How do I stop triggering my partner?

[sorrymess]

My partner has been suffering from symptoms of PTSD since soon after the birth of our child, several months ago. The trauma stems from loss of control during and following a complicated pregnancy and birth, coupled with being dependent on people (i.e. me) who did not provide adequate care, protection and concern during these times. The full story is more complex, of course, and involves more players (e.g. midwives, doctors, my mother), but those are the broad strokes.

When my partner is triggered, and flips into an episode, she goes through hell. She is consumed with anger and despair, cannot eat properly, cannot sleep properly, and cannot control her feelings. These episodes can last a few days. They are horrible to watch, and I desperately want to avoid pushing her into one.

The trouble is, I keep doing it. She has several different triggers, mostly originating from the time following the birth while she was extremely unwell. Examples of triggers include startling her while she's asleep, or taking the baby from her without asking. She tells me that she's more likely to "flip" if I'm rude or unpleasant after triggering her. But although she's told me about these triggers multiple times, I find myself pulling them over and over again. And if she berates me for triggering her I often lose patience and snap at her, which seems to make things much worse.

The costs of doing this are so incredibly high, and the sitaution is completely unsustainable as it stands. She's told me that living with me is torture, and that as soon as she is physically well enough she wants to leave. I want to stop making her feel this way, and of course I worry about the effect on our child. What can I do? Has anyone else been through something like this? Did anything help?

For the record, she is taking an SSRI at the moment (one that had worked for a previous bout of depression) but it doesn't seems to help at all with these episodes. She is reluctant to see a counsellor as medical settings are something she now finds triggering, plus the counsellor would be from the same trust that botched her pregnancy.

So many errors! Sorry, hopefully you understand what I wrote. I should proofread more before I post:(. I am used to being able to go back and edit!

Honestly this sounds horrific for both of you. No matter how hard you try, sometimes (particularly when exhausted!) you are going to inadvertently do something to trigger her. She needs professional help and soon before it gets even more out of hand.

To those lambasting the OP, do you really think it's fair that he lives in fear of accidentally brushing against his wife's foot in the middle of the night when he is getting up to look after the baby?! It seems to me he is being incredibly patient and concerned, but this is his life too and it sounds like hell for both of them. It's impossible to live like that - the stress must be horrendous.

Can I just point out too that if this was a woman posting about a man reacting with extreme anger or rage about his foot being brushed against or a man holding the baby and shouting and not stopping, I think I already know what the responses would be.

It all boils down to one thing Op, you both need help. PP here have pointed you in the right direction on how to get help and practical things that both you and your wife can do to help support the healing process.

Donald Winnicott said that 'the mother holds the baby and the father holds them both.'

I'm the one suffering with PTSD, OP. My DH frequently feels like he's treading on eggshells around me and I actually feel very bad for him. He triggers me, simply because he's a man and I'm dealing with flashbacks of childhood SA. So I get what you're saying, that you don't mean to trigger your wife.

What I can say is that you shouldn't argue with your wife when she's been triggered because at that moment she's in fight or flight mode and can't cope with your antagonism. You need to wait until she's in a calmer place before you talk through with her what happened.

And I agree with PPs that you both desperately need professional help, especially since you have a young baby.

To all pp saying to OP he just needs to 'stop being horrible' is that your advice to the wife 'just stop being stressed/anxious' and oh now on earth an equal parent have a say in child raising or pick up their own child without asking 'permission'??

Can I just point out too that if this was a woman posting about a man reacting with extreme anger or rage about his foot being brushed against or a man holding the baby and shouting and not stopping, I think I already know what the responses would be

Indeed! Makes me wonder what kind of hell some of these posters OHs are living in

You need outside help OP and I agree the first stop is the HV.

I am absolutely disgusted by what I have seen posted here against the OP. Total and utter bigotry.

These are the same posters that would be telling you to "Leave The Bastard" if you had posted as a woman reporting a man's behavior in the same words.

Your wife clearly has some serious issues that require some outside help - you can support her but you cannot counsel her
As several posters have stated here about their own experiences, when someone is in this state, they will blame almost anything on someone else. Guess what: you are the person closest to her and you are the easy target for venting all that angst
Your wife's refusal to see a counselor is, in itself, a telling sign of a bigger issue

Maybe you have been a trigger to these episodes. But it is clear your wife needs external help very very quickly. People with PTSD/severe depression/anxiety will have a multitude of potential triggers - I know I have. That does not mean that I blame everyone around me for my mental state.

When someone cannot accept responsibility for their own behaviors or is unwilling to accept help, there is not much that can be done for them.

