How to tell your partner

[EveHarrington]

Really, it’s not that hard.

Yes, you are overthinking this.

Just come right out and say it.

 

[siniang]

I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for your input! It may not seem like it, but I really do appreciate your comments and I do take them to heart.

Just because I struggle somewhat with this doesn't mean that I don't want to do it. But I'm honest, I'm a little surprised at some of the comments because you'd expect other sufferers of all people would understand best how those kind of things can be incredible hard for someone.

Part of why this is so hard for me is that I'm really on the mild end of the PTSD spectrum. Also, most of my symptoms are very episodic. I'm struggling with denial myself, to begin with. Not because I'm ashamed of my diagnoses (yes, I know I wrote something about "embarrassed", earlier, but I actually meant that differently) but because I extremely normalize and minimalize.

The other, and more important reason really is that for the bigger part of my life, I had to face problems alone, either by choice ("I can do this", "No one can help me with this anyway", "I don't want to burden anyone with this, particularly if they can't do anything about it") or by lack of support (both because the other party really couldn't help, despite wanting to, or by disapproving/not my problem mindsets). I've always been very self-sufficient. And those are >my< things (/problems/...). That's why it's so extremely hard for me to open up about really personal things and to also ask for help (and my trauma pre-dates meeting hubby by years).

 

[Neverthesame]

I am going to pitch an idea at you @siniang, okay?

First, I do hear you that you feel a need to tell your husband about this, I believe you. I believe you because if you didn't, you wouldn't have bothered to post about it in the first place.
Second, please hear me out. I don't think you want to tell your husband. It's not a negative criticism, I'm seeing something here that looks a great deal like what my therapist used to point out to me 30 or 40 times a session..... Avoidance.

Look at this thread now. It has gone from you seeking advice about disclosing your diagnosis to you husband, to you defending yourself from an attack no one is making, or a disbelief no one is expressing. Again, I am not pointing blame at you, or saying anything negative towards you. You said yourself, this shit is hard to talk about. Yes, it sure as hell is!

It's easier to allow yourself to get hung up on a point of semantics, letting yourself be sidetracked from what you really needed to accomplish with this thread. Needing to tell your husband about your having PTSD.
I also personally believe no one in their right mind wants to talk about this with anyone, especially with the people who will hurt us the most should they push us away because of it.

Again, I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, or anyone else. I'm saying, whether or not you want to tell your husband isn't the point. It's how to tell him. Which I'm suggesting avoidance may be getting in the way of.