the trauma experience. If we don't process those feelings, if we just stuff them again and again, they will just come back even more intense the next time they're triggered. Processing is good. I tend to play computer games, very simple mindless games like spider solitare when I am processing stuff, so when I go to my computer room (my safe place) and play computer games it kind of signals to her I am in a distant mood. Of course, I am giving my impression of stuff she does. Her description of what she does might be quite different :D

And we've been doing what we do for a long time, so I probably no longer remember accurately just how we initially worked out what we do, but we have learned to live with my ptsd stuff together and that is a good thing I think.

Ted

 

[Redheaded Stranger]

Dearest Veterans,

You have no idea how TOTALLY helpful it is when you share like this. Thank you so much for helping us see a small glimpse. I think it can only help us, and help us be more helpful to our Veterans. I wish I'd found you months ago.

So a big THANK YOU and hugs to each of you for sharing!

Red

 

[ByYourSide]

I'm going to also add a "thank you" to the list. Even though I'm not with my sufferer anymore it helps me through the process because he's just acting like none of our relationship matters. He's just blank. It's hard when all I want to know is that we meant something -- and that he's sad about this too, that he just wasn't telling me things for the duration and then it just clicked off. Or worse that he was lying the entire time. But I'm getting nothing but I can tell that somewhere he is upset (I can tell by his face in photos he posts - I've seen that look before -- little things he refers to) He's just burying it. He just locks down if I overwhelm him and want him to admit what he's feeling.


So again thank you all. Carers and sufferers. You're shedding light on a situation that I'm having a really hard time with.
I hope current carers can utilize this info and put it into action and eventually see results.

 

[Mockingbird13]

I agree - reading everyones posts has truly opened my eyes and mind to understanding a bit better - since I also could not get mine to talk - I can now understand a bit better.

Thank you all !

 

[Steph_F]

Yes, thank you for the insight! I hope that someday he can open up to me the way people do on here, but in terms of emotional closeness, I guess it's "safer" to pour our hearts out here.

Things I think are getting better, we are texting and talking more, but its funny...I'm still nervous that I am going to say something that pushes him away and for some reason I think he's afraid that if I get him on the phone long enough, I'm going to want to hack this all apart and make him explain himself. (which I do, and I want an appology...and some flowers...and a promise that it will never happen again!) HOWEVER...I think I can be content to just hear him laugh with me again. :)

Thank you so much everyone for chipping in and listening and caring and for the support! There's so much more I could say, but words will never cover it, so just...thank you. omg getting all teary-eyed at work...I'm such a dorkus! hahaha!

 

[Steph_F]

But what I can say is this: Listen to what he is saying to you, when he does say it. Don't hear what you want to hear. As I said above to Jimmy about his kids, Repeat what he said to you to make sure that you heard it right. If not, have him say it again. Then you repeat it back to him again.

I wish I was better at hearing what M is saying to me, and not what I want to hear. Or "hearing" between the lines.

The repeating thing is something that we try to do because we communicate so differently and we both expect the other to know what we are thinking. Sometimes I think I say things plain as day and he claims to have NO idea what the hell I am talking about. Sometimes its the other way around, he says something that seems like its way outta left field and is totally irrelevant to the conversation at hand, sometimes when I question him, he gets upsets and accuses me of not paying attention or not listening but with time I am understanding him more and more. Like I said somewhere else, he communicates much like a good military leader, short and concise and I communicate like a good drunk...gibber-gabber- on and on...somewhere there might be a point! haha!

I just wish I was not so insecure, but not sure anyone but me can fix that one.

 

[Jimmy1]

Hey Steph, its really hard you know. I am so numb now and want to run and hide. I don't want to show Margaret my weakness. I try to smile and be happy and act like a dick. I love seeing her smile. But its hard to fake it.

 

[Fargo1]

Steph,

This is part of my problem. I am pretty good at thinking about all of this. I am even decent at typing it to all of you here. I don't feel the anxiety as much when I am typing it out to you. But standing in front of T...well the Lizard usually is in charge then. And he is a dick. But I am working on it.

A friend of mine who is a Phd in Linguistics has made an interesting observation about me. I have a pretty large vocabulary and he noticed that I use it well. Too well.

When I am talking to people he says that I often hesitate when I talk because he can tell that I am looking for the exact word that I want to say. The draw back is that when using the exact word, it that it is like using a blunt force weapon against the person I am talking to. I use as few words as possible, the exact word and the exact definition of that word, and it leaves people no wiggle room. They feel trapped, and there is a communication breakdown.

I think it may be why most of my posts are long on this forum. I am trying NOT to do that! :geek:.