5 Ways To Help Your Wife With PTSD

My husband came over and tossed 4 sheets of chicken scratched paper on my desk. I looked up with inquiry and he said “I think every husband, or wife for that matter, needs to know what they’re up against!” Looking down at the paper “5 ways to help your wife with PTSD” I kindly told him that PTSD is only one facet, (he put his finger up to hush me) “I can only manage one thing at a time my love. I can’t write an encyclopedia in a day!” We both got a chuckle. Clever guy!  Let the tips begin!

1. Acceptance – The first step that I learned over the years is opening up my heart to accept the challenges my wife faces. It’s incredibly hard to put anger aside at times. PTSD can put an enormous stress on a marriage. Communication will breakdown…alot. You’ll struggle with her irrational behavior and delusional thoughts. You’ll try to turn the irrational into rational and the delusional thinking into reality. What you need to accept is that PTSD is a dark power that distorts her thoughts and emotions. Your wife cannot control it and it frustrates her. Most times, not all, when the dark power starts to take control, she knows it, but is afraid to tell you. People who suffer from mental illnesses are usually embarrassed, feel guilty, inferior, and fearful. The fears that creep in create that fight or flight range of emotions that you may experience.
2. Compassion – Empathy saved my marriage and continues to save it today. I’ll tell you that activating this superpower was/is not easy! I’m a strong-willed, no nonsense type of person. I usually walk away from anything I perceive to be drama. My natural personality didn’t know how to respond to the PTSD symptoms that my wife endures.
   I’d find myself saying things like:
   “I don’t know why you can’t be stronger.”
   “Why do you make everything that’s easy so hard?”
   “Just pick up the phone and deal with it!”
   “I have so much stress and you can’t even handle the simple things”
   
   Can you imagine how she must have felt and how far back that put us both? My eyes started to open when I read Positive Intelligence which lead me to read The Four Agreements. I learned that all of our minds play tricks on us. My mind became filled with noise and anger when PTSD started to rip my wife away. The first step to activating empathy was taking a step back and not taking everything so personally. In the movie “Knocked up” , there is this funny scene where Seth Rogen is frustrated with his pregnant girlfriend’s hormones. He politely screams “fuck you hormones!”. I love that scene because he separates his girlfriend from the uncontrollable hormones. I still find myself saying “F-U PTSD,” but I’ve come to realize that my wife doesn’t behave the way her ugly PTSD friend does. She can’t control it and never will. I put myself in her shoes as best I could and I found a lot of room for compassion.
3. LISTEN – This one isn’t rocket science my friends. If you want to unlock compassion and empathy you must stop the crazy world around you and genuinely listen to your wife’s pain. Feel it if you can. When she is struggling do your best to get her to talk about the underlying emotions and maybe (if she is ready) the issues that are hurting her. If you do that, I promise you that you will learn how to make both of your lives better. Take the time. I wasn’t very good at this for the first 2 years or so and I suffered greatly.
4. Look into Her Eyes – I’m not talking about puppy dog love here. I mean really look into your wife’s eyes when PTSD is in full force. Once you see it, you’ll never forget PTSD’s ugly face. My wife’s pupils tend to get dilated and her body tense as if she had drank 10 red bulls too many. At times you can see the fear or anger on the surface, but complete blankness behind the eyes. When she’s not worked up and PTSD is present, her eyes roll with the look of sheer confusion. PTSD kills the memory. You can see it when it’s there. Help her see it too. Gently point out when you think PTSD is active. If she can start to see it, both of you can cope with it better and do your best to limit the triggers.
5.  Fear – Try to eliminate any opportunity for fear to exist. I’m still working on this. Our society doesn’t create the best foundation to eliminate fear, but you can in your own home and daily life. My wife and I started to see that fear is the fuel that powers PTSD. Everyone has different things that provoke that feeling of fear. We began by working toward and eventually eliminating fear in our communications. Once she understood that I cared enough to listen and had compassion, she began to slowly lose her fear in being vulnerable with her words. We started to have open, honest and constructive conversations. We worked to make it so that our finances are never an issue.We also did our research. We read as many spiritual, meditation, and compassion books as we can to keep our minds clear and strong.

