Hello I am new here and this is my first post. I am not misunderstanding the purpose of this anger thread, but I am also quite cheesed off that I have spent the past half hour trying to open up the introductions page of this forum to no avail. I seem to be able to get into this Angry Thread though! Forgive me for just barging in like this and posting here then!
I am a Supporter of a man who has had such a fraught, traumatic and shocking life rife with abuse of all kinds, emotional, physical and childhood sexual abuse at the hands of family. Parental neglect. Institutional abuse in reform schools and prison. My life has turned upside down since I met him. I am trying so hard to cope and be supportive and loving, but you probably know so well how the story goes.
I am married now for the past 4 months. My husband is the saddest, kindest, loving man, riddled with guilt and shame about his past and what it led him to and what he is recovering from now. He was involved in drugs, crime, gangsterism. He was lost and afraid and filled with self-blame, self-hatred and shame. He is 36 yrs now, and only now has been able to turn his back on drugs. He has been off drugs for 2 years now and he is trying so hard to overcome his problems, and reach out to others on the subjects of drug abuse, childhood abuse, crime and being a lost soul with no direction.
He has in the past months suffered another breakdown, has been in a psychiatric hospital for treatment, and is under psychiatric care for Bipolar Mood Disorder and Complex PTSD. He had started seeing a trauma clinical psychologist and was opening up, but the process has become so incredibly painful for him, that he has seemingly turned his back on therapy for now and refuses to return. He has emotional flashbacks, anxiety and panic attacks, dissociative events, memory loss, nightmares and suicidal thoughts as a result of starting to let all that bottled up trauma come out. I try my best to create a safe and loving home for him, but he has started to hate just sitting around being subject to all his past pain. He just wants to run away most of the time.
Other times are more bearable and he begins to feel hope, but then something happens, or his abusive father checks in with him again, and we are back to square one.
Needless to say, I am bending over backwards, I tread on eggshells each day, I over-extend myself and put his wellbeing ahead of mine. The thing is, I totally understand where he is coming from and what he is going through. I also had a very dysfunctional childhood and my share of traumatic events in my life, although by no means as drastic as what his life has been.
I am beginning to feel though that it is to my own peril that I am capable of understanding his CPTSD condition so well and that I have so much empathy, compassion and love for this man! By no means has he even started healing and he is a long way off from self-acceptance and self-love. So of course he will not be able to treat me in a loving way most of teh time. I am his only reference point right now, he is so socially isolated and has no other good friends or family to turn to. So I have become both his love and hate object for now. It breaks me when he withdraws and is overwhelmed by his hurt and pain and trauma and treats me like the enemy. It hurts me when he says he hates life and everything that comes with it. His negativity and indecisiveness and confusion and passive approach force me to make the decisions in our household, but then in hindsight, he knew everything better, and can't stop complaining and criticising my choices. And blames me for cutting him out and taking away his power.
I cringe when I see sharp objects lying about the house, or when I happen to see him having handwritten a last will and testament for himself. Yet I have to force myself to take on an attitude of "I can't make anybody want to live. I can't force him to find a reason to carry on if life has become too unbearable". I have to resort to praying as hard as I can to the God of my understanding to help both of us.
Today again, after a totally fraught and crap weekend where things just went wrong each day, I am faced with the prospect that he may want to pack his bags and do a disappearing act.
I am feeling hurt, confused, sad, lonely and angry. I am feeling traumatised myself lately.
Today I am starting therapy of my own. I need to find some direction, I need to navigate myself to calmer waters. I just hope and pray that my husband is navigating himself in the same direction as what I need to go...
Thank you. I apologise for barging in and barely introducing myself and then flying into a rant.
Thank you for this forum, it makes me feel less isolated knowing there are others that are going through similar hardships and trying to keep the faith.
