Well, gman, so far you have been doing all the right things for "you" as well. You allow yourself to talk about it, to reach out for support and do the things you need to do so that you remain as grounded as possible.

And I do believe your wife is an awsome person, most if not all the people who struggle like this are extremely kind hearted and good people.

The one other thing that I strongly advise is to not let yourself "react" to the anger when it comes out. That is often very hard to do, my husband would react instead of just listening until I finished the wave of the anger rant. When I think back on the worst of what I went through, I could not seem to "stop it" somehow it would just come out of me, much like a stomach virus where we just have something "come out of us".

Now, you saw me do it here and you did the right thing, you talked me down and the fact that someone saw it, understood it and was there for me, helped me tremendously. And that is something you can do with your wife as well. You can see beyond what may seem to not be apparent in content, but what is important is how you can notice the trigger or how a person is genuinely struggling.

I know my husband often felt he was "walking on egg shells around me" and he was right, I was extremely sensitive and whenever he pushed me around, I reacted. But that is how it is for a while, it isn't something I could help, I didn't like it either.

The biggest thing that helped me was "learning to observe" I began to realize that as I paid attention to what came out, I could work on it and each time I reduced the power of it.

I noticed that with myself, a lot of things happened to me in my past when I really didn't have any language that I could put to it. So part of the healing is through "lots of language and talking" and finally putting words to things. People who struggle with PTSD have a tremendous need for putting it into language. They want to find a way to label things "finally" so they can find a way to store it better in their minds.

We have this term "losing your marbles" well that is very accurate to discribe PTSD, because that is what happens, suddenly the person suffering has all these things they slowly have to finally pick up and sort through, "one marble at a time" and it really takes them time to figure out how to finally find a way to deal with all these unresolved things they lived through. And they are so taken by surprise that they suddenly have this happen to them too.

So make sure that you always do "self care" gman and make up your mind that there will be times when your wife will throw things at you that might seem like something small to be so upset about. The truth is not always in the content, but how it touches on something much deeper, which is usually attached to "something taken, something disrespected, someone not listening and her not having a way to stop it when it happened in the past". And that is an important one, because when she does "ask you to do something and you ignore it, her reaction will be "magified" to when that happened in her past".

Within a victim going through PTSD is a cry of "I need the power, I need to be heard, I need to own my boundaries, I should run, did I fail somehow, how can I fix this once and for all to stop the pain?". And finally, how to I finally know I am safe in my life, and can stop having to go overboard with trying to be so strong all the time?

Some things only your wife can finally find the answers to, and in her quest will be lots of anger, frustration, and "language".

Open Eyes