Did your vet tell you about his PTSD and what triggers he had or did you just figure out through all the ups/downs what was going on? Do your vet goes in waves with being social?
Yes, he told me he had PTSD fairly early on in the relationship. His case is pretty severe. He is physically disabled from combat as well. He is unable to work because of all of it, and he spent months in various hospitals after Iraq, including an inpatient stay for PTSD treatment. He cannot really play it off.
As far as telling me what his triggers are... he doesn't even know what all his triggers are. Sometimes things just hit him out of the blue. It could be a smell. A sound. He knows what a lot of them are, but it'd be impossible to warn me about all of them. I've seen him triggered. I've seen him stressed, and I've seen him dissociated. There is absolutely nothing I can do to shield him from any of that. That's not really my responsibility. That stuff is happening in his head, so ultimately he is the one who is responsible for dealing with it. It's everyday life for him.
Let me tell you a story. Once I threw a broken down box into the recycle bin. Sounds innocent enough, right? When he walked in, the second he saw it he was instantly triggered. Full freak out mode. I thought he was going to pass out, then he went into a rage until he puked. That piece of cardboard was laying exactly like a piece of trash that covered an IED his vehicle hit in Iraq. He was not driving, and he noticed it about a split second before the vehicle struck it. He says he will never ever in his life forget that piece of f*cking cardboard.
Did I trigger him? Nope. I threw away an old box. I did not trigger him... he was triggered. There's going to be stuff like that happening. You can't avoid it, and you cannot plan ahead for it.
As far as him being social... he's not. He has some friends he's known his whole life, but they don't hang out much. He has army buddies, and friends from the VFW... but he doesn't hang out with them much either. Even hanging out with people he knows and likes is a source of stress. I've seen him wind himself up about going to the VFW and having a beer on Taco Tuesday, and that's one of his favorite things to do. If he's in that mode, he'll stress about it until he is too sick to go.
