Howdy, All!

Just popped in to give you all an update. The DH is doing much better. His anger has not exploded into bad rages lately. When he's been having emotional problems he's not told me he's leaving (he promised he would stop doing that after we had several discussions about how it affects me).

I've been consistent with leaving no matter what the time of day (or night) if he gets too angry, and that helps amazingly. At first, it had to be that I left the premises and went shopping or something of that nature for a few hours to give him time to collect himself. Once I started doing it EVEN IF it was, say, 9 pm, he began to realize that I was going to be consistent in doing it, and that helped. It has gotten so that if he is having a problem and recognizes that he might boil over he'll suggest that I might want to leave him alone for awhile, and I will go to another room. Now, he won't follow me, as he has come to recognize the value of distance when he's irrationally angry. This is new, and very good! So, by setting a hard boundary, he learned that we benefit and he now respects a softer boundary of my being in a different room.

And, I've been giving him Reiki consistently. At a minimum, it relaxes him. But I think it is helping on more levels than that. After I started doing daily treatments, the nightmares went away. Cause and effect? I can't say, but I'm keeping it up. I don't think it can do any harm, anyway.

He's not "cured" by any means, and he's still showing symptoms, but not nearly so acutely. I think we've made it through this rough patch and come out stronger. I'm seeing more improvements all the time. I know there will be more rough patches in the future - that seems to be the nature of PTSD - it seems to be a bit cyclical, at least with my DH. But thanks to this forum I have a far better understanding of what is going on than I ever had previously. Understanding what is going on helps when one is trying to figure out coping strategies.

Hugs,

Cowgirl