Welcome. Your guy is so fortunate to have someone like you, who's willing to work with him on his challenges while standing by his side, and educate yourself on his issues to better understand and help.
Hopefully you'll check in with the supporters forum, as well, for those who you can identify with exactly, as to what they're going through with their own PTSD sufferer.
He's a great man and we love each other very much, but some times it's very difficult to deal with his extreme mood changes. I fight hard to maintain a sense of self and protect myself emotionally by not allowing his condition to silence me.
I understand the need not to feel silenced. That's very important, after all--that you feel free to bring up and discuss your concerns. Often, though, others don't understand that, for the PTSD sufferer, the WAY it's done makes the difference between night and day.
Even an approach that seems very gentle, nonconfrontational, and reasonable, can be interpreted as threat by the PTSD sufferer. It's one of the main symptoms/traits of PTSD, and It's just a matter of neurophysiology. it's hard to understand that there's little someone can do about his reactions, when the reactions seem emotional, rather than something physical: if he were wearing a leg cast, it would be pretty obvious that he couldn't be expected to dance.
But when it comes to emotions, our natural reaction is that adults, especially those who care about us, should be able to control emotional reactions, if they really cared about us enough to try that hard.
But a PTSD brain has undergone a shift to programming for a dangerous environment. Theory goes that it's an evolved trait, developed to protect us when we find ourselves in a threatening environment. Reactions are ramped up accordingly, so that we are very sensitive to any sense of threat whatsoever. Those are the kinds of reactions that keep you alive in a very dangerous environment, after all.
It may feel very uncomfortable to "treat him with kid's gloves" so to speak...as though you're coddling a child, etc.
It's not exactly the arrangement the average person is looking for in their mate, right off. It certainly feels unnatural--and may feel as though you're walking on eggshells, trying to change yourself when it's he who should be making the effort to change.
But he has PTSD brain. Just like the man with the cast has a broken leg. He can't just use his leg if he wants to badly enough. It's broken. It's just harder to accept this when it comes to something like emotions, instead. We don't think in terms of emotions as being fundamentally "broken", and not within our conscious control.
But these kinds of outsized reactions, fight/flight reactions, are one of the most common features in PTSD.
He's at the mercy of his brain. And with a head injury, that may be even more the case.
That doesn't mean that you should feel a need to silence yourself, and not bring up concerns. But try to keep in mind that what you see as just a straight-forward matter of fact approach that one adult uses to address another...may really seem as though you're coming at him ruthlessly, from the PTSD brain's perspective. All sense of threat is heightened, after all. We're jumping at shadows, notoriously, especially for some time immediately following the trauma.
I'm glad you've expressed your commitment to remain with him and see it through, together, as long as you're making practical efforts at progress, and communication. Hopefully you can find chances to reassure him of this regularly.
I'd try to begin placing a lot of importance on the form your communications take, rather than seeing it in terms of having to walk on eggshells for him, or as a matter of his not wanting to control his reactions badly enough.
It does improve, especially with treatment. That's the bright side. In the meantime you have a soldier with broken reactions, even though you can't see them as plainly as a broken leg. And a little effort to take this into consideration can go a long way towards having open lines of communication, and cooperation, rather than being met with violent fight/flight reactions as a result of his new threat-based brain.
Welcome to the forum, and best wishes. He's lucky to have you. Hope you can find support in the supporters section, as well.
