PTSD:Casualties At Home

Reading this took me back to when PTSD ruled over my own house. How many conversations did I have to walk away from? How many times did I listen as co-workers were acting as if their life was ending over someone trivial compared to what I was going thru? It happened all the time.

"My husband's snores and it drives me crazy!" I'd hear and then think, my husband is going through hell, can't sleep through the night, has nightmares so severe he breaks out sweating and screaming. Then he spends the night on the couch watching TV after checking every door and window to make sure we were safe.

"All my husband does is talk about sport!" While I thought about how my husband didn't talk anymore unless he had to. How he didn't want to tell me what was going on with him, why he was acting like a stranger, why he couldn't remember a conversation we had moments before or feel as if he owed me an explanation of where he had been.

So many conversations when someone would talk and the listener would understand but how could anyone understand any of this? Would they even listen? Usually not. I had some close friends over the years working for different businesses. Most of them were really great people but even they would change the subject when I tried to talk about what was going on in my house. I stopped talking. There wasn't much of a point to it when the usual well meaning advice I'd receive was to get a divorce.

Why is it so hard to understand PTSD when it is really not that hard to do if someone wants to know? The problem is, they have no desire at all.

Is it because they can't think of what happens in combat or having to have to take a life? Is it because somewhere in the back of their own minds they know PTSD could wound them as well should something traumatic happen to them?

For us, living with PTSD, we need to make it as plain and simple as possible for them to understand. There is nothing to be ashamed of when you live with PTSD in your home. Until the day comes when most people are aware of this, support groups are vital to our survival so that we can share with other people fully aware of what we're going thru. AA works because everyone there has a deep secret in common and there is mutual trust where there is sharing and not judgment. While it's hard to talk to people with no understanding of what PTSD is, talking to other people going thru it is freeing and empowering.

Casualties At Home
February 1, 2010, by Sharon Adams
Sitting in a dentist’s chair, Susan Binnie asks if she can stay after the dentist is through—just so she can soak up the peace. She lives near St. Albert, northwest of Edmonton with her two daughters, aged nine and 14, and her husband, a veteran who has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for 15 years. Binnie has discovered if one person in the family has PTSD, the whole family suffers.

And so she takes her peace where she finds it.

Angelle Peacock, a mother of two small boys, lives in Morinville, Alta. She is also coping with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Her husband Ted, a serving member of the military, is in treatment, and at times it has been like she has three small children, especially when her husband has had to be reminded to eat or to shower.

Both women describe other instances when typical childhood behaviour has triggered angry outbursts or flashbacks from their husbands. Both are juggling full-time jobs and family issues that demand full-time attention.

These women—and hundreds more across Canada—cannot turn to colleagues at work or chums for support because those who don’t live under the umbra of Operational Stress Injury just won’t understand. “They say, ‘Why don’t you leave?’” says Binnie. Peacock adds: “I’ve woken in the night to find my husband has taken out a window and is in the backyard ‘fighting bad guys.’ How do you go to work the next day, and over coffee say, ‘You know what’s going on at my house?’”
read more here
http://www.legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2010/02/casualties-at-home/