Supporter New Here...boyfriend Has Ptsd

[IttyBittyKitty]

Hi everyone,

My name is Kate and my boyfriend of 8 months has PTSD due to the sudden death of a child several years ago. I suspect there's complex grief as well, but as far as I know he hasn't been diagnosed with anything but the PTSD.

He's a wonderful man and I'm willing to do anything to help this man help himself, but wow it's tough being shut out. I've been researching this for several months and I know there's no cure, but it can be managed.

I'm looking forward to meeting and talking with people who are having the same experience.

 

[RussH]

Welcome to the forum. I am sorry for your boyfriend's loss; no parent should have to lose a child. You will meet a lot of people here who will offer support and suggestions.

I do not know if I fully agree that there is no cure. If he truly has PTSD, then he has not yet reconciled the memory. It is possible that he will, in time, and with therapy be able to reconcile the memory, and make it just that a memory He certainly will gain a healthy perspective.

I so appreciate the support you are giving him. Having the love of a good woman who supports him will go a long way toward him letting go of the past grief and grasping the happiness of today, and the hope for a bright future.

I do strugge with a form of PTSD. I was diagnosed in Novmeber of this year, and while healing is a process, it is still healing.

Keep loving him, keep supporting him and watch as he climbs out of this grief ( which is almost likely a kind of depression) and he starts walking in sunlight again.
Blessings to you and your boyfriend Kate... Perhaps he would like to join the forum? Sometimes knowing that others feel the way you feel can help.

 

[Sighs]

Welcome!

Loving someone with PTSD can be hard. I find the hardest thing to cope with is the withdrawals/shut outs. If you are willing to take him as he is - with all his wonderful traits and his own faults as well as the PTSD then you can be happy together.

 

[IttyBittyKitty]

Hi Russ and Sighs,

Thanks so much for the kind words and support. It means a lot to know there are other people going through the same thing we are.

One of my biggest questions is when is it appropriate to start medication? He's been doing this for so long with only counseling but I think it's time for medication. PTSD isn't just psychological--it's physiological and biochemical as well. If medications can help him, then maybe he should try them. He hasn't ruled it out; but he thinks of it as a last resort. I'm going to have to broach that subject very, very carefully. If he can get the anxiety under control through medication, then it will give him a chance to move forward. It's hard to do that when you have a need for constant activity because it's the only way to turn off your brain. Keeping busy is good, but when you go to extremes it becomes an avoidance tactic.

The tendency to withdraw is the worst. I am really trying to understand, but it's the only way he knows how to deal with these periods. I've really tried to not take it personally, but it's not easy. After thinking about this, I think that part of my own difficulty with it is the point I'm at in my own life: I'm about to become an empty nester. My one and only child will be 18 in a few months and will be off to college next year. She has a part-time job, a boyfriend, and a social life. Also, for the first time in 7 years we're not running all over the place with her sports. So I have more time on my hands than I've had in years and boredom is setting in. My first impulse is to want to spend more time with him...but I can't do that and still allow him some space.

So, I have a plan for myself. :) I'm not going to sit around and pine away. I still have to take care of me.

All in all, I look at it this way. How I handle this is up to me. I can choose to let it drive me crazy, make me angry, or say to myself that this isn't worth the aggravation. Or I can help him help himself. I can't fix him--he's the only one who can do that--but I can be there to support him while he does it. What I don't want to do is become an enabler, and having PTSD doesn't give anyone an excuse for treating people badly.

 

[intothelight]

@IttyBittyKitty Welcome to the forum! :)

it's tough being shut out.

I think this is the hardest part for supporters to understand and I am glad that in your second post that you recognized the importance of not taking it personally and are resolved to doing things for yourself.

Withdrawing, isolating, shutting people out isn't done to hurt a person, but the actions do have an affect on people around us. It is almost impossible to explain what happens during those periods except that things become so overwhelming inside, that even the littlest thing outside it too much. There have been time that gutting myself and pulling out my own intestines would have probably hurt less, as for the most part physical pain has a beginning, a level and an end. However, emotional pain really doesn't seem to have "rules" and sometimes the shutdown is necessary just to get through. It is difficult to share what you can't really rationally wrap your head around yourself.

