My Fear: Obessive Compulsive/Addictive Behavior

3/30/2012

My wife made it very clear to me yesterday that I have obsessive compulsive tendencies that have been manifesting more and more over the past few months. This scares the crap out of me. I am going to talk to the docs and the social worker about it as soon as possible. That's a relatively new wrinkle that I need to get ironed out. I start doing something that I am passionate about and I lose sight of everything else. I can't get my mind to focus on other things. I think the obsessive aspect of my PTSD that has manifested over the course of the past year had played a major role in making me seem emotionally inaccessible. Is being my kind of intelligent a curse or a blessing? I can disappear into a thought or idea for days and not realize the passing of time. Before the PTSD, I had ideas and thoughts like this, but I was always grounded by the passing of time. I have lost that sense. How do I regain it? I don't know. I wish I did, but I don't.

So now I have to be even more careful: I can't afford to start obsessing about whether or not I am obsessing. That sounds confusing right? I almost laughed when I wrote it. It's true, though. Looking at this another way, catastrophic thinking is, in my mind, a form of obsessive compulsive behavior. Is it that much of a stretch to think that the obsessive behavior could manifest in other ways? I don't think so.

I ask that you, my readers, think deeply on this. I am asking for your input. I hope everyone has a great weekend. I will continue to think on this as well. Maybe together we can find a workable solution for coping with this.

13 Comments

Shawnay link

3/31/2012 11:29:00 am

I am a Psycology Major, I am getting my masters just so I can apply for a job in a VA Hospital Mental Health Department. I have to say sounds like compulsive disoder is not quite the only thing going on. In the Military we are programed to finish our tasks. I get started on a project on the computer or cleaning, not the passing of time or the need to stop and eat or take my meds even crosses my mind. I would talk to your PCP not your socal worker. Its the sign of something more. Im not saying this is your case but I had a stoke and didnt even know it. I ignored it. Just asking you to take this more seriously then a PTSD matter. However it does tend to stem from that. If you get migranes you can get leisions and that will change your personality. But talk to your Mental Health Provider. You are not the only person who has ever gone threw this. I did.

Max Harris link

3/31/2012 12:29:16 pm

Thank you for your concern. I will talk with my doc. There are a lot of things it could be. I haven't had any symptoms of other conditions. Who knows, though. The only thing I know is that when I get angry, I get pressure in my head. I always thought it was figurative or psychosomatic. I'll talk with him, though. Thanks for your concern.

Elaina Tyler link

4/2/2012 06:15:46 pm

My husband and I both have PTSD (his is from Vietnam combat, mine from domestic trauma and abuse). We are both the way you describe. We get into a book or a project, and we lose all track of time. We do it all the time.

We haven't found a solution to it yet, but we're both in trauma counseling, and doing a lot of reading on the subject of PTSD, searching for answers. If we get a handle on this problem, I'll be sure to let you know.

It can be a difficult way to live, especially with both of us being this way. The good thing is my husband and I totally understand each other. The bad thing is that we'ren a lot like the blind leading the blind.

It does help, though, that our individual trauma triggers are very different. That way, when one of us is going off the deep end, the other one usually isn't. So we take turns being "crazy."

I saw your link to this post in my twitter feed. What a happy surprise it was to me, when I clicked here a few minutes ago, to find something that I had created several years ago, at the top of your page! The graphic: "PTSD is a Normal Reaction to Extreme Trauma, just as Bleeding is a Normal Reaction to Being Stabbed." I am starting to see it in more and more places around the web, and I can't tell you how good that makes me feel!

I originally had my name and a copyright date on that, but then a while back I took that off, because I want everyone to feel free to use it, if they wish. This is a message that needs to get out to the world. Seeing it here brought happy tears to my eyes!

One month from today I will be 59. I have had PTSD for most of my life, going way back to the 1960s, long before PTSD had a name. Even when PTSD became an official diagnosis in 1980, it was still considered almost exclusively to be caused by combat. Thus, my own severe PTSD was not diagnosed until 2003, the year I turned 50.

All those decades when I knew I had something teribly "WRONG" with me, and yet I had no idea of what was wrong, or why, I believed I was just CRAZY. I was NOT NORMAL, NOT OK, I had been Born Defective somehow. I was a second class citizen and I didn't deserve to be treated with respect, compassion, or equality.

When my PTSD was diagnosed in March 2003, my diagnosing psychiatrist was the renowned Paul Meier, MD, author/co-author of over 80 books, and founder of the nationwide chain of Meier Clinics (formerly Minirth-Meier). Dr. Meier himself told me, after I had taken a full battery of psychological and physical tests: "You are not crazy! What you have is PTSD, and PTSD is not a mental illness, it is a psychological injury. PTSD is a normal reaction to extreme trauma!"

