Relationship My Husband Has Ptsd!!! This Is Not Easy :(

[Tiffylatuff]

I am married to a man with the PTSD... his father was negligent and committed sexual assault to my husband when he was child. His mother was just as guilty, but her abuse was physical and mental, as well as her family.

When I had first began dating my husband I knew he came with a lot of baggage. However he worked extra hard to love me and show me how wonderful he can be. He was married when we first met and he was wanting to leave the marriage. We were best friends and got along great! Everything was wonderful... mind you there were many down days where he was not happy or creating problems where there were none to be had. 4 years later we are entering into counselling for the first time. He has not sought this out in the past! He figured he would tuck it all under the rug and cut those people out of his life. This was not helpful as he has many outbursts of rage and self pity when things do not go his way. He has a strong sense of being a victim. He can be very hurtful and belittling as was done to him. He does this to me.

We have a son together and I bring a daughter into the marriage. He is wonderful with them.

When he gets angry it seems he has no logical thinking, which for me is extremely frustrating!!!!!! He always seems to dismiss his actions after the dust settles.... he never seems to accept any accountability for his actions. He has extreme mood swings... he seems to go from very upset.....to.....poor me..... to..... just love me..... I try and try to not trigger him as to avoid a bad day.... I hate doing this as I feel it is making his behaviour acceptable... He reacts overly emotionally... in or out of public. He seems to be most focused on gaining approval from others as to support his "side" He at times considers this behaviour as us arguing.... when really.... he is the only one arguing!!! I love him so much and live for the good days as they are fantastic! It is the bad days that make me question what I have gotten myself into??!!! People that meet him think he is absolutely wonderful! He is chatty funny and quite the conversationalist. He knows how to make the women smile... even the elderly.... For some reason this makes me resentful at times.... I feel he puts out this image that protects him from anyone finding out about his emotional instability.

We are just starting to find help for him.... I am not sure how successful this will be since he never seems to accept full responsibility for himself??

 

[NaturalHeights]

Hi Tiffy,

I understand how hard this can be, it's confusing and difficult to mantain a seamless relationship when old trauma patterns are re-triggered when there seems to be nothing happening to cause it,

Fortunately, I have had the first hand experience of living under intense trauma based conditioning and figured out how to cure myself,

At the age of 18, I was diagnosed with an extreme anxiety disorder caused by being yelled at and belittled every day for seven years by my Mom's boyfriend. Although I was not sexually abused or did not experience the trauma of warfare, I was in very critical condition mentally. My mind would think of suicide every day, although that was the last thing I wanted on my mind. I was in deep trouble, which is what drove me hard enough to discover really what causes and cures trauma based conditioning such as PTSD,

What I learned was that the human mind has a hard drive and becomes programmed just like a computer. This is what we call the subconcious mind. When someone experiences traumatic events, the subconcious mind develops a 'software program' to act as a survival or comfort response. Because so few are aware of this part of themself, their hard drive goes unmaintained and continues to accumulate trauma imprints. The more conditioning, the more drauma and complexities are made in their personality.

Fortunately, nature has designed the mind with also the ability to deprogram itself. Certain forms of hypnotherapy are for this purpose, which is a modality over-looked awfully too often. I was cured via Circle Therapy, which is a form of hypnotherapy which does not require the subject to go into any form of deep trance. Within 24 hours after the second session, my anxiety dwindled from a 10 out of 10 to a 2 out of 10. The last bit of anxiety I still had left was actually caused by a congested liver and gallbladder, which is a common side effect of living under intense emotional conditioning for any length of time. The modality used to decongest the liver of the chemical forms of emotional retention is liver flushing, which you can read thousands of testimonials about on the CureZone website.

Anyways, if you ever feel you need to talk to someone or get more information on how to go about having your husband visit the right practitioners to decondition him from his past, dramatic experiences, I am always willing to help,

It is just not morally right for me to live an ordinary, happy life without using my experience to service others who are still suffering under the conditions I found a way out of,

Warren

 

[DMerish]

Hi Tiffy -

Welcome to the forum.