There are many ways to treat PTSD and exploring various options is always a good idea, but ultimately the decision remains with the sufferer. Like anyone, there are things that happen in life that never really go away and I would imagine the loss of a child would be a pain that would accompany the person the rest of their life. The trick is leaning to live with what has happened and not letting it take you completely down and out in the present.

You are on the right track with focusing on yourself and it is good that you recognize your own potential pitfalls. While having children leave and go off to college is great, you are right about the large blocks of time that are suddenly free. It really is a good time to take up things or do things that were put off because of other demands. Enjoy the time that you have to spend on yourself.

 

[IttyBittyKitty]

@IttyBittyKitty Welcome to the forum! :)



I think this is the hardest part for supporters to understand and I am glad that in your second post that you recognized the importance of not taking it personally and are resolved to doing things for yourself.

Hi, intothelight, thanks for your thoughtful response.

It's really, really hard not to take it personally. It hurts. It's easy to understand why supporters start to resent it.

Withdrawing, isolating, shutting people out isn't done to hurt a person, but the actions do have an affect on people around us.

Yes, they do. But at least you're aware of that. :)

It is almost impossible to explain what happens during those periods except that things become so overwhelming inside, that even the littlest thing outside it too much. There have been time that gutting myself and pulling out my own intestines would have probably hurt less, as for the most part physical pain has a beginning, a level and an end. However, emotional pain really doesn't seem to have "rules" and sometimes the shutdown is necessary just to get through. It is difficult to share what you can't really rationally wrap your head around yourself.

It's probably nearly impossible for most of us to walk in your shoes, so it's difficult to understand why anyone would want to withdraw from the world at a time when they probably need love and support the most. Even harder is to stand by and let you do it.

There are many ways to treat PTSD and exploring various options is always a good idea, but ultimately the decision remains with the sufferer. Like anyone, there are things that happen in life that never really go away and I would imagine the loss of a child would be a pain that would accompany the person the rest of their life. The trick is leaning to live with what has happened and not letting it take you completely down and out in the present.

It will always be with him, and so will the pain. Anyone would feel that way. He doesn't necessarily live in the past, but he doesn't look to the future, either. It's one day at a time.

You are on the right track with focusing on yourself and it is good that you recognize your own potential pitfalls. While having children leave and go off to college is great, you are right about the large blocks of time that are suddenly free. It really is a good time to take up things or do things that were put off because of other demands. Enjoy the time that you have to spend on yourself.

Thanks, I really needed to hear that. :) I've tried to be relaxed about it and just rolling with it one day at a time, but sometimes it does get to me. On one hand, I know I should just be quiet and let his withdraw run its course, but on the other hand, if I resent something I should be able to talk about it with him. I don't want him to feel bad for acting in a way he may not be able to help or to minimize how he's feeling. But to bury my own feelings isn't good, either. It's a fine line to draw.

 

[RussH]

he can get the anxiety under control through medication, then it will give him a chance to move forward. It's hard to do that when you

Itty, please feel free to have your boyfriend contact me. After my last triggering in October, it was so bad that I did not know if I was going to survive it. My doctor put me on an antianxiety medication, and it did a world of good, and I am already off of it.

It can help your boyfriend, and if he is open to talking to me about it, then I will be more that happy to do that.

 

[IttyBittyKitty]

Itty, please feel free to have your boyfriend contact me. After my last triggering in October, it was so bad that I did not know if I was going to survive it. My doctor put me on an antianxiety medication, and it did a world of good, and I am already off of it.

It can help your boyfriend, and if he is open to talking to me about it, then I will be more that happy to do that.

