Having a relationship with a partner with Complex PTSD

 

Dear Bloggers.

 My spouse was the engine of our family and made my life easy for many years by doing all our financial things and a lot in raising our daughters and was a star in cooking and everything that you would love to see in a loving and caring partner and mother. Until 2011 everything was fine when a manager at her job as a Call Centre agent was telling her everyday that she smelled bad. After battling with this issue the company decided to rearrange her to an other team so she could recover from this. In the beginning this looked quite alright until this manager started to manipulate her in the form of gaslighting her mind. And yes he went far by even telling her that she should leave her partner and she was absolutely not worth to be here at all. I found these things out after several years that he had destructed her mentally.

 

The effects of Complex PTSD can disrupt lives and devastate romantic relationships. If your partner is living with this condition, your support can help them heal trauma through treatment. Learn your responsibilities in your romantic partner’s treatment and help them begin the journey to recovery today.

 

We had a fair romantic relationship together, I knew quite some of her past. I knew she had fled her home in the middle of a prolonged and violent relationship several years earlier; aware of her reluctance to talk about her past experiences, I respected her feelings and didn’t press for details. At night, she sometimes alternated between severe nightmares and prolonged bouts of restless sleeplessness. She accused me of hiding secrets from her and claimed she could not trust me and that I was planning to hit her. We lived a romantic and happy life after some time and she was getting used to the fact that not all man are the same and that your partner can be loving and caring.

 

 After many years living together, we decided to get married and however, I became aware that having a steady job was necessary as a part of her present life. I did a lot of small contracts in several businesses and I should find something more stabile for the whole year round. After serving my time in the army I became restless and could not deal with certain kind of people. Which made my life difficult as I needed some adventure and from that point of view I started a job as a waiter on passenger vessel. Not ideal when you are young and in love with the most beautiful woman that you know. In 2009 my career at sea ended due to reorganization in the company I worked for and I was laid off in a good way. The gave me some money to build a new career and I got paid quite well on the dole.

 

I took some time for myself to reflect on my career and what was still a dream for me. And I got my driver’s license for the bus and took off on my new job as bus driver through a temps office. We were a good team together as I was more at home we divided the jobs with the kids and the household jobs. She had build a career as a Call Centre Agent and was hired by the biggest phone company who just had started on internet and television through the internet. She loved her job and was always happy to help customers with their problems during the years the Company was pressing more and more towards targets and numbers. Not always you can solve a problem in five minutes. She was fully focused on fixing it directly. Very service minded towards the costumers care. Until they had totally smashed her brain in the beginning of 2014. She was suffering from things like not being able to pick up the phone and talk in full sentences. The manager she had was a real A-hole and a bastard towards her. It still makes me angry that you can be such a low life to destroy a human being with no reason.

  

 

We went to the doctors office and were send to a psychologist to get professionally help, it turned out that she had a variant of PTSD known as Complex PTSD. While PTSD, a mental illness that causes severe recurring anxiety and fear, may come about as a result of a single traumatic event of relatively brief duration such as a serious accident or a violent assault the trauma that triggers the onset of complex PTSD is prolonged and repeating, lasting for months or years. Examples of such trauma include long-term physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, a lengthy captivity, or, as in my wife’s case, a struggle to survive. Complex PTSD, also known as C-PTSD, is harrowing and devastating for the sufferer; the effects of this condition may also create stress for their romantic partner.

Comprehensive and careful professional treatment for C-PTSD is necessary for recovery. As this condition may create trust issues and inhibit the formation of interpersonal bonds, treatment may also be needed to heal romantic relationships damaged or destroyed by the painful effects of complex PTSD. If someone you love has C-PTSD, your support and empathy can aid in their recovery and repair your strained relationship.

