Hello everybody,

My name is Annette and I am sure my partner has mental health problems related to childhood traumas but I'm not sure if it's PTS or PTSD or what little box he best fits into. I do see that he has symptoms in common with people here though and, having had some aweful crap of my own to deal with some years ago, I've had my own taste of how the emotional aftermath can take on a life of its own too.

DH and I have been together since 2001 and our son was born in 2003. Becoming parents has been a hard journey for us because, as parents know, not doing what you have to with a baby is simply not an option. Many times it has felt like life was completely out of control as DH would slide back into withdrawing from everything including work and wouldn't even go to Centrelink. We've been evicted twice and last year we were threatened with it again. Luckily we have a very sweet landlord now who has given us a lot of slack and let us catch up with the rent as we could afford to.

Hubby's History
When hubby was 11 his severely bipolar father was having another violent argument with his mother. DH walked into the room, his father had a shotgun out and narrowly missed shooting DH in the head. He walked out of the room and went to play computer games. You could say that he's been playing computer games ever since.

After that night (cops were called, mum and the kids hid on the roof but evenutally escaped etc) DH's father tracked down his mother and convinced her to move the whole family (they have 6 boys) from country NSW to Perth to "try again". DH remembers the time between the incident and moving to Perth as a pretty happy time for him but everyone else remembers him being "out of control". (Not really sure what's going on with that. His mother's family does like to paint him as evil like his father so I don't trust what they say.)

So DH was taken away from his grandparents and the friends he had known all his life to go live with the bastard who nearly killed him. :cool:

That was the major incident but I guess if you know about child abuse you'll know that you rarely get just one type of abuse or just one traumatic experience. His father has severe bipolar disorder and was extremely controlling of their mother. Their mother was overwhelmed and acted out.

His childcare centre used to tie him to a chair. When his mother found out she took him out of there and got him a babysitter. That babysitter used to play cruel tricks on him like buying him toys, let him play with them for an hour and then make him watch her burn the toys in the backyard. She also used to beat him. His parents only worked it out when he was so happy to see them come home he raced out to meet them, she grabbed him and beat him right in front of them.

Later in his life, DH's father beat him with a cricket bat.

When he was only about 9 years old, just after a move to a new suburb, his mother failed to pick him up after school. After a while he realised she wasn't coming so he valiantly tried to find his aunt's house that he'd only been to once before but he thought was around there somewhere. Eventually some kind lady found him wondering the streets crying and picked him up. He couldn't tell her where he lived so she took him to the police station. It wasn't until 10:30pm that the cops finally found his parents and they came to pick him up.

There are other incidents too but I'll leave it at that for now.

DH has always had insomnia which his says started with staying up late at night to play computer games because it was the only time he could ever have to himself.

He's had problems with substance abuse which started when a school friend died. For years he was addicted to morphine as a teenager and young adult. After a suicide attempt he went cold turkey and moved to Melbourne to get away from that circle of friends, only to end up shooting up speed in Melbourne. Then his grandparents in Canberra offerred to have him stay with them while he did a computer course. He was extremely lonely and isolated there and spent those few months drunk until his grandparents kicked him out. He came back to Melbourne and started shooting up again.

Then he and I met and he stopped taking speed. I've tried to be a good influence on him and provide him with a healthy environment in which to live and I think it has helped quite a bit but we're now at a point where that sort of thing has done all that it can do for him.

He has weak lungs due to asthma, emphasema and his lung collapsed twice in 2002. Since then his health has been poor and he catches every bug that's going (or so it seems). Last year he found out that his has a stomache ulser and had to give up his new job in a high-pressure call centre because the stress was making him vomit blood. At around the same time I'd bullied him into talking to the doctor about depression so he started taking a very low dose of Lexapro.

A few weeks after that I could see some improvement. He was doing some things around the house without me even having to ask him to, and he just seemed more sure of himself. He was back to communicating well with me again and the future was looking brighter.

Then we had to go to Perth for his brother's wedding and it was shot to hell. It was the first time he'd been back in 10 years. There were 12 people of various ages staying in one house for the week. It wasn't my family but I coped well enough as an outsider. I focussed a lot on keeping my son out from under people's feet, so I think I missed a bit of what was going on. At the time I thought things were going alright until the night of the wedding when DH's uncle picked a fight with him calling him an "unfeeling monster" among other things.

As tempting as it is to b*tch about who said what, I'm sure it would be boring for you so I'll summarise. Although he was constantly "trying to be good" he was constantly being told to apologise for things he could not remember. Little things IMHO. He has felt like crap ever since getting back. Part of that is probably because one of his brothers came back with us to Melbourne and has been staying with us ever since. Another reason is because his best friend's brother died of an OD while we were over there. The connection is too complicated to explain but it was a kick in the gut.

So since October, DH has been drinking more, been looking for work with no success, not going out if he can avoid it, been grumpy, short tempered, accusing me of being unfaithful and some other odd things, read my diary and destroyed it, and said some very cruel things to me. I have "run away from home" (a friend's house down the road) a number of times upset enough to not want to return.

The last time this happened was the day before Valentine's Day. He'd been awake for two days playing computer games. Then he drank at least a six pack of beer and "Voodoo Truckerman" appeared. I swear it musth have something to do with the body chemistry because it's almost like clockwork that this complete change of personality will happen. He used to only lose it like this about once a year but he's done it alot more than that in the last few months.

I'm glad to say though that the next day he apologised profusely and swore off alcohol. Yesterday we both went to the doctor and he fessed up to what's been going on over the last few months and how bad he's been feeling. I'd had no idea that he'd been feeling so morbid and agoraphobic. The doctor has given him a referal to the clinic's psychologist and he'll be seeing him next week. He's also increased his dose of Lexapro.

So what do you reckon? Do we belong here? I'm very interested in any feedback or questions you have.

Annette

Sounds like you are strong woman who loves her man very much!

It's never a dull moment when you have PTSD as the third party in a relationship. This is a great place to learn, talk to others that "get it" & know that you are not alone in dealing with what this can do to our partners.

Look forward to chatting to you more.

Hi Jods, yeah I could do with a little less drama in my life though. I'm trying to finish a university degree so that we will evenutally have some money. Just informed Centrelink that he's having a bit of a crisis and they want to get all official about it. That's freaking me out a bit though, for a whole bunch of reasons. One of them is that, since I've been dealing with this for so many years with barely any progress at all, progress is happening so fast that it feels really wrong. Do you know what I mean?

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Your hubby will need to go through this: http://www.ptsdforum.org/forms/ptsd-diagnosis/

this will help determine if he has ptsd or not. Only a psych and diagnosis, officially, but I would see if you hubby would go through this with you.

There is also a assessment tool in the forms section (button on the top of the screen) which he should use.

bec

Thank you Bec. Hopefully he'll be in the right headspace to be able to do that over the weekend. Right now he and I are recovering from last night's little meltdown.