OP do not allow yourself to become the accepted root cause of this situation.

don't see why people are saying I'm trying to pick a fight. It's clear to me that the poster himself is aware of his own behaviour being a problem and has admitted to being unnecessarily rude and unpleasant. That's not to say that his wife isn't very ill - it sounds like she is - but his behaviour can't be helping.

It is clear to me that you are being an unnecessarily unhelpful and inconsiderate twat and need to stop.

Indeed! Makes me wonder what kind of hell some of these posters OHs are living in

Those saying that wouldn't have the mouth to actually say anything to their own OHs... it's easier to target the OP on an anonymous forum.

It's ridiculous how harsh people are to men on here.

LeCroissant

In a desperate need to demonize anything with a penis, you're actually minimizing his wife's illness. You can't cure PTSD by "not triggering someone" anymore than you can cure agoraphobia by staying in the house.

holdonasecondwaitwhatno

Bravo - could not have put it better

For the record, I have found the replies to this thread extremely useful, and particularly want to thank those people with direct experience of PTSD. As a result, my partner has agreed to reconsider counselling. Part of the reason she'd ruled it out was not only the fear of being further triggered, but she didn't really have any faith in its effectiveness. She'd contacted mental health services a couple of times before and it hadn't exactly been encouraging. I think we will try to go private. It will be a stretch financially, but will be worth it if effective.

To those who have had counselling or therapy for PTSD, can I ask what kind of things to expect? What actually happened during the sessions? How did you feel they helped you? In what way? I think my partner has some skepticism that going into a room and having a chat can help with what she's going through, as she finds her symptoms to be so overwhelming and so 'physical'. She keeps saying, 'what could they possibly do?' and I'd like to have some sort of answer.

Also, a lot of people have mentioned get support or counselling for myself - what kind of things would this involve? Has anyone got direct experience of them? I haven't really spoken to anyone about these things in great detail, but when I have alluded to difficulties, it usually leaves me feeling more humiliated than consoled.

The majority of posters here have been very supportive, and TBH I don't detect much misandry. I'm certainly not feeling oppressed and I'm happy to receive constructive criticism. As for implying that my partner may have been responsible for her own birth trauma - you can fuck off with that.

Trauma therapy will deal with the physical stuff too. When a trauma happens all kinds of things happen in the brain, and therapy just corrects that. Sometimes it is as simple as talking as it helps the memory to be reprocessed. If she can't talk EMDR (thinking of the memory while moving her eyes) will help.

Therapy for PTSD is very effective, there is a lot of genuine research behind it. It's not just "a chat". Just find someone she feels comfortable with. Try either the British psychological society or the babcp website for therapists. Made sure they are accredited! (Psychologists with the hcpc, CBT therapists with babcp. I think emdr also have accreditation shown online)

For yourself I would consider CBT to help with the 'quick temper'

I would also recommend EMDR therapy for your wife. I've had some and it was really helpful, I'm no longer having the distressing flashbacks I was having before, though I'm looking into having more of it now.

For yourself CBT might well be useful, or just talking therapy. Maybe joint therapy for the two of you together as well.

EMDR worked for my sister - she started to feel better during the first session.

Thank goodness for the later replies. I was reading the earlier ones thinking, WTF?

If OP was a soman, the replies would be totally different. Op, it sounds as though you have self-awareness and you admit your faults. Fair enough. But it sounds like you are walking on eggshells all the time. Your wife has an unbelievable number of triggers.

And how are you meant to know what wil trigger her? I really think that ‘trigger’ is fucking overused.

You need outside help. Your HV, counselling, whatever. If your wife had a traumatic birth, she can talk to PALS or the Birth Afterthoughts service at her hospital.

But going mad because you knock her foot in bed is not being triggered; it sounds like an excuse for behaving badly and not having to own it or be responsible.

Good luck, op.

Actually I wonder if a birth debrief might be helpful. I’ve heard a number of times it helps more than not.

One of her triggers is when I walk into the side of the bed. This stems from the early days post pregnancy when her episotomy scar was new (and newly infected), and me jostling the bed caused her a lot of pain

Most recently, I went to pick up the crying baby in the morning, being careful to avoid the bed, but as I was turning away from the crib I thumped up against my partner's foot, which was dangling off the side

She tells me that she's more likely to "flip" if I'm rude or unpleasant after triggering her.

hang on a minute...It sounds to me like small accidents are being "used" as "triggers" an awful lot at the convenience of the op's dw. And you trigger her if you are rude after you have triggered her? She is trying to stop you feeling any sort of emotion over this, isn't she?

