Jennifer Urbany - PTSD Affects The Whole Family

Anger, anxiety, rage, depression, fear, alcohol, substance abuse, and panic attacks are all symptoms of one of the most common invisible injuries our OIF/OEF/OND veterans experience, PTSD. This injury can not only affect the veteran but their family too. For the family member who decides to be strong and take on the burden, and yes it is a burden, of a spouse, brother, sister, friend, who has PTSD is quite the warrior. PTSD can also show up by-proxy, so not only is the wounded veteran experiencing a plethora of emotions in their head, so is their wife, their children, their entire family. The fear of not knowing what will set off rage, the anxiety after a rage spell, and depression during the calm after the storm. Did you set them off? Did the kids set them off? The dog barking? The unexpected sound of something dropping? The baby crying?  Even a video game.

I met my husband after his injury, I didn’t realize the extent of his invisible injuries. I was young, 18, and had issues of my own. I saw him throw chairs, put holes in the walls, take prescription pills, and stay drunk 24/7. But something was tugging at my heart strings to stay. I can’t explain it. He didn’t really have anyone, his family was in Michigan and not one of them came to visit him. He was alone, so I was all he had. A year after we met he asked me to marry him. I said “yes”. We moved to North Carolina and bought a house. We’ve been together now for 12 years, long years it seems, and have had 4 children together. In the beginning of our married life, there were holes in the walls after or during a fight, there was self-defense, and police called. I’m pretty sure the vacuum got thrown once. The neighbors referred to us as “the couple who fights a lot”, They were right. Things I thought were silly things would set him off. Things like losing a match on some war game he’s playing, not having the specific pair of socks

or pants he wanted to wear, not knowing where his car keys were. Things that you and I would just deal with or figure out would cause anger, anxiety and rage for him.

In early 2008 I had gotten pregnant with our first baby, I lost that baby in a miscarriage. I didn’t know how to tell him. Would he be mad at me? Would he put a hole in a wall? What would happen? He came home while I was on the phone with the nurse from my OB’s office, tears running down my face, and that moment he knew what had happened. He sat down next to me and cried with me, I was relieved. But then the PTSD kicked in and he left me to go play a war game and was more frustrated with the game than usual. Three months later I became pregnant again and in April I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Bennett. Life was great for a moment.

Bennett is now 7, and although my husband has become better in dealing with the emotions that accompany PTSD, Bennett mimics his father’s behavior.  It affects Bennett’s every emotion, every thought, and every action. The smallest thing could make Bennett fly off the handle. His anger and impatience is way greater than any other 7 year-old.  In school, I got a phone call from his teacher telling me Bennett was so mad that another student wouldn’t tell him her middle name that he started banging his head against the cinder block wall. He’s thrown chairs in school, just because he had gotten the answer to a question wrong, and has said some pretty ugly things when things out of his comfort zone had happened. At home he screams and yells at his brothers if they are in his room and touch his stuff, and it’s not a normal frustrated brother yell, it’s a rage filled yell filled with real frustration and hate. This is all learned behavior, he saw how his father reacted to things because of his injury, and he thinks this is how you are supposed to act. He was exposed to this type of behavior almost half of his life.

Finally, something clicked with my husband. Although he still struggles with all the wounds of an invisible injury, and slips up a time or so. He saw what his actions and reactions have hurt our Bennett. By the time our second child was old enough to understand or be affected by the actions of my husband, things had gotten extremely better. We had a few rounds of couple’s therapy, we tried a few new systems that seemed to work, and by our third child we had a system that helped with cooling down from built up anxiety and anger. And before we had our fourth child we found a loving and beautiful church family, who took as we were, by the Grace of the God we believe in because 3 almost 4 boys at the time is a handful! He was baptized, and is now the director of the sound board during service and special events. We both have found our faults, and are working on them through prayer and our church family, and our fourth baby will only know the man his father is trying to be, and not the man he was.