Anyone with knowledge of PTSD or trauma

[sccradio]

Hello. My partner has PTSD or c-PTSD - I am not sure which but he got it from on going and pretty horrible trauma a couple of years ago. At the time we were just friends, but I was around /supporting him when it happened so I know it was pretty bad.

To anyone who knows about this can they please tell me:

1. Is it normal to direct anger / negative emotions at the here and now? I feel like he is blaming our happy / lovely life and ruining objectively happy times by blaming feeling bad on something relatively innocuous while he seems unable to blame or feel anger at the events which caused the actual PTSD. Is that something he is choosing to do, or is it part of it?

2. He says he can't feel joy and he experiences a lot of fatigue and aches and pains. There's no medical reason. He blames things around him for this, but I knew him years before he had PTSD and he was fine then so I know all this started at the time of the trauma but he won't really acknowledge that. Again, is that part of it?

I am trying not to get angry, but I have been so loving and so supportive and it gets me down that I feel like the lovely life we have, so in love, keeps getting blamed for things which happened when I wasn't even there.

I think he loves me very much, but despite many, many conversations where I have asked him to acknowledge the obvious - which was that he was fine before the trauma - he can't do it. He just keeps saying we need to change something in the here and now to make him feel better, and yet this never works.

He won't get professional help. He acknowledges he has PTSD and it traumatised. He has got much better since we started seeing each other as before he was having full blown flashbacks and so on, but these things have lingered for a year now and I am starting to question my own sanity.

You need to leave quite honestly or give him an ultimatum.
I have complex PTSD and anger/rage is all part of it.
It is NOT the kind of condition you can just refuse to get help for.
I am on drugs for life and have had engthy counselling but I'm unable to cope with relationships at all so don't have them.
I only achieved happiness and a good stable life with extensive psychiatric care and medicationif he's refusing he doesn't get to have a relationship with you. He has to understand that. You cannot inflict your unresolved problems onto another person. It's incredibly selfish.

I have diagnosed CPTSD. None of what you describe is unusual, these things are definitely facets of the condition, but he MUST have professional help. He isn't able to manage it by himself, which is why it is poisoning your everyday life. It won't get better on its own. I agree with the previous poster that if he absolutely won't get help, I wouldn't stay with him. It's too much to ask.

I have CPTSD.

Your second point is reasonable, mental pain can manifest as physical.

Your first point is more complex. My trauma is related to a medicalised event and the surrounding days, but now all medical settings are very tricky for me, and it's very much a fight or flight reaction. I can see how if you're unable to manage that reaction even the tiniest bit it could come out as angry.

The whole "we need to change something now and that'll fix what was" is I'm guessing, sheer panic. He's clutching at straws.

Realistically the only way off this merry-go-round is professional help. I had EMDR, and it was very helpful. I used to think about my trauma every day, multiple times a day. It would play over and over in part of my brain like a film on loop in the cinema and it was exhausting, EMDR helped break that loop and I realised eventually that I hadn't thought about it for 2/3/5/10 days at a time, which was huge progress. The fight or flight reaction is still there, but it's less extreme, and I'm more able to advocate for myself and put coping mechanisms in place to make sure I feel safe, or I have the confidence to decline but out of a reasonable decision, rather than utter terror and panic.

If he's refusing point blank to get help then there is very little you can do. PTSD/CPTSD is by its nature wildly complex.

If you feel unable or unwilling (completely reasonably) to support him if he won't get help then you can try the ultimatum, but be prepared for him to walk away rather than deal with that's in his head; the fight or flight will be immense.

I think he'd be open to certain therapies like EDMR but he's basically terrified to talk about it. He got it from severe domestic/psychological abuse.

Is it possible he really believes that whatever is in the present is making him ill / causing his unhappiness?

He acknowledges how he got PTSD and how bad it is but vehemently denies that's why he's unhappy. He blames other things like working hours, money or traffic when none of these things made him unhappy before.

If i try and point that out he just won't accept it. If I tell him he's poisoning current life he just feels bad.

I agree with pp on cPTSD. He needs professional help. Also untreated PTSD often leads to severe Depression because resilience to day to day stress and is simply not there anymore. Coping strategies that worked before, no longer work as they did before the trauma. He needs professional help to tackle all of it.

If he’ll go get help with the Depression, he may have a therapist that he can eventually open up to about the trauma. I can understand him being terrified to go over what happened to him because in doing so, it would force him to access those memories and re-live them. Perhaps agreeing it’s stuff today making him unhappy, encourage to get help for Depression including referral for counselling, and then later gently encourage him to consider talking about the trauma once he has a therapist that he is familiar with and trusts.

I had severe trauma. EMDR will address the issues without 'going into it' like counselling does. Its pretty amazing. Everything you describe is normal for PTSD. He is terrified to get triggered and thus the frustration, fear and anger sets in. Read Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Mates books if you want to know more. It is often fixable and life post trauma is pretty amazing. Please PM me if you or he wants to ask anything at all.

Another one recommending EMDR therapy. Can be absolutely transformative.