In retrospect, I should have immediately apologized and taken responsibility Of course, you should always apologise, but it sounds like you are doing an awful lot of walking on eggshells and apologising. I get that she had a traumatic birth, I did too, and I get how trauma continues and takes on a mind of its own, mixed in with all the other emotions of being pregnant and giving birth...however, I do feel that that PTSD is being somewhat overused if your banging into a bed/knocking her foot turns into a trigger that she "flips for days" over.

I don't want to go into detail about my mother, but essentially she visited shortly after the birth, and my partner felt the presence of this relative stranger to be more intrusive than helpful. I really should have anticipated this and asked my mother to schedule her visit later on how can you anticipate that though? You mother came to meet your child, her grandchild! A perfectly natural occurrence, did she do something wrong towards your wife, or child?

The other thing to consider is, is this PTSD alone, or something like PNP (post natal psychosis)

Misandry is no more valid a term than 'reverse racism': men as a class have more privilege than women as a class. Though you probably don't feel very privileged just now, I imagine you feel very tense and alone and anxious.

Ask yourself why you were unable to advocate for her in labour. I'm sure the pressure on you was intense, but you (like lots of men) bowed to that rather than standing with your partner. She may need the two of you to confront this head on.

Parenthood causes lots of us to look deep inside at why we are how we are. It's unfortunate that psychotherapy's so expensive at a time when money's often very tight, & obviously I think your budget should go on therapy for your partner, but reading, reflection, simple but hard techniques like counting to ten before reacting in anger, deep breaths when you feel irritable - can be enormously effective. It's no longer ok to be argumentative - you developed this trait as a way of dealing with circumstances when you were young, but now you want to keep your very vulnerable family together and to be a dad your child can trust: you need to change. The 'stately homes' threads on mumsnet are very helpful in learning about patterns laid down in childhood that start out helping in some way but become destructive.

There is EMDR and trauma CBT. Personally I'd opt for EMDR in your partner's situation because she has so many triggers and EMDR works quickly. She doesn't need to go into detail or talk about her childhood - it's a completely different way of working. I've done EMDR myself for other trauma.

OP if she does any trauma therapy, you need to support her. REALLY support her. It's not like she'll be going for a massage.

1. Forget about being right (at least for now), especially when you're not! Keep your goal in mind: helping her heal so your family has a better life. If you find yourself "being right", try to just stop and say "I'm sorry" or even "I'm sorry, I'm being a dick right now. Of course it wasn't your fault your foot was off the bed when you were asleep." Or come back and say it later. That doesn't mean you think you deliberately bumped it either. You're just apologising for the way you dealt with that situation (as an example). And you need to be sincere. If you spit the words out, or sigh them out, you'll make things worse.

1. It might be useful for you to ask if you can attend a session with the therapist, or part of one - first or last 10-15 mins for example - to find out how best to support her. Show that you're there for her and you're trying.

1. If she doesn't want you to attend, google EMDR (or whatever therapy type she does) and how people feel after, how to support someone doing it etc. There are FB pages and forums about it (some have people with more long term trauma than your partner's so their experiences of it may be more intense).

1. Help her sleep. Whatever is happening, however annoyed you are with each other, help her get sleep. Babies are tiring, but trauma adds a whole other level to exhaustion. If you're tired, she's probably 100 times more. Sleeping is healing though, so it's not a waste of time.

1. Overall, think: I need to do the right thing here, not always be right. You've identified that you have a quick temper, need to be right, are argumentative etc, but that doesn't mean you have an excuse to be any of them!

And of course, this doesn't mean you're always wrong and she's always right. But I'd suggest you try not to think in terms of wrong and right as much as possible for minor daily things.

Hi Sorrymess, I’m a bit late to this but wanted to reply as your OP was familiar to me. I have/had PTSD and becoming a Mum led to quite a big relapse of symptoms for me.

What I found helpful was finding a private counsellor, one who I paid through choice and could have an ongoing relationship with, rather than limited by funding. Appreciate that this is not financially viable for everyone. We were able to prioritise it.

I saw my therapist for two years. She was an integrated therapist but also an artist/used art therapy and when we began I didn’t realise how useful/appropriate that would be. It took me over six months to start to take down my guard and talk openly. The trauma counselling she did with me was life changing. Stuff like using a sand tray to ground me when having flashbacks, and objects/dolls to build narratives. She also got me to research and understand the physiology of panic/stress and I found that incredibly empowering, to understand why I sometimes couldn’t make my voice work and felt faint etc. But we had to build trust before getting to that stuff.

Very best wishes to you and your wife.

OP maybe you need some counselling to help you become more careful about not triggering your wife?

