How to cope when your loved one(s) feel overwhelmed by your PTSD

It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.

Lena Horne

Carrying packs, Nepal (Sam Judson, flickr creative commons)

I haven't been posting for a while because the last week or so has been a very stressful one. One week and three days ago, my husband told me how overwhelmed he's been feeling about my PTSD and my emotional turmoil over dealing with my aging parents. These things are emotional and my husband - as many men - doesn't deal well with emotion. To be honest, he's a bit of an emotional phobic. What that seems to mean, as best as he was able to explain it, is that when I'm feeling intense emotions he feels overwhelmed. He even cried. I was at a loss for words. I really had no idea that he was feeling that way. I knew he was pulling away from me; however, I just assumed it was his usual too much work, not enough time. Apparently, the final straw was our visit to my parents. Things seemed to go well enough, to me, although they were stressful. My husband seemed to take it in stride. Then, about two weeks after we got back, he dropped the bomb. Well, it's not that saying he feels overwhelmed was so bad, it was the fact that he used the D word and I felt like he was blaming me: saying that I was "wrong," to have PTSD. I suspect some of you out there with PTSD - and your loved ones - may have had similar experiences. Call it burnout or whatever you want, it's never easy dealing with PTSD. 

 

Alone (Adrian S. Jones, flickr creative commons)

 How my husband feels

• Isolated
• Alone
• As though I don't care about him because I'm distracted by processing trauma
• As though we are moving in different directions: me inward, him outward

What my husband is doing

• Going for walks alone each evening
• Sleeping in the guest room
• Going to see a therapist - well, he went for the first time today
• Thinking a lot

How I feel

• Afraid
• Abandoned
• Sad
• Empathetic
• Angry

What I'm doing

• Seeing my doctor and therapist more often
• Being kind to my husband and myself
• Paying more attention to my husband and acknowledging his feelings/needs
• Spending time on Pinterest to deal with stress
• Listening to healing music
• Cooking dinner several times a week (an issue that I need an entire post to explain)

 

All alone (Mariag, flickr creative commons)

 

Now what? This issue of living with someone who has PTSD isn't an easy one. It's tremendously complex and not one that can be dealt with in a single post. So, I'm planning a series on the topic. Several of you have been asking about this and I'm sorry I didn't get to it sooner. Maybe I should have used the word "help" in the title of this post because that's what we all need. Help, and lots of it. We need to support ourselves, individually and as a couple. Easier said than done? Absolutely. But I know there are good resources out there on this topic and my goal is to find some and share them with you. 

Here's a great article to start with on PTSD Caregiver Burnout. 

A final thought: look for small signs of hope. When I got up this morning, I found a note on the table from my husband, who had left the house early to go to therapy. "Have a good day!" he'd written on a piece of notebook paper. I smiled.