I can understand on a cognitive level that someone who has lived through trauma has triggers either conscious or unconscious. I can understand that something that reminds someone of something traumatic in the past can lead to a flight or fight response. I’ve had enough stuff of my own in my adult life to understand that when things get tough people retreat into themselves and isolate. That’s a very understandable thing. What I am struggling with (unfortunately soon) is the emotional shut down resulting from a simple misunderstanding in which thousands of messages of undying love and commitment and shared promises of openness and communication (with both capable of open communication of life experiences) turning into complete emotional shut down. Literally love messages in the morning, to we need to go own ways in the evening. And not any argument in between but a simple misunderstanding communicated by text. I wish I could say that seeking to understand that isn’t important. But it is fairly soul destroying to have the rug pulled from under you with no understanding of why. I have a job which requires me to be on top of my game constantly and my experience with what happened with my lovely ex partner who has been through so much in life, has just thrown me completely. She tore into me when I mentioned ptsd, she didn’t live with it she claimed. And it was only recently that I saw a message from her - there were thousands, in which she said she had ptsd just before she met me, and had “had it before” and in fact “several times in her life”. It’s not a contagion. She lived with ptsd just as I had lived with depression over the years. There may be times when it was less symptomatic but I’m not naive to think that ptsd isn’t something that people deal with on an ongoing basis. I had to say to the head of my firm this week that right now I don’t know which way is up. Between family health issues, social isolation , trying to maintain my job etc it’s been hard enough as it is for so many many people. The added questions about why it all
Fell apart so suddenly and over nothing has really thrown me.
Fell apart so suddenly and over nothing has really thrown me.