Those words gave me back the self-esteem I had lost in 1967. For the first time since my "crazy" PTSD symptoms began, way back when I was just 14 years old, I finally knew that I am not and never was "Crazy." I am Normal, for what I have gone through. What a HUGE RELIEF that is for me to know! That huge weight off my shoulders is what inspired me to make this graphic design. If I leave just one lasting legacy behind me, when my time on this earth is done, I hope it will be that simple but profound sign.

Elaina

4/2/2012 06:55:45 pm

Elaina, thanks for sharing all of that. I am glad that you have found my site. It is good to know that the word is really starting to get out about what I do here. It is important to engage in discourse in a transparent way. I blog to get the thoughts out of my head and use them to educate and advocate for others. I hope you continue to drop in!

Erica

4/3/2012 03:15:08 am

Do any of you have children? My husband and I are Veterans and we too have the weird quirks about organization and finishing our tasks and sometimes it feels like our children are raising themselves. The may say something like I'm thirsty and he nor I will hear them or is doing something at the time and they either go thirsty or have to remind us constantly. Worries me that they are ignored all day and we are too busy to notice.

4/3/2012 03:47:13 am

Erica, I have a 17 month old daughter who was missing her daddy terribly. I won't let her feel that again. I can't. The guilt would destroy me. Now I work with my wife to ensure that I stay grounded. It's a challenge but we seem to be making a little bit of headway.

rather not say

5/20/2012 04:15:14 am

I am a spouse of a veteran with combat ptsd and mild TBI. It has been 6 years since he has been in and we are going through the same patterns of abuse throughout this whole time. He has never laid a hand on me violently, but verbal and emotional abuse is rampant. We have 4 kids and they see these cycles daily. A couple days ago I said something he didn't like and he got in my face and was trying to intimidate me to "stand down" . I know that if he snapped and chose to lose control he could kill me in an instant but I refuse to let him see me as fearful so I got right back in his face. He wasn't happy about it and we ended up not speaking for a while. I feel like I CAN'T discuss this with anyone because most don't understand that its different with soldiers. All I desire is a somewhat "normal" family and some balance but there is absolutely no consistancy. I am struggling with severe depression and just want to escape but I don't think it will solve anything but make it harder on the kids. All I know is that the abuse has to stop. Please if u have suggestions I really need them.

5/20/2012 04:51:50 am

rather not say,
First and foremost, I wanted to thank you for writing. Let's get to it:
The most important thing is that you take care of yourself first. Abuse is unacceptable. You also have to understand the effect this has on kids. Your children are going to learn that being abusive is normal and acceptable. I know you don't want that for your kids.

That being said, I know you love your husband. Is he in treatment for PTSD? If he isn't he needs to be. He needs to understand in no uncertain terms that his behavior is unacceptable and not manly. Real men don't abuse women. While I understand he's hurting, abuse is never the answer. Do you have any family close by you can turn to for support?

5/20/2012 07:30:49 am

Your description of your husband's rage attacks is exactly the way my husband started behaving with me, within 1 day of our marriage! We met in 2003 and married in 2004. I was 51, he was 55. He had already gone through 4 divorces due to his PTSD from Vietnam!.

What I did was refuse to stay with him when he was raging. As soon as he would start raging, I would grab a few things and run out and get in my car and leave. If I had the money to stay at a motel, I would. If I didn't, I would sleep the night in my car at a Walmart parking lot. I kept a sleeping bag in my car so I could do this, even in the winter.

After a few months of this, with his rages escalating, I finally told him, "I love you, you are my best friend, and I would like to spend the rest of my life with you. But I have gone through too much in my life already, to spend another day of what's left of my life, being raged at. If the house is on fire, THEN you may yell at me. If my life is in immediate danger, in other words, and you have to yell at me to warn me of the danger, THEN, and ONLY then, is yelling acceptable. Otherwise you may not ever yell at me. I demand to be treated with respect. Until you go into in-house long-term treatment for your PTSD, I will not live with you."

And with those words, I moved out. My husband immediately got with his VA psych and made arrangements to go into the 8 week in-house PTSD treatment center in the VA hospital in Topeka, Kansas.

The man who came out of that treatment program is a totally different man from the one who went in. He went there in 2005, less than a year after we married. Today, 2012, he is truly my best friend, and my dream husband. He is, as he has told me, the man/husband he WOULD have been, if he had not been a US Marine sniper at the age of 19 in an insane sesneless horrible war.

Don't get me wrong, my husband still has other symptoms of PTSD.. intrusive thoughts, trouble sleeping, anxiety and depression and low energy, things like that . But he never rages. A handful of times over these 7 years he has started to rage, and all I have had to do is say, quietly but firmly, "You are being inappropriate," AND HE STOPS. Like turning off a switch! My hubby is 6'3" and 290 pounds, he is not henpecked, either, he just learned in the Topeka VA Program how to deal with his incandescent rage.

