Hi David,
You're not scitso, delusional or any other psychotic form. You have PTSD + military training + combat = confirmation of training that aggression saves you when feeling threatened.
Does that make sense?
That is the problem... its not that the missus puts the toilet roll the wrong way round, then you go off your nut because of that, when really, you know that's not the problem. You have all this anger inside, and the slightest thing overflows your cup. Being military, and a veteran, you now have the reinforced experience that what the military taught you about releasing aggression, works for you as a life saver.
Here's the difference though that only you can change... no therapist, not me, nobody, only you. You have to become extremely honest, in a sense, with yourself and your partner, so that everything you feel that builds up within you, you talk about it near instantly. If you don't, then you will continue to fly into rages, because just the slightest thing that pisses you off is overflowing your internal stress cup, which is full from military training, PTSD, and then all these normal good and bad daily stressors that we encounter.
You need to take a small amount of time to understand this model:
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When you understand that, then you will understand what is going on within you. So you will also understand that adopting an extremely honest approach is an initial starting method to try and keep that cup below the full line, otherwise, you go to work, you buildup all this shit, then you unleash on your partner, which is not what you want to do, but as you say, you can't help it.
For some part, you can't help it because you don't understand what the problem is... but reading above, you hopefully will, thus you will understand the importance of initially being extremely honest in an approachable way, not a blunt aggressive, don't give a shit about your feeling manner, to everyone daily... Even if you don't like an order given, you don't talk to that superior, but you can talk to a work mate, not complain, but talk with someone that you trust, a peer, how it makes you feel, thus instead of that emotion, whether positive or negative, building up in your cup and being unresolved, you near immediately resolve it, thus you regain some control.
Is this a full-time solution? Not a chance in hell. Its a start on how you can help yourself.
Its a solution that you will need to use for the rest of your life, however; you must also talk with someone you trust and resolve all that negative emotion you harbor within about your traumatic experiences. I know, we are all meant to be big, tough and unbreakable, though your brain has broken, so we aren't as tough as the military or ourselves, make us out to be.
You don't need an enemy to shoot at you any more, you just need the threat of it to near do the same damage by taking out soldiers psychologically, instead of in the physical sense.
The best thing you can do for your partner, get her onto
www.PTSDForum.org so she has support, not here on this forum obviously, and reinforce to her that its never personal against her, because that is what females think... they take it personally, even though we never mean it that way due to what PTSD turns us into initially.
Take note of 'initially', as you control your outcome by how much you openup to someone close, whether a therapist or mate, and talk about all the negative crap that you carry with you surrounding your traumatic experiences. You also must get some type of resolution back from it, hence a good therapist or mate who will not just listen, but provide commonsense back to you that you can use to help yourself reason with emotions.
