Elly Taylor takes us inside the ravaged world of PTSD.
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“All of a sudden he quit his job and would just spend the whole day at the beach” she says incredulously, “we had a toddler at the time who never slept, but Steve wouldn’t … couldn’t … help.”
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Steve and Marilyn* are a gorgeous couple. Steve is tall, broad shouldered, blue-eyed, and sandy-haired in perfect contrast to Marilyn’s dark eyed, olive skinned petiteness. They are the sort of couple you envy until you hear their story. Ten years ago Steve was a decorated Police officer until the day he “just knew I couldn’t go back, couldn’t do it.” Images of what that shift might bring were running through his head: a SIDS baby? A body off The Gap? Someone’s submerged, bloated son? Unaware of what was going on inside him, Marilyn had a different perspective: “All of a sudden he quit his job and would just spend the whole day at the beach” she says incredulously, “we had a toddler at the time who never slept, but Steve wouldn’t … couldn’t … help.” Being unemployed impacted Steve’s self-esteem to the point “he would put me down to make himself feel better” she says. Marilyn took a second job “just to stay away from him.” Confused, resentful and depressed, she remembers “I used to cry a lot. Some days I used to struggle to go to work myself.”
Now they can talk about it; the diagnosis, the derision of colleagues, the effects on their lives. I ask Steve what it was like, having that job, when he became a father. “I knew I couldn’t do it” he answers. Suddenly Marilyn faces him. “You said that! That’s one of the first things you said to me after the baby, that you ‘couldn’t do it.’ I thought you were talking about our relationship!” “No”, Steve shakes his head, “the job.”
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Around 5% of Australians will have a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Others will have the condition but not know it. For men, particularly those in the emergency services or military, it’s often work related, but the greatest fallout is at home. Many have partners and young children and all are affected. To cope with trauma you have to shut down, put emotions aside to keep functioning. An asset in the field, but not in family life. Some sufferers will eventually be able to share their struggles and reconnect emotionally, but many families will never know what haunts their men.
“He comes from a family of ‘real men’ who don’t understand. It was hard for him,” she says compassionately. But it was also to prove very, very hard for her.
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Matt and Kara O’Connell had three young children when he returned from East Timor. Kara first noticed something wrong when Matt “just had no reaction. To anything. He was like a robot. He shut himself off, never wanted to go out, even to family functions.” At first Kara was frustrated but that changed overnight when she suffered an ectopic pregnancy. “It burst, I was rushed to surgery and given hours to live. Matt went home and played computer games and told no one what had happened. Not even my family.” Kara was distraught. She insisted he see a doctor and the diagnosis brought relief, but Kara “made the mistake of thinking it could just be ‘fixed.’” Matt was also struggling with what wasn’t an obvious, physical injury. “He comes from a family of ‘real men’ who don’t understand. It was hard for him,” she says compassionately. But it was also to prove very, very hard for her.
Kara could deal with the PTSD but their relationship came to an abrupt, devastating end when Matt’s army counselor began an affair. On discovering it Kara had a breakdown. She was ten weeks pregnant at the time. “I don’t know how I managed to hang on to that baby. I had to take five tablets a day to do it. I literally threw up at the thought of it all.” She doesn’t blame Matt, but says it’s the PTSD that “destroys lives and destroys families.”
PTSD has mental, emotional and physical effects: three clusters of symptoms include hyper-arousal (anxious, irritable and easily startled), intrusion (sudden flashbacks, nightmares and re-enactments of the trauma) and avoidance (blocking emotions, withdrawal and disconnection from people and life). Many sufferers feel like they are going crazy, as symptoms can be delayed and then triggered for years, seemingly unrelated to the events which caused them. When PTSD isn’t diagnosed (and even when it is), many self-medicate with drugs or alcohol to numb symptoms, only to create new problems.
After nine months of “always waiting for the death knock, you don’t ever take a full breath until they’re back in the country,” she was shocked when husband Paul returned from Afghanistan and didn’t even kiss her at the airport.
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Rachel Denham’s family is another casualty. After nine months of “always waiting for the death knock, you don’t ever take a full breath until they’re back in the country,” she was shocked when husband Paul returned from Afghanistan and didn’t even kiss her at the airport. “He just said ‘right, OK what are we doing?’ No emotion, nothing”. At the time Rachel, rejected, put it down to exhaustion.
But things didn’t improve. The plans that had sustained her while Paul was away, finishing their home and travelling through Europe (the London ballet was booked) were dashed when it became clear Paul wasn’t up to any of it. Instead he “went to bed exhausted and pretty much slept for the next two weeks. I kept making excuses for him: of course he’s fatigued, maybe another cup of coffee.” But then it got bizarre. On walks “Paul would be checking for threats in the bushes. Sometimes he’d hit the ground in the prone position. It was surreal.” There were other changes too. “He never used to swear but he would have road rage, uncontrollable, every second word fxxk or cxxt. Then one day he was standing in the bedroom, just staring at the floor and saying ‘I can’t get my shit together, I’m fuxxed, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’ He just wasn’t able to function.” Alarmed and confused, what was even more baffling for both was that Paul had received psychological screening before leaving Afghanistan and he “was fine at the time.”