You'll find lots friendly, supportive people here - those with PTSD and other's like yourself who deeply care for someone with PTSD.

Here's a link to the section titled "Articles" - you can find it yourself at the top of the page if you haven't stumbled on it already: just keep swimming Towards the bottom of the list you'll find a heading "Support" and under it a link to "The Ideal Carer" that you may find helpful.

Again, welcome!

Drew

 

[crazy8]

Hi @Tiffylatuff, welcome to the forum.

What a beautiful manifestation of your love for your husband to join this forum and try to understand the pain he is going through. It sounds like his pain is also a very real and painful strain on you, too.

I wanted to respond to your post because your description of your boyfriend sounds an awful lot like a description of me in my relationship of 2 years with my boyfriend. I didn't realize that my symptoms all this time were PTSD until a few months ago, but they have been the biggest strain on my relationship on our relationship the entire time.

I, too, have emotional outbursts where I genuinely feel as though my boyfriend has mistreated me and wants to hurt me - I feel victimized and incredibly hurt. It makes me want to die. The thing is, my boyfriend didn't do or say anything that warrants this feeling. Being abused as a child makes the world a scary, unsafe place, where exposing emotions equates to intense physical or emotional pain, or in your husband's case, the terrorizing anguish of sexual abuse. Eventually, my "arguing" (read: me being upset while my boyfriend tries to understand what the hell is going on) with my boyfriend turns into my deeply internalized negative self-concept emerging, causing me to just want to be held, loved, and ultimately....feel SAFE from the abuse I imagined.

I didn't even realize that this is what I was doing until I was doing it in our relationship on a fairly regular basis for 1.5 years. Before we got emotionally close, I never behaved this way with my boyfriend. I, too, am outgoing and friendly - but an important distinction here is that those more casual relationships to not involve the sharing of deep, raw emotions like is experienced in a romantic relationship or a marriage. You see, we only feel the intense self-hatred and perceive the abuse with those who are emotionally closest to us, like our parents were when they abused us. I'm sorry that you are on the receiving end of the negative effects of your husband's abuse.

Thanks for joining. And best of luck. Your husband's interest/commitment to trying therapy is the surest bet that he could see improvement. Give it some time :-)

 

[Barconian]

You have a very kind heart Tiff.

 

[Tiffylatuff]

@NaturalHeights thank you so much for your reply it is very comforting to know you are there to help with questions and advice.... I am so happy I came across this site :)

@DMerish Thanks so much for the useful tools.... I will certainly be using them.

@crazy8 I am very grateful for your input. You are right our situations are very similar. We also didn't know until recently so over the last 7 years...4 married... there have been many issues that went unresolved. We summed a lot up to the fact that he cannot handle stress and he referred to himself as a loose cannon and that was what made it "ok" I am grateful to have someone to speak with that can help give insight since he not exactly finding himself accountable yet. We are entering back into counselling Monday. There have been a few triggers in the last few weeks and I honestly hate the feeling of " what have I done!! I married this guy ... we have a son and a life together!!" I wish we could sustain our happiness like it is without the triggers. I am having a hard time coping with the flip flopping of his moods...yesterday we had a situation and my feelings are hurt... whereas today he feels that it should all be water under the bridge since he says so.....ugghhhhh

@Barconian I appreciate you saying that... sometimes I wonder how I got into this in the first place. Then I end up deciding that he knows I have a kind heart and he needs that in a mate since patience and understanding are exercised beyond regular limits at times. :)

 

[crazy8]

@Tiffylatuff please feel welcome to private message me anytime you'd like about specific things. I have been so very grateful for the support and understanding from others when my painful, irrational emotional outbursts hurt them. I want to help others have the opportunity to overcome this and show their true colors (them, minus the triggers and emotional outbursts) to those they love. Message me anytime.