With child trauma, things have to get a lot worse before they can get better. She's been running and staying one step ahead of her trauma for her whole life. Now she's turning to face and go into her fears. She is going to be extremely afraid of her overwhelming feelings of anger/rage, abandonment, neglect, shame, wishing she were never born, etc. She is going into the darkest parts of her psyche to try to heal trauma. Trauma gets recorded in the timeless part of our psyche. It is not dulled or diminished by the passing of time.
This means, it matters not one bit that what occured to cause these feelings in her body and soul is "old news." Trauma is always fresh, like opening a fresh can of immense psychic pain, the highest pain a creature can tolerate without dying, and having it occur as though in the present. Time does not heal. That is only true of normal non-traumatic occurences. And trauma is defined by this. If it diminishes, it's not traumatic. If it forever emotionally charges you and gets re-opened into a personal hell, it is traumatic, no matter what "it" is. Plus anything that happened that somehow got filed into the brian as "trauma-related" gets forever latched to it. Simple things like smells that a person smelled back during the trauma time, which could have spanned years of abuse, get stored as triggers.
The smell of gingerbread sent me into flashbacks of my horror-filled childhood period of holiday last week, and I have not stopped having emotional flashbacks and panic attacks since. I have not been able to be around people without severe social anxiety, fearing I will be attacked at any moment. Even my husband, who tried to hug me from behind on our anniversary last night, I thought was "stalking me" like a hunter stalking prey, based on how he looked to me. I am in total fear: flight, fight, freeze mode for the last two weeks.
Like your wife, I try to keep on being a good wife/mother, cooking dinners, feeling exhausted by everything, and it is soooo hard to concentrate, to spell in this post, everything.
It is very hard for people with PTSD to "make it feel safe enough." I literally spend all my energy just trying to calm down and feel safe enough to keep going with life. No, even after years of this, my husband doesn't seem to comprehend.
Supporters need to realize the average length of regular PTSD duration is 14 years, and that is for single incident trauma, like a bad car accident.
Now take a C-PTSD survivor whose entire childhood was one long train wreck, someone who had to keep smiling to try to finally be lovable by sickos, and you have someone who will never truly Heal. That pain is so much to work through, don't expect anything from her healing. It's taken me three years to make any kind of "progress" and now I feel like I'm falling back down again. It's very disappointing.
Prepare for more. She is trying to be hopeful, but you cannot afford to be. You need to be aware of what's really going to happen, and yet, be a constant cheerleader for her, telling her she's making progress over each tiny thing. You need to learn everything you can about Complex, childhood trauma, which is not as well documented on the internet. You need to read her book and take notes on it. Let her tell you what's really happening in side her and just listen. I can affirm that she is being totally honest with you so far, and it's going to get a lot worse than her being scared by you.
I have thought my husband was my dad (one of worst of my 4 abusers) and attacked him, thinking I was "back then" fighting for my survival and trying to kill my attacker. It lasted a few minutes, and he had to hold me down until I realized what was happening.
Once I thought my 15 year old child was a stranger and began screaming. She woke me up and I literally saw a strange man in my room. These are hallucinations from C PTSD or flashbacks to the Day and Nightmares of my childhood, which lasted for years of torture.
I have two college degrees and hold down two professional positions. I help hundreds of other people to be successful in their lives. I am a teacher and mentor, a wounded healer.
Your wife is not alone. 1 in 3 women have survived some kind of sexual assault before the age of 18, most of these crimes were perpetrated by either a parent/guardian or someone they know, who is respected in the community. They were often not believed and had to keep it a secret, even from themselves, in order to keep growing up and not going totally bad/crazy.
I don't know your situation, but your post seems to relay the idea that you feel victimized. My supporter feels that my C PTSD is hurtful to him, to watch it unfold. Yes, it hurts his feelings. How we act in fight/flight/freeze is not normal. You have the right to take it personally, but if you were aware that this is normal PTSD behavior, then you would see it is to be expected, the same as if a diabetic is too low on blood sugar, you expect them to wig out. Don't pretend it's your fault.
Unfortunately, giving us "sugar" is not the same as "gving her space." She needs you to ask what she's going through, listen, show empathy, and go on this journey with her. Anything less, and you will be in the way of her healing, which will take the rest of her life. Tall order. But if you leave, you will just find another wounded angel to love, who will just go through this, too. Because you are attracted to this kind of person.
Finally, the silver lining is that she's opening up to her trauma because you have created a stable enough, good enough relationship for her to feel safe to do so. That is a compliment to you and the relationship you have created, which may have been therapeutic for her. Ironically, now it's safe enough, she will start to feel worse for a while. It's like resetting a broken bone. All you need to do is keep trying to support, and you will be surprised how much it will help and how much it could mean to her healing.
Take care, Muse