 

Complex PTSD shares a common base of symptoms with PTSD, including flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, and self-destructive thoughts or behaviors. In addition, C-PTSD features a number of symptoms being specific to the condition, including the following:

• Difficulty regulating emotions, which may take the form of severe anger, sadness, or suicidal thoughts.
• Interruptions in consciousness, including periods of dissociation and difficulty recalling events surrounding the trauma.
• Self-perception issues, such as strong feelings of shame, guilt, or helplessness.
• A distorted perception of the perpetrator of the trauma. Those with C-PTSD often have an unhealthy preoccupation with their former tormentor, seeing them as unstoppable and all-powerful. Because someone with C-PTSD likely experienced a trauma in which survival hinged on their interpersonal connection to the perpetrator, they may still be obsessed with that relationship long after the end of the traumatic situation.
• A loss of faith and feelings of hopelessness.
• Difficulties with interpersonal relationships, such as an inability to trust people or a nonstop search for someone to rescue them.

 

Complex PTSD can devastate your Romantic Relationship

If your romantic partner suffers from the effects of complex PTSD, it’s probably taking a heavy toll on their life and well-being in multiple areas. Your romantic relationship may be one of those areas. C-PTSD may make your partner unable to fully trust anyone, even those who are closest to them and that could include you. Your partner may also feel isolated, as though no outsider can understand what they’ve been through; as much as you care about their physical and emotional health and sincerely wish to help them heal.

 

One of the many symptoms of complex PTSD is an ongoing search for a rescuer. During the sustained trauma responsible for creating this condition, your partner may have longed for someone to free them from their situation; even after the traumatic situation has ended, the urgent desire for a rescuer might linger on. If your partner wants you to constantly perform the role of their savior, it can create a strain on your dynamic. While you may find such behavior unsettling or confusing, it’s important to always treat your romantic partner with trust, patience, and understanding.

Professional treatment for complex PTSD takes much the same form as treatment programs for other forms of PTSD, although the symptoms unique to C-PTSD are addressed as well. The intention of treatment is to restore power to the traumatized individual to mitigate the damaging effects of the symptoms and help them reconnect with their everyday life.

If someone you love is receiving treatment for complex PTSD, you may be able to aid in their recovery. Make an effort to learn all you can about your partner’s condition the causes, the symptoms, the effects, the treatment and be prepared to approach them with openness, understanding, and a lack of judgment.

 When your romantic partner has C-PTSD, helping them recover will require empathy, compassion, and gentle support. With your active participation in their professional treatment, you’ll be able to strengthen your romantic bond and help your partner through the healing process.

 

The Old Sailor,

 

Trying hard to win the war within yourself

Dear Bloggers,

My wife is going through some traumatic times as she is emotional abused for almost three years in a row by two psychopathic and narcissistic persons (managers) that did everything to bring employees down that didn't fit into their profile. The company gives them a lot of freedom and it is a very sick atmosphere. A lot of former employees signed for their resignation and got a few months pay so they agreed to keep their mouth shut. My wife wasn't in the flow for leaving the company as she enjoyed what she was doing and this was against all the expectations of her manager. He was not amused with the fact that she was putting up so much resistance to keep her job. 

She kept up the fight for three years and dragged herself to work everyday. I pulled the plug in February of 2014 and she was tired and mentally so beaten up. In the last two years we have been trying to get her back on her feet with psychological help and psychiatric assistance. She has been checked on a medical scale by a neurologist and she was tested on defects by a neuro psychologist, lucky enough that there is no damage found in the brain. She is diagnosed with Complex PTSD with a panic and a anxiety disorder. Our wonderful future has been destroyed by two bastards that should be held responsible. 
 
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is mostly associated with soldiers returning from war. After the horrors witnessed in such an unnatural setting, many wo/men have a difficult time returning to “normal” life, often suffering from flashbacks, panic attacks, and severe anxiety.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Acute Stress Disorder (or Reaction) are not typical responses to prolonged abuse. They are the outcomes of sudden exposure to severe or extreme stressors (stressful events). Yet, some victims whose life or body have been directly and unequivocally threatened by an abuser react by developing these syndromes. PTSD is, therefore, typically associated with the aftermath of physical and sexual abuse in both children and adults.

Any traumatic event can trigger it. Rape, assault, acts of physical or verbal violence, even repeated emotional abuse or the sudden split of a significant relationship, especially if abuse was involved.

Repeated abuse has long lasting pernicious and traumatic effects such as panic attacks, hyper vigilance, sleep disturbances, flashbacks (intrusive memories), suicidal ideation, and psychosomatic symptoms. The victims experience shame, depression, anxiety, embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, abandonment, and an enhanced sense of vulnerability.