Hi RussH,

Thanks so much for this. I do think it would help tremendously--but he is afraid, that's what it comes down to. He mentioned the word "weak" once. And I said something along the lines of "if you broke your leg, would you use a crutch till you got better?" Getting him to see it not as a weakness but as taking control of his own health is a challenge. I think he knows it's going to come to that, though.
To be fair, he hasn't been able to go to his counseling sessions since the end of February. He has been out of town every single week since the beginning of March, and is just getting back to being in town every day. He doesn't deal well with that kind of stress. Depressed and anxious people need routine, and you don't get that when you don't know what city you're going to be in from one day to the next.

I can mention it to him, but he has a hard enough time talking to his counselor much less anyone else. And that's another thing that bugs me. I don't think this counselor is helping him. At all. She says she can get him through it--but I deal with the end result of that, and whatever she's doing, it's not working. It seems to me that she's taking his money without actually doing anything. On the other hand, it's up to him to implement whatever suggestions and strategies they agree on.

As I said upthread, I'm willing to wait and be patient and support him while he works on himself, but I'm not going to enable him. My ex-husband had bipolar disorder which he refused to have treated (and I ended up having him involuntarily committed after he physically attacked someone), so I know my way around the US mental health system (as poor as it is). When we had only been dating a month or so, we talked about his treatment. I asked what treatment plan was in place...and he had no idea what I was talking about. Red flags went up all over the place. No treatment plan is not a good thing. PTSD is a medical condition and should be treated as such. Counseling can help in conjunction with medical treatment, but on its own it's very limited. IMO he needs to be evaluated by a competent medical professional and treated accordingly.

 

[RussH]

He mentioned the word "weak" once. And I said something along the lines of "if you broke your leg, would you use a crutch till you got better

@IttyBittyKitty I completely understand his thinking of himself as weak. I too feel that way.( Your analogy though is spot on.) I have always beat myself up, and still do at times, for being weak, after all if I was not weak then I wouldn't have allowed the abuse to happen, and I wouldn't have PTSD. It is a vicious cycle of thinking.

I do know that PTSD is a phychological injury just as much as a broken leg is a physical injury, but there is a stigma to mental disorders where there is none with a broken leg.

The reality is your boyfriend experienced a tramatic situation that cause an injury to his brain. The injury is not to the "hardware" of the brain, but the "software". In other words, the PTSD caused a short- circuit, or a programing glitch in his thought process that causes these flashbacks. So it really has nothing to do with weakness, and everything to do with suffering a tramatic situation thatt the brain could not process, and so it created a glitch in its programing. (Hope this makes sense.)

The bottom line, because the brain has this glitch, and he has been triggered, the brain is also producing all these storm like emotions as it tries to deal with the trauma that it does not understand, and your boyfriend is caught in the middle of his brains conflict. The medications simply calm the storm so that he can deal with life and PTSD in an emotionally stable way.

I do hope he will seek help, and again thank you so much for caring enough to find ways to help him.

Again, I am available if he wants to talk.

Russ

 

[IttyBittyKitty]

@IttyBittyKitty
The bottom line, because the brain has this glitch, and he has been triggered, the brain is also producing all these storm like emotions as it tries to deal with the trauma that it does not understand, and your boyfriend is caught in the middle of his brains conflict. The medications simply calm the storm so that he can deal with life and PTSD in an emotionally stable way.

I do hope he will seek help, and again thank you so much for caring enough to find ways to help him.

Thanks, Russ. We had a long talk over the weekend and he's not completely against the idea of more treatment. He's just not there yet. But we're getting there. It's going to take time, but I think in the end he will. He's not unreasonable.

 

[RussH]

@IttyBittyKitty I am glad to hear he is not completely against the idea of more treatment, and please feel free to share with him anything I write; he can even read my post if he wants.

Part of the long-term effects of my abuse is the absence of any sense of worth, or significance, in other words, I don't matter, I am irrelevent in my mind, and I am more, or less ok with that because it has been true for so long. However others do matter to me and are releavent(sp), and so I, at least, try to help others find themselves