Little did I know that my words in the next few seconds would ignite an hour-long lecture, elevate his blood pressure, cause steam to emit from his ears and set the harsh and edgy tone for the rest of the day.
All I said was, "Oh! That sounds like the recipe for funeral potatoes..." I couldn't even finish my innocent thought before he went off! I just made a simple comment. Instantaneous trigger! He yelled, "Why do you always have to bring up dead people? You're always talking about funerals!" Then he continued for at least an hour about how I ruin all foods by bringing up death or something most people find disgusting.
In my defense, I don't always and I don't ruin everything. Funeral potatoes is a dish often brought to grieving families because they are easy to heat and eat and they are meant to serve a lot of people. I hadn't even heard of any other name for this dish before the other day. In fact, one can google "funeral potatoes" and several recipe sites are listed. I totally missed it--I had no clue that my referring to the recipe as funeral potatoes would yield that kind of overreaction! DUH! How could I have missed that one?
The more my husband
What can you do when your beloved is making an innocent comment a matter of
It seems impossible to exclude all the trigger words at times. From your point of view this voltile unpredictable behavior baffles everyone but the PTSD sufferer. Triggers are scary and dump cortisol to make us fear for our life.
ReplyDeleteThis can be soothed and healed through mindfulness. The words are not the issue, it is the stored trauma from the war he was exposed to. Death and loss are overwhelming to him. He has seen things, witnessed things that were to horrible to process so this disorder is the result of those experiences.
They can be unplugged with work. Thoughts can be integrated along with the traumatic event to integrate them.
It takes a therapists direction and taking daily action to improve. The longer you wait the worse PTSD can get.. Small actions taking every day chance our personality and self worth.
Good luck
marty