I envy my husband in some ways, because I am a civillian with severe PTSD and I would love to be able to go through the program he went through! It saved our marriage, and we are so happy together now. We laugh every day. We are peaceful together every day. My husband is on 100% disability now, so we are together almost 24-7, and we get along great!

It's hard to believe this is the same man who used to fly into a screaming ranting rage for such dumb reasons as walking into the room where I am doing some houecleaning, and I have the radio tuned to an oldies rock station, and I am happily singing along with a popular old Beatles tune, and he starts SCREAMING at me that the Beatles were druggies and atheists and commies and how can I call myself a Christian and sing along with one of their songs? INSANE. I could throw out an empty coffee can, and he would rage... a hoarder, he was (we are still working on the hoarding he tends to do, but now he no longer rages, he laughs at himself about his silly hoarding tendency, instead.)

When you have young children in the middle of all this, it makes it all so much harder to put your foot down and stand your ground, I know this. I've been there and done that... I raised 3, and this is not my first marriage either, and nor is he the first raging Vietnam Vet I have been married to! But this is the first time that I REFUSED to put up with it, for even one day, or one hour.

From experience, I am talking HARD experience, I will tell you now that the raging and controlling ABUSIVE behavior will ONLY GET WORSE WITH TIME, without the kind of drastic indepth treatment that my husband finally went in to the VA hospital for. If he had done it years earlier, he would not have gone thru 4 divorces (but then I wouldn't be his happy wife now, either). I was married before to a Vietnam Vet who would occasionally rage... the rages got worse, more frequent, until, he finally assualted me and literally almost killed me. He broke my nose, my jaw, and gave me such a bad concussion that I didn't know my own address for awhile. TBI, and PTSD, that's me.... I did not see his physical attack coming, because we had been married 10 years at that point and he had never hit me before. But when he did start hitting me one day, just out of nowhere, I literally almost died. He even choked me during that horrific attack.

If I had my life to live over again, I would never have allowed myself to be yelled at and bullied and pushed around. I would have put my foot down like I finally did with my current husband, way back during my first marriage.

We teach people how to treat us. We really do. I lea

Elaina ~ ptsd-is-normal.com link

5/20/2012 08:24:43 am

Oops, I see that the bottom part of my last comment was cut off; my server froze up is probably why. Luckily I had saved my entire comment in my word program, so here is the rest of my long-winded... but i hope helpful... reply to "rather not say:"

We teach people how to treat us. We really do. I learned that the hard way, too. Having PTSD is no excuse for someone to be abusive. My PTSD is just as bad as my veteran husband's. In addition to being beat up and almost killed by my ex, I was drugged against my will and violently raped at age 15, and my parents were both very abusive, both very mentally ill, my dad diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, and when his evil personality violently abused my mother, she became so traumatized and depressed, that she, my mother, tried to gas us all to death when I was just a girl. So yes, I have BIG TIME PTSD, you don't have to be in combat to get it. And yes, I have had to get in depth therapy to deal with my own RAGE. And I can tell you right now that no matter how bad a person has been traumatized and abused, and no matter how bad their PTSD is, that does not give them a Get Out of Jail Free card, for abusing anybody, not verbally, nor in any other way. Your husband is responsible for his behavior, period. The hell he went through in war does not no way no how negate his responsibility for his own actions and words. If he feels that he cannot control his behavior at times, then he is responsible for getting the treatment that he desperately needs, to learn how to control it.

Honey, PLEASE take care of yourself and your children. My heart and my prayers go out to you.
Big Hugs,
Elaina

PS I know you can't take your children and go sleep in a Walmart parking lot, so if you don't have any other resources, check into the nearest Women's and Children's abuse shelter. Yes, it is that serious. Your rage-aholic may not wait 10 years like my ex did before finally getting physical, and when that happens, yes I said WHEN, you may not be as lucky as I was, in escaping with my life and a head injury... not to mention a formerly perfectly shaped nose that is still crooked.

5/20/2012 08:51:57 am

PPS to "rather not say:"

I want to apologize for being too pushy/preachy. I was speaking about my own experiences with a raging combat veteran husband, and remembering how deadly it got in the end... reliving those memories SCARE ME! I don't want you and your children to go through what I did. I don't want you and your children to keep going through what you are already going through! That is why I pushed so hard about looking into an abuse shelter if you have no other resources.

But, it is your life. Yours, and your children's, and your husband's. Only YOU know the whole story. Only YOU can decide what to do, for YOU.

Again, I am very sorry for coming across like I was TELLING you what to do. All I can do is suggest, and that is based on my experiences and my life, not on yours.

God Bless

home drug testing link

8/6/2012 12:45:09 am

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Living with PTSD:
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