Relationship How to help my vet cry?

[Lowe]

Please do. And have your husband read it too. My wife is my anchor, or my care-giver, but it took a lot of studying...

Wow.
I read this last sentence and it got me. How did she pull out the tears from you? I want to do the same for my vet, but it seems so hard to get those tears out of him. I would love to be that women for him. How do I do it?

 

[Sighs]

Please be wary of taking on the "saviour" role. Its impossible. You cannot "cure" your vet's PTSD. Trying can suck the life out of you to the point that your mental health suffers.

By all means, love him, support him and help him. But just be careful with your own sense of self and your boundaries.

 

[somerandomguy]

I can't imagine that there would be anything you could do to make him want to cry. In fact, that sounds like a terrible idea. How about if you just gently let him know that it's ok for him to let out his feelings around you if he wants to? What about doing things that will help him to feel safe around you?

 

[Fadeaway]

Men aren't like women when it comes to crying, plus society discourages men from crying. If he cries or doesn't cry, that is up to him, you shouldn't have any expectations either way.

 

[Friday]

Female vet, here.

It’s a very very very bad thing if I’m crying. Crying doesn’t help me. At all.

AKA - in my case - How can I help my vet be suicidal?

 

[LuckiLee]

I agree with @Friday. If my Vet is crying he's in a very very very bad place!

Why would you want your person to cry?

 

[mumstheword]

I would never "help my sufferer man cry". While I know you mean well, and want to support him, just holding him, touching him in caring ways (if that supports him) support with basics (eating can.be a big one) and just love and appreciation for him and all that he brings into you're life might be a gentler, less intrusive way to support him.

Many men feel much more shame and fear for expressing such vulnerability than plenty of us women (yes I believe it's both cultural and hardwired) so it may be doing more harm than good to try to get him to cry.

My guy gets angry instead of tears, much more often and mostly, doesn't really want me to see him cry, although I'm his safe person.

It's best if I try to not get triggered myself when he get angry (which is hard as I'm a sufferer too) so he can blow off steam without incurring more guilt and shame for upsetting me.

Anger and venting without judgement and (me) taking it personally seems to work better for him, but I also seem to help when I remind him "don't sweat the small stuff" after acknowledging the validity of his feelings and responses.

 

[Sweetpea76]

Emotional numbing is a symptom of PTSD. Trying to elicit high emotion is going to blow up in your face.

I've seen my vet cry once, and he was so bad off I almost took him to the hospital that day.

 

[Sweetleaf]

Everyone is an individual, everyone reacts to things individually, everyone is different with crying - for some people it's bad, for some it's a release, for some it can go either way, or some other way - but either way, it's something I think is best to just let happen naturally. You can't really force it, not in yourself (in my experience, lol), not in someone else. It's not really a thing that can be forced - not without doing something bad, really.

It's best to just let it happen organically, and if it never happens? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. There isn't really a -need- to cry, like we have a need to eat, sleep, etc.

 

[Sweetleaf]

yes I believe it's both cultural and hardwired

One word.
Hormones.

 

[EveHarrington]

It would be mean to make your mom cry, or your sister cry, or your best friend cry, or a child cry.

(I know we’re not talking years of joy here.)

Why do you think it would be a good idea to make your guy cry?

Please, for the love of god, do NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT x like a trillion....play therapist. Yes, this crosses lines into playing therapist. I’m still trying to recover from my ex playing therapist and trying to fix me. (He had no therapeutic training.) Many of my therapy sessions are dedicated to fixing his damage. My healing has been set back in many ways.

Please leave the healing up to professionals. Please don’t try to fix him. Please don’t be codependent. You are there to support, not fix.

If you open his Pandora’s box.....let’s just say that’s pretty cruel. My box was blown open and I almost ended up dead. Not fun.

 

[Sweetleaf]

Please, for the love of god, do NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT x like a trillion....play therapist. Yes, this crosses lines into playing therapist. I’m still trying to recover from my ex playing therapist and trying to fix me. (He had no therapeutic training.) Many of my therapy sessions are dedicated to fixing his damage. My healing has been set back in many ways.

Ugh, this. My experience is with a shitty therapist, though - if a trained therapist can f*ck up big, imagine an untrained person trying... I have to have therapy to fix what my old therapist did, and it has set me back massively - that said, at least now I have someone who knows what they're doing. My counselor/pdoc told me that she could do EMDR this next session, on the memories of her f*cking up massively and throwing me into a PTSD clusterf*ck big enough that now I also have a panic disorder diagnosis - and like almost daily panic attacks, and I can't f*cking sleep more than 4 hours it seems.