I (24F) and my husband (28M) have been married for 3 years and have gone through quite a bit of a rough start. I met my husband after my mother passed away and I was still very much grieving. He has helped me emotionally and in every other aspect of life since. We are happily married and I have no complaints besides that he cannot cook for the life of him lol. Anyways. After we got married and moved in together, we struggled a lot with communication and expectations, and support for each other in our relationship. I believe this was 99% because of me having PMDD, undiagnosed. For people who don't know what that is, it is a serious hormonal imbalance that leads to experience very severe symptoms (random crying smells with thoughts of suicide/worthlessness, insomnia, agitation, lack of control, paranoia, etc) before your period. Basically 100x worse than PMS.
I used to have monthly episodes where I would become irrational and moody. Every time this would happen, everything I felt would always be focused on my husband. Such as "he doesn't love me, he doesn't understand me, he doesn't know how I feel, why doesn't he do this for me". Worse things would be when I would make up things such as "we haven't spent any quality time together in so long" even tho we just had a movie night 2 days ago. Believe me, during those episodes, it all FELT really real. Everything I felt like was true and I was going crazy. There were times I have spent standing in the shower thinking of killing myself because I was losing my goddamn mind. I was aware but was not aware. I don't wish this on my worst enemy.
During these episodes, my husband really didn't know how to help me or how to deal with it (I don't blame him). We would argue and there would be yelling back and forth, to the point of divorce. It would get really bad. He never could figure out what to say or how to be so to me "he was always wrong".
Once I recovered from my episodes, I would reflect on what I said and what I did, I would always regret it. I just didn't know why I did what I did. I would apologize and make up. He'd always forgive me. This went on for a whole year before I got help, got diagnosed/treated for it. Now it's been almost 2 years on the treatment and after some adjustments with the meds, I haven't had an episode in more than a year.
The real issue I need help with is that; now that my husband and I argue or disagree on things where he may have done something wrong/ or made a mistake, he becomes incredibly defensive and starts to yell. He acts as he did during those episodes. I sadly believe it is a trauma response. This makes me feel so shitty and I hate that I put him through this. I want to help him recognize this and maybe see if he can get help? Our arguments get worse due to this even though the reason for disagreement isn't even a big deal. I do call him out asking him to not yell and calm down. He doesn't think he is being defensive. I even tried to talk to him about reflecting on what he said and why he said those things because those things were irrelevant to what we are arguing about. What made me think of the trauma response is during the argument he said "It's always my fault, I am the one who is always wrong" which is exactly what he used to say during those episodes. What can I do to help him see this?
TLDR: I (24F) caused my husband (28M) to possibly develop a trauma response when we argue due to my undiagnosed PMDD leading him to act defensive and guarded. Need help with him recognizing it and how can I help him at all.
I (24F) and my husband (28M) have been married for 3 years and have gone through quite a bit of a rough start. I met my husband after my mother passed away and I was still very much grieving. He has helped me emotionally and in every other aspect of life since. We are happily married and I have no complaints besides that he cannot cook for the life of him lol. Anyways. After we got married and moved in together, we struggled a lot with communication and expectations, and support for each other in our relationship. I believe this was 99% because of me having PMDD, undiagnosed. For people who don't know what that is, it is a serious hormonal imbalance that leads to experience very severe symptoms (random crying smells with thoughts of suicide/worthlessness, insomnia, agitation, lack of control, paranoia, etc) before your period. Basically 100x worse than PMS.I used to have monthly episodes where I would become irrational and moody. Every time this would happen, everything I felt would always be focused on my husband. Such as "he doesn't love me, he doesn't understand me, he doesn't know how I feel, why doesn't he do this for me". Worse things would be when I would make up things such as "we haven't spent any quality time together in so long" even tho we just had a movie night 2 days ago. Believe me, during those episodes, it all FELT really real. Everything I felt like was true and I was going crazy. There were times I have spent standing in the shower thinking of killing myself because I was losing my goddamn mind. I was aware but was not aware. I don't wish this on my worst enemy.During these episodes, my husband really didn't know how to help me or how to deal with it (I don't blame him). We would argue and there would be yelling back and forth, to the point of divorce. It would get really bad. He never could figure out what to say or how to be so to me "he was always wrong".Once I recovered from my episodes, I would reflect on what I said and what I did, I would always regret it. I just didn't know why I did what I did. I would apologize and make up. He'd always forgive me. This went on for a whole year before I got help, got diagnosed/treated for it. Now it's been almost 2 years on the treatment and after some adjustments with the meds, I haven't had an episode in more than a year.The real issue I need help with is that; now that my husband and I argue or disagree on things where he may have done something wrong/ or made a mistake, he becomes incredibly defensive and starts to yell. He acts as he did during those episodes. I sadly believe it is a trauma response. This makes me feel so shitty and I hate that I put him through this. I want to help him recognize this and maybe see if he can get help? Our arguments get worse due to this even though the reason for disagreement isn't even a big deal. I do call him out asking him to not yell and calm down. He doesn't think he is being defensive. I even tried to talk to him about reflecting on what he said and why he said those things because those things were irrelevant to what we are arguing about. What made me think of the trauma response is during the argument he said "It's always my fault, I am the one who is always wrong" which is exactly what he used to say during those episodes. What can I do to help him see this?TLDR: I (24F) caused my husband (28M) to possibly develop a trauma response when we argue due to my undiagnosed PMDD leading him to act defensive and guarded. Need help with him recognizing it and how can I help him at all. https://ift.tt/eA8V8J https://ift.tt/3iYESZA
Comments
Post a Comment