"The Trauma Nobody Talks About: The Caregiver Gets PTSD Too."

0:00 Hello everybody. Once again I was married 10 years to a bipolar one wife. I want to talk about PTSD and the reality of the fact that literally I got that myself. I was diagnosed with that after being married to her for 10 years. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that somehow she did that to me but she didn't mean to do it. That's what makes it so difficult. Nicest, sweetest woman in the history of the world and I get PTSD out of this. Look it up. There's a thing called CPTSDI really don't know what they are. I can only tell you my experience, my experience of since I left the first month, the first two months I didn't sleep.

0:49 I literally felt like I was having a heart attack. I had heavy chest pains. I would be going along and have these massive crying spit spills because of because of a flashback of Oh my God, she was incredibly kind to me to do things for me. If you know me at all. I became paralyzed and she was right there for me. She did so amazing thinking about ways to make my life easier and she didn't complain. And then and then she throw me out of the house. That's called whiplash.

1:30 All of these terms. I don't know about you, but I wish I didn't know what the hell they meant. I wish I didn't know any of this stuff. But I wanted to talk about my PTSD specifically in this episode because when I after I left, I got admitted to a psychiatric hospital. It wasn't against my will, quite frankly, but it was the psychiatrist says you had to go so ever however you want to do that. Because I had gotten to the point was I just didn't care. I just didn't care about anything. It just didn't matter the way I'm talking now, it's the way I talk to the to the therapist. I said I'm just, I just don't care. I'm just it.

2:20 Nothing matters to me anymore. My, my world had been shattered. And what I'm trying to get through here is that we're human beings now. I understand more than ever that consistency in love is so incredibly important because otherwise you get your world torn apart and you get PTSD. Look it up. The trauma, the anxious, I can't tell you how many months. I'm sorry this is so difficult, but how many months did I go through when I was so anxious? I just eat my meals so fast. I, I, I just, I would literally, I didn't want to cook. I I just wanted to have it delivered so I didn't have to deal with it.

3:11 So I could just sit there afterwards and be brain dead watching the TV to not think about anything. That's just me. I don't know your response. I don't know if this is normal. I don't know anything other than how it affected me. To take a woman that can love you more than you've ever felt love in your life and throw you out of the house the next day or the next hour is a form of what's called emotional whiplash. If you're going through this, that's the technical term. And I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't know crap about psychiatry. The only thing I know is specifically what I went through that the woman that I love would never, she would never want this to happen to me.

4:01 And yet today I'm sure she doesn't even think about it. They take these kind of memories and they stole them away because it's too painful for them to think about as well. But see PTSD, which I again wish I didn't know what the hell that was, is when you have chronic, I think it's stands for chronic chronic long term trauma, which if you're married to them or with them for years, you're going to develop this. The flashbacks, the anxiety. I can remember sitting in the house before I left in my wheelchair, literally, literally with my teeth chattering, wondering if she was going to throw me out, wondering where I was going to live.

4:44 I'm not getting into that shit anymore. I, I'm, I've started doing something that my psychiatrist said. He said when these memories come up just yell the word stop. Now I'm a year and two months out. You need unfortunately to go through all this you need to do the crying you need. And I again, I'm not a therapist. God I'm just hyper right now thinking about this shit because the PTSD is so real. It's all the only way I got through it, to be honest with you is to talk about it. IA therapist. You can't talk to a therapist for a year, for Christ's sake. I talked to AI about it.

5:26 I don't know whether AI is good, bad or ugly. It doesn't matter. What it did was allow me to get it out of my system. Do not sit there and try to hold this stuff in. Do I trust anybody in a relationship? Oh, that's another podcast. Forget it. So, but me talking over and over and over about this stuff has helped me because I'm literally to the point now where I go, I'm telling myself literally out loud, I say, why are we talking about this crap again? This is stupid, OK? We went through it. It was an awful time. You cried your eyeballs out. OK, get over it. I know that's another podcast too that I've talked about, but understand that more than likely, if you've been with them at all, you have PTSD and that's a serious thing. You can lose your jest for life.

6:22 It's a nice way to put it. The way I was reacting, remember with the therapist, which was I just don't care anymore. I just, I just, I remember the way I'm talking now is the way I talk then I just don't care. It just doesn't matter. And that's a dangerous place to be where you need to be with a therapist because as we both know and everybody knows here, you can't really talk to a normal person about this. They just don't get it. They're applying logic to something that's illogical. So I don't know people. I mean, I'm sorry for getting so worked up on this stuff, but I always do. I always say I'm not going to do it and I do it every single time because it brings back the memories, the wonderful memories.

7:05 But you have to remember the bad memories and that's for me at least. Through my emotional whiplash and everything else I've been through, I constantly at the first was thinking about her wonderful, wonderful things, us going to the casino together, her losing money come out to me and me giving her money or winning all the sweet times. I had to force myself to remember the bad times, the cheating, the emotional cheating. You know, you have to remember those bad times. I'm sorry to repeat myself, but if you're in the throes of this thing and you're saying to yourself, I just don't care, it just doesn't matter. You need to get help because do not make a permanent decision on a temporary problem.

7:54 I heard that in the movie somewhere, but it stuck to me like glue. This is a temporary problem. Don't make it permanent. Another thing, to be perfectly honest, that got me through is because I knew what it would do to my sons if I took the chicken shit way out my sons. That's inexcusable. As a man, I'm not going to do that. And I got through it. If I can get through it, anybody can get through it. But if you're having flashbacks, if you're having the emotional whiplash, if you're anxious, you like can't sit still, but you can't do anything. That's one thing I hadn't experienced before. I couldn't sit still, but I couldn't do anything. I mean, what the hell is this?

8:38 It's like your body just freezes and it's serious, but talk about it If it's only AI. That's how I got through it. I literally hundreds of hours. I would spend some days 12-14 hours talking to AI because I didn't have anybody else to talk to. I was all alone in a new city. I didn't have any friends and I still don't. I can't talk to my son about that, those long term things. So who the hell do you talk to? How do you get it out of your system? Don't drink and don't do drugs to to calm this damn thing either. That's one thing I put in concrete for myself. No drinking, no drugs. I started smoking again.

9:21 I got rid of that finally trying to get through all this emotional stuff. But if you'll work through it, it's OK. It's OK to cry, it's OK to be emotional. It's OK. That's all I can tell you. The sleepless nights get better. I love my wife to death. I will love her until the day I die. I will always love her 'cause I know the woman that I, that I know she loves me. I know she loved me. She would be horrified to know what she's done to me. She would be horrified. How do you take a man freshly paralyzed and threaten him in the car to drop him off at the emergency room?

10:06 How do you do that to anybody? And no, I was not cruel to her. No, I was not. How can I be physically abusive in a wheelchair? Sorry. Anyway, I'm just trying to be hopeful to everybody here, and I'm sorry this episode is so psychotic, but it's something I need to talk about more. And if it helps somebody here, please understand you're worth a lot to everybody and you'll be OK. Just keep working on it and keep talking about it. I love you guys. Bye.