General New To Ptsd

[MPwife10]

My husband is military. We have 3 wonderful daughters and have been married almost 7 years. He was just diagnosed with non com a PTSD a couple weeks ago. Before that he suffered with really bad depression to the point he thought of suicide which I didn't find out until one of our therapy sessions. His PTSD was caused by seeing his father died and his mom treating his horribly because he looked like his dad. I am new to PTSD and its so hard. He has more downs then ups. Yesterday he made me feel like the worst person in the world because I went out with friends who were in town...just to dinner not drinks and I had our 21 month old. I am a stay at home mom and rarely get out of the house because I don't have friends and his ptsd/depression/anxiety makes him not wanna do anything but lay around...even with his meds. I feel like the worst wife sometimes because how he makes me feel.

 

[Deleted member 28812]

Welcome to thre boards! Why didn't he want you to go out with the friend?

 

[MPwife10]

Apparently he was mad because it was to a restaurant that we were all suppose to try together...kids, him, my dad and I. We have been here for 5 years and have never went. Even when I was pregnant and craving it because I wanted to try it. I wasn't gonna stay home again and not spend time with my friends just because of where they chose to eat. I live with 3 kids and 3 dudes...I needed adult female conversation lol. Our buddy tried to take him fishing but he was so upset/mad at me he wouldn't go.

 

[BlueOrange]

His objections don't seem reasonable. Relatable, sure, but isolation can be harmful, and he's had chances to take you there. Not your fault he didn't take them.

You're an influence on his feelings, but you're not responsible for them.

 

[Rotorhead]

Being a newbie, I have no idea to the "protocol" of expressing or sharing my personal experience with the demon of PTSD with others. In me I feel an obligation to make the effort to relate or give my personal advice learned from my battle with the beast since 1987. First of all I'm not a "hero" or anyone special, and never do I hope anyone thinks I'm talking down to them. I returned from combat in Viet Nam in 1970, and no one can understand or know the living hell I was forced to live in for 17 years before I reached my end. For those years all I could do was search for the addiction that ruled my being, the rage I had every single moment I was awake, total and devastating intolerance of any situation that I felt or experienced, mainly just plainly a worthless, irrational, ticking time bomb. I was 22 years old, married ( married 4 days before I was deployed to Viet Nam just to say I had someone, and because I knew the job I had, I was almost certain to die in that place I didn't even know where it was. I was drafted, ( forced to go into military service by the government) at the ripe age of 19. With a father, uncles, neighbors who had served so honorably in WWII I had a great deal of pride, dedication and the "warrior spirit" that had to live up to. BS!!!!! I should have gone to Canada, joined the others burning their draft cards or just gone to prison for 10 years (as that was the sentence for dodging the draft back then) and would have been a lot better off. But oh hell no, I even got so gung-ho I volunteered and signed up for an full stretch in the military and went to flight school. So, hopefully not boring everyone to death, but I have always felt different or even a little special only for the sole reason that I was forced, without any recourse to be in the military to begin with. Point in fact, for all these years since then I have had a over whelming hate, detest and unbridled anger to government, society and mainly any body that would express their opinion or beliefs of what I had been forced to go through. I thank God I never used or got hooked on drugs while in Viet Nam, as the pot, opium and other drugs grew like grass in that place. I guess my seeing so many of my companions, other soldiers and civilians cause the senseless death of so many others cause they was wiped out on drugs and had the abilities of a house fly, they couldn't do their jobs and ended up killed due to their stupidity and ineptness from the drugs. So, I turned to ole Jack in the Black, sometimes a 5th a day...on a good day. But the worst addiction I suffered when I got back to the states was one that was all but incurable, almost impossible to find and the most devastating. Adrenaline! I could write a book about my quest to find that allusive and wonderful emporia of looking death or danger in the face and then spitting in it. Fights for any reason, jumping out of airplanes, pissing off a railroad bridge at it's highest structural beam 100 feet above a river, road or whatever that would mean certain death if I fell. Always in a drunken stooper on top of that. Awakening during the middle of the night and attacking my lovely wife next to me, sometimes choking her to the near point of death. Wakening at night, Running out of our home in nothing but my under ware, screaming to the top of my lungs and jumping in the bushes. Several times the neighbors would be having a party or get together with friends or family, and out burst this idiot in his drawers, screaming like a mad man then jumping in their hedges. But what and where I was and was experiencing at that moment was as real as when it really happened in war. But, no help was there, I went to the VA so many times begging for help and all I got was " you outa, you gotta, you shoulda, etc. even though I was rated 60% disabled, due to my wounds incurred in the war. Oh! there was no such thing as PTSD then, even a VA hospital administrator was quoted as saying " well some of these soldiers were and are nothing but BOYSCOUTS, real soldiers don't have these crazy notions, and need to be put away" So, that gives just a small glimpse of how Our Government and their supposed Health Care System was, and thankfully they have been "FORCED" to admit the effects of PTSD and offer some forms of help. I'll shut up.

 

[anonymous]

Honestly, if you've dropped the hint about wanting to go to a new restaurant and your guy doesn't take you up on it, you've got FREE REIGN to go on your own without him! I'd say you had that power after a few months, let alone 5 years! He snoozes, he looses. Don't take on his bad vibes because he refused to step up to the plate and take you out. You deserve to have a life of your own that isn't dependent on whether or not he wants to do something!

 

[MPwife10]

Thank you everyone! I thought I did something wrong by going and it's been 2 days but I still feel like crap for going. I too have anxiety and depression from years of mental abuse and seeing my mom physically (like bust his head open with huge flash lights and whatever) and mentally abuse her husband or my little brother after her husband shot himself. There were time that I feared for mine or my siblings lives because of it. I don't get help for my issues since we don't have insurance but he has a chance for help and I wish he would take it. I have my own demons but I try to push my issues to the side to take care of his. I wonder what happens if he gets better but then my issues get worse from pushing them to the side? Will he be able to handle them and stick with me while I try to get better? Or will he say "I can't do this" and leave?

 

[BlueOrange]

@MPwife10 , you raise some very important questions there. We can't predict your husband's reactions any better than you can, especially since we can't deal with him directly. But I would like to suggest that the longer you push your own issues to the side, the more they are going to build up.

Sometimes it's essential to put your own issues to the side. Other times, it only seems that way. It can definitely be a very hard habit to break.