I hope that you find my learnings helpful. I am consistently absorbing new information. If you have any tips of your own I would love to hear them in the comments section.

Signed – A loving husband

You Can Change Your Story

In my youth I was a child of domestic violence, molested and subject to incredibly inappropriate situations by my step-father. In an effort to run away from that circumstance I ended up in an even worse situation; being held captive and repeatedly raped by an uncle for 2 eternally painful weeks. At some point I looked up my natural father hoping to find that not everything around me was full of pain. I don’t know what my father saw in me but it wasn’t his daughter. My father ended up raping me and committed suicide some years later, as did that uncle. In my 20’s I resorted to substance abuse to kill that pain and ended up being listed as 1 of 100 worst cases of domestic violence abuse in a county with a population of over 600,000 people. Being seriously assualted in a major mens prison riot while on the job was just another bullet point on a long list.

I spent much of my life burning through friendships and relationships, drowning my pain in red wine and hiding it all from the world. By my early 30’s I had finally achieved what I knew could be possible; an amazing career, the most loving husband a woman could dream of, beautiful souls for children, a lovely home, etc. Little did I know that everything was about to change.

There was this fear gnawing at me, a fear of the unknown path that I knew I was going to have to walk. I didn’t want to walk that path; I was fighting it like a cat about to get a bath from the dog. Digging in my heels with the intent to pretend that none of this was actually happening.

After years of struggling in my own head and blaming others for my circumstances in life, I began having such severe panic attacks that I would lose consciousness. I felt stupid and weak and my mind and body were completely at odds with each other. No matter how strong I was at burying my pain and holding my head high, my body wasn’t cooperating and I was pissed off!

I didn’t think it was possible but at some point I gave in to vulnerability (which I strongly considered weakness). I finally grabbed on to the hand that was reaching for me. At first I thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but now I can’t even imagine living in my prior struggle. I feel as though a 1,000 lb weight has been lifted from my shoulders. At the same time, a lighter yet awkwardly unfamiliar object was put in its place.

I was living with undiagnosed Bi-polar I Disorder w/psychosis. That was the easy part; because I had gone untreated for so long, I had horrible experiences that damaged my brain and my heart in such traumatic ways that I survive with Disassociation & Complicated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (“CPTSD”) in a way I never believed existed. This all leads to Generalized Anxiety Disorder (“GAD”) complicated by panic. Last but not least the Agoraphobia from sheer shame and confusion I suppose.

Looking back, I see my illnesses in every tiny step. In grade school when I had “school tummy” from sheer anxiety and couldn’t bring myself to go, how did nobody see? When I resorted to alcohol and clearly struggled with relationships and stability of any sort, how did nobody see? I see it so clearly now.

I understand now that earnestly learning from each step is the most beneficial thing I can do for myself and for those around me. I try each day to own myself, own my decisions, and own my path. I have learned to have SO much compassion for myself in the midst of it all. I am grateful for my diagnosis and even more grateful for my willingness to be vulnerable when every fiber in my being fights it. Those moments are the most rewarding. Accepting myself, my diagnosis, and my treatment was the first step to many rewarding experiences for me and those around me. I don’t announce my diagnosis to the world because I am not my diagnosis, I am ME. I also don’t think many people have earned the privilege of knowing me in that intimate way. I still have my days that I strongly consider how the world would look without me in it but I no longer blaze a path of destruction.

Maybe I’m in denial but I am not ill, I am learning to be the best person I can be with additional information to help me do that. I can’t change reality, but I can change how I percieve it. I’m changing my story. In my experience, those of us labeled with the term mentally ill:

• Have purposeful insight.
  
• Know how to live with pain and struggles that not many others can even begin to understand. There is great strength in that!
• We have the unique opportunity to focus on building our identity outside of our diagnosis, our job, our car, our name, etc.
• We possess some of the greatest minds on earth. Need an example? Click Here

I am a survivor, not a victim and it’s only a stigma if you give it merit. If judgement is all they have, then they can focus on that while I strengthen my mind and spirit through purposeful insight.