“The most traumatic thing in my life was he didn’t realize how sick he was and I couldn’t get any support. I had to watch him get sicker and sicker and I couldn’t help him and I couldn’t get him help.”
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Rachel desperately tried to get help but ran into a maze of closed doors. “Paul didn’t want to open up to the in-house psychs because it ends up on record. He held it together for appointments, meaning I didn’t get believed, and then he would be out of control for days afterwards from the effort of acting fine.” Annoyance and frustration turned into powerlessness and despair. Paul’s PTSD was destroying their family, but as a partner Rachel wasn’t eligible for assistance. At the same time she felt the pressure of being the only person who could save her husband. “The most traumatic thing in my life was he didn’t realize how sick he was and I couldn’t get any support. I had to watch him get sicker and sicker and I couldn’t help him and I couldn’t get him help.”
Eventually their 10-year marriage broke up six weeks before Paul was due to be screened again when “the kindest, most gentle, warm-hearted man, the kind dogs and children gravitate towards” become violently aggressive.
Paul is recovering now. But for Rachel, “the impact of PTSD blew our family apart. He is well in himself but our relationship was collateral damage” she says angrily.
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Treatment for PTSD sufferers typically involves identifying symptoms, understanding the condition and re-processing the traumatic experiences to minimize triggers. Then the work is to re-build damaged selves and damaged lives. Partners and families also need help to grieve the person that went to work and came home changed. Like any loss, this involves the tumultuous cycling and recycling of shock and denial, bargaining, anger, sadness and finally, hopefully, acceptance. It is at this point they can best support the sufferer. But this final salvation is denied to all when sufficient help is not forthcoming.
It’s a situation advocate Debora Shannon is all too familiar with. When her husband Warren returned from Somalia in 1994 they had two children, two and seven. “We’d just built our home and Warren was saying things like ‘I feel so materialistic. Five minutes ago I was living amongst people with garbage bags for roofs. Why do we need all this stuff?’” she says. “Before he was very social, but he became distant, to the point of me wondering if I’d done something wrong.” With a mounting sense of dread, she tried to make sense of why he’d changed, “Is he unhappy? Has he met someone over there? I would raise it and he would fob me off, but it felt like he could walk out the door any minute.”
Warren’s diagnosis “was a relief” says Debora, but then she got angry: “Where is the husband I had? They’ve taken him.”
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Later Warren started having panic attacks when he went out and would have to ring Debora to collect him. Eventually they found help. Warren’s diagnosis “was a relief” says Debora, but then she got angry: “Where is the husband I had? They’ve taken him.”
Warren improved, until 9/11“triggered something … he got worse, told me he was going to commit suicide. I remember,” she struggles, “the neighbours had a barbeque and he turned to me and said, “Deb, do you know what burning bodies smell like?” She was horrified. Warren was eventually hospitalized for ten weeks “which was hard for all of us. We missed him so much. One day daughter was playing the saxophone, she stood on the footpath outside his window and played for him” she laughs. “Another day we smuggled the dog in.”
Finally Warren disclosed the PTSD to his employer. “He didn’t go back to work from that day” Debora says with disbelief, “No thanks, no recognition, no farewell, nothing.” To add insult to injury, “most people wiped us. They didn’t know how to deal with it and we lost a lot of friends.”
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What Deborah and the others are describing is called “second injury.” Trauma is compounded when trust is broken by people you think you can count on—when employers, family, friends, helping professionals not only let you down, but cause further distress.
Debora is now runs a Facebook page called PTSD Aware. Her advice for partners is to “educate yourself because you are going to have to educate your kids, family, in-laws, everyone. The more you understand, the better you are going to be. Don’t hide it from the kids. Join a support group, seek counseling and look after yourself so you can be supportive.”
As a family we worked around it. Some days we would say ‘it’s not a good time to talk to Dad, he’s not good today.’
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Debora has found some version of acceptance. “It’s still a rollercoaster. But he’s a good man, a good father and we’ve persevered. He’s not angry or violent and he doesn’t drink, a godsend, because many do and it turns to abuse, which is common for people with PTSD. As a family we worked around it. Some days we would say ‘it’s not a good time to talk to Dad, he’s not good today.’ Looking back, my kids missed out on things like Warren not attending school events because he felt vulnerable in public. But he walked my daughter down the aisle. I know how stressful that was for him, but he was determined to do it” she says fondly.
Despite all that has happened, Kara is still hoping for her family. “Our three eldest grew up with a dad, a decorated soldier, all muscle, big as a house. He used to run in their sports days. Now they see a very different man. Every day is a battle for him. Our two youngest will never know the strong, wonderful hero their father was. My greatest wish is that one day I will see the glint in their eyes like I used to, that they will be proud to say ‘hey, that’s my dad.’”
*Names have been changed to protect identities.
Originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo—Eurritimia/Flickr