Anyone with knowledge of PTSD or trauma

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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.

I did actually buy "the body keeps score" ages ago and was reading to him but he asked to stop as it was upsetting

OP do you not see how wrong this all is? You are his friend-turned-partner but you're treating him as if you're a therapist or the mother of a frightened child.

You clearly love him deeply but you are not a professional. You cannot and should not be trying to find treatment for him or push him into any sort of therapy. It's absolutely pointless because until he decides he needs it, he won't engage with it and will decide its made him worse.

Stop trying to decide whether his symptoms are physical, mental, or both. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you can't fix him, and he's going to make you very unhappy if he doesn't seek help for himself.

I would be putting this house purchase on hold for now. If he wants to do a geographical (which is what it's called in AA - moving areas in an attempt to leave your demons behind you) then let him go. If you let him drag you along for the ride you will be on a hiding to nothing.

Sorry OP, he doesn't deserve to have to deal with this shit, but he has to accept that life isn't fair and sometimes the only path back to health is painful. If he got hit by a drunk driver and was terribly injured, he would understand and accept that the physiotherapy to get him walking again would be hard and painful, right? It's the same with mental trauma, he has to face his fear of pain and work through it. But he has to come to that place of acceptance himself. You can't do it for him.

I think unfortunately that we sometimes need to wait to be ready for therapy. Often the fear of falling apart is so great and we worry we will collapse so our brain and body tries to shut it all down by giving reasons not to do it.

The other thing is that just being in a relationship even if it’s good can be triggering. I went through a lot of therapy to deal with CPTSD partly caused by abusive relationships. I am mostly fine now and with someone wonderful but the very act of opening my heart to someone new and being vulnerable was incredibly challenging even though I knew he was the best person i’d ever been with and absolutely kind and supportive. Without that therapy i would not have been able to do it and have a healthy relationship as it was just too triggering for me.

I hate to be a downer but if he’s not dealt with the issues from this relationship then from my experience a new one is really likely to be triggering. You are now playing the role of his therapist and that’s not at all healthy, it’s draining and prevents a more equal relationship developing. Yes you are the one he has told and you know what he went through and that is good in some ways - but in others it makes him very vulnerable because you have this knowledge of this extreme situation he suffered. That puts you in a very tricky position because you need to act like a therapist and keep this information safe and him safe emotionally at the same time as trying to just build a ‘normal’ relationship. It is just really unhealthy for both of you.

Its understandable he doesn’t feel ready for therapy but i’m sorry to say that if this is the case, particularly as his trauma is from a relationship, my view is it’s a pretty bad idea to be in a relationship, especially when the person he is in the relationship with is the only one he will ever open up to about what happened. And also the one who he is expecting (even if not consciously) to absorb his negative symptoms and to go along with his denial and refusal to address why he’s so unwell still.

You sound like you care for him so much but you can’t make him become ready for therapy, he has to make that decision himself. Equally, you can’t be expected to remain with someone who is this unwell and be his entire support system. It’s not good for either of you.

Look you sound like a lovely person but this guy is bringing you down. What incentive does he have to change if you just keep putting up with his misery?

To answer your questions, yes, physical illness and pain can absolutely be trauma related. So too the mood swings and generalised fear and unhappiness.

Trauma is incredibly hard to conquer but it can be done. If you think about the numbers of people who have been traumatised in childhood or toxic partnerships or through natural disaster, or years of exposure to micro aggressions, that is a hell of a lot of traumatised people walking around out there.

Whatever happens to us, we have a responsibility as adults to manage it. He can continue to limp along dragging you down or he can own his misery and set about being the boss of it.

I see myself in much of what you have described, I was negative and volatile and genuinely believed the world was very unsafe and that no one could be trusted.

Since then I have had EMDR (magic), done three terms of trauma-sensitive yoga, and engaged in long-term therapy. Talking helps me at times but I find art more soothing so I do art therapy.

I also take medication (was diagnosed with trauma-induced ADD), and as part of my commitment to well-being I work out, swim, meditate and don’t drink.

Looking back I can see what a mess I was although at the time I genuinely believed the world was bad.

There is hope for your partner and he is lucky that you are so supportive, but he does need to own this.

Thank you everyone for the information and advice -even the harsher pushes were helpful. I explained yesterday he had to take steps to help himself and it was a rough conversation but I think made progress.

I am not going to leave, not now anyway. He's been there for me over the years through so many rough things and never left my side or tired of helping, even when I couldn't help myself. All my adult life if there was one person I know would walk across the arctic for me just to bring me a jumper, it's him. It's not easy at times, but a life with him is what I choose.

I think he will come around, and maybe me losing patience is part of that. He's agreed to see the GP, he's agreed to read the book, he's agreed to talk more and read up on EDMR. Progress.

Today he's very sick, a huge flare up, lots of pain and puffiness, exhaustion, headache and every noise seems to physically hurt him. It's really horrible to deal with and I know difficult conversations flared him up so it's always a bit confusing to know when I should push and when not.

So happy you have had such good progress so quickly. Well done OP.

While PTSD does cause physical symptoms it would be wise for him to ask the GP while he is there about his as they sound to me to be a bit OTT and also seem to flare up with no PTSD trigger. Has he had covid? His symptoms sound very much post viral fatigue…aka long covid.

He said counselling would traumatise him

That's not unreasonable, I couldn't have coped with that either. I actually self referred to Talkworks right at the beginning but 5 minutes into the triage phone call I already knew that the direction they were wanting to take - counselling and CBT - wasn't the right one. I stopped the referral and went to a private EMDR therapist.