The quote you pulled up of mine is describing something different. But, it’s ok that bring it up with a question/sentiment of do you mean this?

From what you share your wife genuinely struggles with PTSD. She was badly abused as a child and most likely learned to dissociate when things were happening to her to survive. However, her boundaries were constantly violated by the very people that were supposed to love and protect her.

The brain stores everything yet we learn to keep going, especially when we are young and don’t really know what abuse means. Instead we just learn to live in whatever environment we are experiencing. We have few skills and we don’t have the kind of knowledge an adult has so we often believe what we are told. What can now be considered abuse can be normalized from parents towards a child.

The other day I watched an old John Wayne movie called Mclintock. This movie paired him up with Maureen O’Harah and many of the interactions between them were similar to an earlier popular movie called “The Quiet Man”. Both movies had lots of drinking and messages of how women should be treated that are NOT acceptable today.

It’s not just that your wife was ok and now she is stricken. It’s more that with adult awareness a history of abuse can become very traumatic. I saw the movie “ Miclintock” so many years ago and it was no big deal and seeing it now made me realize how bad behaviors were normalized many years ago.

Asking someone struggling to remember their past can get very tricky. Also, if there was abuse and a lot of fear, that fear can actually be magnified by the adult mind due to more knowledge and life experience.

Ptsd does change the brain it has been learned that two areas that are affected are the hypocampus and the amygdala. People that experience triggers and flashbacks try to withdraw and distance because they are trying not to suffer any more damage. Not only that but trauma stays in the nervous system and adrenal glands so a trigger can produce too much cortisol that gets into the muscles and it can actually get painful.

People turn to alcohol in hopes to manage the symptoms. Unfortunately tha alcohol reduces cognitive function and numbs areas of the brain were the individual loses the ability to care about how their actions can hurt others.

Some people can get very mean and scary when they consume a lot of alcohol. They wake up hung over and tend to gaslight and deny they did or said anything bad.

All alcoholics GASLIGHT!

Someone who genuinely suffers from ptsd can become abusive. It’s the nature of AUD.