My wife is rather ashamed to admit that she has experienced them all. These last few weeks have made me realize just how deep the managers have traumatized me, she said. It was my husband who noticed, actually. He said that I was exhibiting symptoms of PTSD, and he was right. How embarrassing to be experiencing PTSD because of such a short-lived work-relationship. But all of a sudden there it is.

However, this reaction doesn’t reflect her or her ability to cope with it, as much as it speaks to the depth of the abuse. The depth of the trauma caused by emotional, cruel verbal, and even narcissistic pressure abuse, not to mention the sudden change in her personality and subsequent abandonment.

The first phase of PTSD involves incapacitating and overwhelming fear. The victim feels like she has been thrust into a nightmare or a horror movie. She is rendered helpless by her own terror. She keeps re-living the experiences through recurrent and intrusive visual and auditory hallucinations (“flashbacks”) or dreams. In some flashbacks, the victim completely lapses into a dissociative state and physically re-enacts the event while being thoroughly oblivious to her whereabouts.

In an attempt to suppress this constant playback and the attendant exaggerated startle response, the victim tries to avoid all stimuli associated, however indirectly, with the traumatic event. Many develop full-scale phobias (agoraphobia, claustrophobia, fear of heights, aversion to specific animals, objects, modes of transportation, neighbourhoods, buildings, occupations, weather, and so on). My wife has somethings the other way round for example she has no more fear of heights and isn't afraid of spiders anymore. Strange how the brain works

Her fear has been so great, that an email from him throws me into a panic attack, knowing that it just contains more pain. She doesn’t read them when they come in. In fact, she does not longer know if they are coming in or not, thanks to email filters that just delete them before we will even see them.
Thank goodness for technology.

Emotional abuse, like gaslighting as well as so many other insidious forms, is hard to recognize and even harder to prove. Let me first of all explain the gaslighting effect: “Gaslighting is an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation that is difficult to recognize and even harder to break free from. That’s because it plays into one of our worst fears – of being abandoned – and many of our deepest needs: to be understood, appreciated, and loved. The abuser is usually a very insecure person. He has a need to put others down in an attempt to make himself feel better. He must be seen as right at all times.” Often, the only indication that your partner is causing emotional damage is to trust yourself and how you feel.

• Are you asking yourself if you’re crazy?
• Are you questioning reality?
• Do you feel blamed for everything in the relationship?
• Do you feel unsafe to talk with your partner about anything? 
  
  
  
   
  

Certainly not all charming people are predators or abusive, but it is something of which to take note, especially if they are particularly charming. Please, please look closer, or perhaps, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Find out about their past relationships. How many? How did they end? Do they take responsibility for their actions? Their words? Are they relatively consistent in their words/actions?
indication: They don’t take responsibility for their own actions.
Please believe me when I say that these actions are insidious. I mean it. They are so subtle and often covered up by grand gestures of love and excessive affection. It is very intoxicating and convincing, but beneath it all there might be a constant assault on your sense of self through gaslighting and other forms of covert abuse.

The first step is recognizing abuse as abuse. One very surprising thing I learned about this over the past few weeks is that some types of emotional abuse feel like love. Another reason the trauma is so deep: it’s not just the damage , but it is unhealed damage from a lifetime of emotional abuse.

Research PTSD and Emotional Abuse. If you are exhibiting any of the signs, you might be trapped in a betrayal or trauma bond with the abuser. This makes it even harder to get away and heal.

Let us all learn how to protect ourselves from such people, for in this society, there is no other recourse. No way to prove it. No way to make them accountable for the damage they cause. Our only hope of defense against this type of abuse is to recognize the danger early, reinforce our armor, and get away before a trauma bond can be created. Slowly we start with counseling. To me it’s an interesting one, and it might be helpful to you, reading this blog, as it shows how one is in so much denial at first because of the shock and disbelieve, and how, if you commit to healing, you can uncover some pretty horrific things and extensive PTSD.

My wife quotes: “I might never be working again and damaged for life. Still, I’d rather know, accept, and heal than to fall into the same trap with another predator”.
Let's hope the future brings better times.



The Old Sailor,