This sounds like a really difficult situation for everyone. Of course your wife who lived through this trauma (and is still living it), and for you I imagine seeing her go through it and now not knowing what to do to help.

Therapy is the recommended intervention for PTSD. And obviously no one can say without assessing her, but if she's having such an intense reaction to reminders several months after the trauma, it definitely sounds like it could be.
There are different types of trauma therapy, but the ones that have more of an evidence base to them on the basis of research done so far are trauma-focused CBT and EMDR. These both tend to get used a the main approach if it's a single trauma (as opposed to something that happened repeatedly over time).

They are both similar in that they involve 'reliving' (going over) of the trauma in a safe and contained way, with the aim of processing and putting the memories into a more coherent narrative, which does not have the same painful emotions/thoughts/etc connected with it. Ie like if someone asked you to describe a non traumatic event from the past.

It's too long to explain the details here but there is tons of stuff out there about trauma focused CBT and EMDR if you do a Google.

A good therapist (and personally I would be going to a clinical or counselling psychologist, or an experienced CBT or EMDR therapist as opposed to a generic counsellor) will take a lot of time to assess first, and develop a shared understanding with your wife of what is going on. It might be there's some other stuff from the past that mean the loss of control and other issues during the trauma felt even more traumatic.

They'll never force your wife to do or say anything she does not want to do and will work through the very normal fears someone might have about discussing something so painful (it's often a bit of a misnomer to people; the idea of purposefully focusing on a trauma that they want so desperately to forget). Sometimes there will be a period of stabilisation first, which might include helping your wife to deal with emotions or memories, before they get to the business of proceeding the memories themselves. But it's all individual.

Good luck to both of you. It might seem very overwhelming and hopeless at times, but therapy for trauma (especially one off traumas) has one of the best outcomes compared to therapy for lots of other kinds of issues.

Hi Sorrymess, I'm really pleased that your partner has agreed to get help. That's a huge step and I can understand her concerns.

I didn't want any talking therapies as the emotional pain and upset was overwhelming for me. Due to lack of any understanding about therapies I ended up trying EFT with a therapist. It helped me to relax a bit after sessions, but ultimately didn't help to resolve anything and there was way too much talking in it for my liking. The therapist did finally try hypnotherapy with me and I loved that - no talking and relaxing too.

PTSD was like the cherry on the cake of chronic stress, it was my breaking point and part of my breakdown. So dealing with the obvious traumatic event (which was a memory of being raped from years ago), didn't cut it. I was so stressed that I could barely function. I think I always saw PTSD and my breakdown as inevitable really. It ended up being extremely messy, but also a profound experience. I wouldn't want to go through it again though...

I saw a hypnotherapist (different one who was also my trainer) twice. Those sessions took away the flashbacks, nightmares and the label of PTSD. I wanted to find out how a memory could affect me so badly and how my mind was creating such a bloody awful nightmare world. During my lucid days, I did know that I was going from normality to an altered state where everyone was a threat. I knew it was me, but I couldn't stop it. I didn't see any more therapists after this and I trained in hypnotherapy, NLP and finally coaching instead. I sorted it out myself really and I understand it now. The PTSD and chronic stress is a thing of the past.

I actively avoided talking about the event and the ptsd and to be honest with you, it worked a treat. Delving into pain and trauma is not something that's necessary to recover. In my own experience, after a couple of years of not being able to talk about, I'm absolutely fine to now, it doesn't touch me. However, I do recognise that everyone is different and what works for one person, doesn't for another.

How your partner wants to do things is vital to her recovery. There are loads of different therapies and therapists and finding someone she likes and trusts is essential. Let her know not to be afraid of changing therapies or therapists if she's not experiencing an improvement. Sometimes you need to change as you've gone as far as you can with one therapist too.

My partner didn't show an interest in helping me find a therapist and left me to do it on my own. He was completely out of his depth, I can see that now. I think my recovery would have been a lot quicker if I'd had someone who was willing to do a bit of research, leg work and have some encouragement and support for me though. Then again, my training has been invaluable so he may have done me a favour in the long term.

Mine's not a conventional recovery, but it does show that there are different ways of getting the results you want. Just help your partner to find what she needs, there will be someone out there to help her.

I suggested support for you as at the time your partner was unwilling to look for help for herself. It would have been so difficult to carry all of that on your own. I'd see how she goes, and if you need extra support, then look for it. Again, there's a lot of help out there so getting specific in what you need helps to narrow it down a bit.

I'm happy to recommend some people if you'd like me to and I'm happy for you to get in touch if you want to ask any questions or anything.

Best of luck to you both xx