@RDMercer, it’s easy to end up in a pattern of functioning like you describe not realizing that you have taken on more than is healthy for you.

I also don’t want to demonize your wife because I know first hand how crippling ptsd can get. Some have it and manage to function and others can suffer from it so badly that just getting through the day alone takes a lot of effort. One person can say they had a lot of trauma and struggle but can function and may think your wife is a bad person. Yet that’s just one person advising based on their own degree of ptsd and their own personal history.

The truth is there is a sort of spectrum with ptsd where some have it worse than others. I have spent many years working and being around children. And one thing I learned is how they are all unique. Some are very outgoing and have strong personalities while others may be more shy and sensitive. People are all different and can have varying temperaments just as dogs and cats and horses have varying temperaments and personalities. I am sure you can see that fact in your own children.

Well no one here knows your wife. And different members are going to have differing opinions based on the behaviors you share about your wife.

Ptsd is MORE than just an anxiety disorder. It’s an actual change that happens in the brain caused by trauma. There has been an ongoing study of ptsd to understand how it affects people and what is taking place in the brains of people that struggle with ptsd.

When a person experiences trauma they begin to avoid the kind of situation they were traumatized in. We are all designed to navigate in ways that we gain a sense of control and safety from. We are designed to survive and thrive in whatever environment we happen to be born into. We all imprint a lot more than we realize.

For example, I had a little girl I was teaching riding lessons to. This little girl presented me with behavior patterns that were different than any other child I had worked with. I would work with her and she would suddenly tell me that she needed to stop and rest for a bit. So I would stop and she would just sit and sigh and after a little bit she would say she was ok to do more. Her mother would say “well she is not very athletic and a bit lazy”. So I kept working with this little girl and she could be athletic it’s just this strange pattern she kept exhibiting. She was only about 5 or 6 and I worked on her taking less of these little brakes.

Well after getting to know more about her mother I learned that when this little girl was younger her mother battled breast cancer and went through chemo therapy. So this behavior I was dealing with in this little girl was more about how her mother would engage her and then be tired and need to rest a bit. So this behavior I was seeing was how this child imprinted this behavior pattern from her mother. So that became a pattern I worked on slowly changing that this girls mother had no idea came from how she behaved with her daughter while struggling through breast cancer treatment.

So it isn’t just that your wife struggles badly with ptsd, but some of the behaviors you are seeing her engage in are imprinted from things she saw most likely in her own mother. We all imprint patterns we do not even realize.

Part of what you are experiencing with your wife is due to her developing this ptsd from trauma. And part of how it is crippling her which is real is something she imprinted long before she met you and tried to have her own plan for what she wanted to accomplish personally. Well she failed to create whatever it was that she wanted to have her life be like. Your wife probably has an accumulation of traumas where she finally experienced a breakdown.

The bottomless anger you are witnessing her experience typically is a result of how much your wife can experience more triggers than her frontal lobe is able to handle. This can happen with ptsd and they are trying to figure out what is happening in a person’s brain when that happens.

I have experienced these episodes myself. My husband did a lot more than just watch porn he was a binge alcoholic that did not care about anyone when he got involved with his drinking and using cocaine. He has been sober for 28 years and while I have learned that’s a disease and I am glad he got help and got sober I still carry the trauma his drinking caused in me. Well that tends to come out when I experience these anger episodes you see your wife exhibit.

Sigh...all I can say is that when your wife throws that out at you what she is doing is venting out some of the things that are part of all the traumas that hurt her and made her feel unsafe and disrupted whatever she wanted her life to be like.

Going back to this little girl I worked with that presented me with this strange challenge. I worked very hard at helping her over come this pattern of behavior. However that doesn’t make that go away it’s always going to be part of her early imprinting that may pop up in another way. We are all susceptible to that.

There is imprinting in you that will always be a part of who you are too. Some of that includes your tendency to practice codependent behaviors. Truth is we imprint and learn things long before we are aware of what we are learning. This little girl had no idea the behavior she engaged was imprinted behavior and even her mother had no idea. Her mother just thought her daughter was lazy and not very athletic.

When my daughter was a baby I never let her cry very long when she was hungry. It would really upset me. Believe it or not I experienced flashbacks that were horrible and I was in my crib crying and crying. My therapist talked about how when a baby is hungry and cries their stomachs really hurt. The baby’s stomach hurts so bad it makes the baby cry out louder and louder. Well after thinking about it I remembered I was the youngest of three and my older brother was a handful and I think I often had to wait longer because my mother could not get to me right away. So when my daughter cried it bothered me so much that I got to her right away. Truth is now looking back with all I have learned that upset I felt was a trigger.

Now we have a lot of things we have learned and there are many articles about childhood emotional neglect and how that can affect someone’s personality for the rest of their lives. As a member you are probably receiving a monthly Psych central email that has different articles you can read. There are occasional articles about childhood emotional neglect and what is being learned.

Well as a parent if you sit and read about what it means and how children can struggle in ways we don’t realize it can be a bit daunting. Yet at the same time you will understand how that long ago concern you had about your wife creating the same dynamic she grew up with was a genuine concern.

I don’t think your wife realizes she is recreating the same dynamic that she lived with that hurt her for her own children. If anything it’s something she should pay attention to. I doubt she even thinks about that either. That mother of that little girl I shared about here had no idea what she was really seeing in her daughters behavior was what she herself imprinted.

Both you and your wife really need to sit down and talk about how your relationship challenges are being absorbed by your children.

Don’t beat yourself up either you have been trying and I hear it in what you share here. You did the right thing in reaching out for help. Now it’s time to learn and in all honesty your wife should be learning too. It’s not JUST about the two of you either. There are three children you both need to think about in the bigger picture too.