Read Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Mates books

I was just about to mention both!
Gabor Mate's film checkout.thewisdomoftrauma.com/movie/ is essential viewing, just for the insight alone. You can also look him up on YouTube and this is a good podcast open.spotify.com/episode/12QO0BXYtKuBHw3uAyCSbS?si=482f807ea747402b

And Bessel van der Kolk's book The Body Keeps the Score is a worthy read.
I'll link you to a good podcast with him here: open.spotify.com/episode/7l49wHwmNEdiO12HRQJcv6?si=3548c3df16664f7e

He's focusing on the symptoms rather than the cause. He may well be struggling with working hours, money and traffic etc now when before he had no problem. But the cause is the PTSD. His ability to cope with the normal stresses and strains of life is impaired by the underlying, untreated condition.

This is also not uncommon. It's much easier to focus on the relatively minor issues than massive one that overshadows anything. The whole issue with PTSD is that the trauma isn't dealt with, it's locked in a box inside your head, in a corner where you can ignore and pretend everything is normal because it's too awful to look at. But it leaches out and continues to poison your life until you get proper help to process it.

I found EDMR really helpful.

Maybe he's not ready for a relationship yet.

Time on his own may help him understand his trauma better and stop him from taking his confusion out on you. What feelings do you believe are beneath this trauma, anger, guilt, loss ? Is he blaming you for something.

He says he's wanting to change something, has he not suggested what that may be?

I do think he needs to see someone, why is he so reluctant.
Do you feel he is getting cold feet about your relationship?

It can manifest differently in different people. He has to seek treatment. But even with treatment he still might be unhappy about work, etc. Treatment can help with flashbacks; and recognising and managing trauma responses. But someone who has experienced trauma isn't the same person afterwards. If you're hoping treatment will return him to his pre-trauma state, I think you're being unrealistic.
My close relative has PTSD. Yy their daily life was much better after treatment but they weren't the person they had been before. And sometimes treatment means acknowledging that daily life does have to change too.

I have a diagnosis of CPTSD. I dont want to risk having a mental breakdown by reliving trauma through therapy. I have a child to care for. But to be fair, my cptsd is pretty mild. It mainly consists of feeling really warm when I'm stressed out and sometimes things triggering a memory of the abuse. It's all quite manageable.

But ofcourse its not like that for everyone. I'm just wondering if your partner is concerned about therapy making things worse before they are better?

I don't expect him to be as he once was. I'm sure this isn't about our relationship.

I think what happens is that he can't cope with any stress- even minor, like crowds or noise, so he thinks he's unhappy in his environment.

Right now, he wants to move, and fine, we can, but I just feel like he blames and is negative about our life which upsets me and makes me feel bad.

Yes, this is his same reason. He thinks he will unravel.

This also might sound irrational but after a solid year of someone putting pretty extreme illness down to things In our environment or lifestyle, as well as being unable to enjoy things he used to.... I feel a bit betrayed? Like "why are you taking this out on our lovely, happy home instead of blaming the woman who did this?". That sounds selfish. It's just gone on a very long time and I thought he'd get what's going on but he's in extreme Denial

Is it possible he really believes that whatever is in the present is making him ill / causing his unhappiness?

Yes. But without treatment it will carry on. Just to be very clear, just because something is caused by trauma, it doesn't mean you have to fix it or put up with it. You are allowed boundaries.

Is he angry about financial losses?

Has he left behind children ?

No, we don't have any financial problems. Life is really good but he constantly says "every day is a thankless joyless grind and I feel ill all the time we have to move, I hate it here".

This feels awful for me! I can't stop ruminating on why he's not blaming the past for being ill. He acknowledges he GOT ill during the abuse, but doesn't acknowledge it's why he remained ill.

He's got much better. Immediately after the abuse he was an absolute wreck and I honestly thought at the time he might never be okay again. Since we got together he's been so much better and he acknowledges that.

If I raise how upsetting this is, and how important it is for him to remember the present hasn't made him ill, he insists I'm wrong and that all he needs to feel better is to move / change job etc. Even though he more or less loves his job. It's so irrational.

He tells me it's not ME or our life, I am the best thing in his life and he loves me to bits. I believe him. But the headfuck it causes me is immense.

If he can't feel joy and sees everything so negatively it makes me feel inadequate.

No, our children are grown up

You keep reiterating that everything is perfect in your relationship now, do you have children, does he, are there other factors that could be causing him unhappiness in the present, stuff not related to the ptsd.

It's difficult to comment as you seem fixed on everthing being about his past, his present is also important.

Has he actually been diagnosed with PTSD?

I have severe C-PTSD (and PTSD from another specific incident.). I can attest to EMDR being very, very effective for desensitizing specific triggers, but for it to work, you need to open up to the therapist first so that they know what to work on. If he’s not going to be willing to speak to trust the process, it will be a waste of time and money. (And he will then probably claim that he feels worse now because he tried something else and it failed.)
You might have to accept that he is going to be unable/unwilling to change his behaviours and decide whether or not you can live with them.