What to Do When Someone with PTSD Pushes You Away

Navigating relationships can be tricky, no matter the circumstances. But when someone in the relationship grapples with PTSD, it can be overwhelming and challenging to know how to do the “right thing.”

Defined by debilitating symptoms like intrusive memories, hyperarousal, and avoidance behaviours, PTSD is a condition that extends beyond the individual experiencing it. It can significantly influence the dynamics of relationships, often posing challenges that require a nuanced understanding and compassionate approach.

In this blog, we’ll explore a few key things to consider if PTSD is affecting your relationship

At its core, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex mental health condition that arises in response to experiencing or witnessing traumatic events. These events can range from combat and natural disasters to personal assaults or accidents.

People struggling with PTSD often grapple with a spectrum of symptoms that significantly disrupt their daily lives:

• Experiencing recurring distressing memories, nightmares, and flashbacks of the traumatic incident, often accompanied by intense physical reactions such as heart palpitations or difficulty breathing.
• Avoiding anything that triggers memories of the trauma, including activities, places, people, or thoughts associated with it.
• Battling negative emotions like fear, anger, guilt, or emotional numbness leads to self-blame, social withdrawal, or disinterest in daily life.
• Feeling constantly on edge, evidenced by sleep disturbances, difficulty concentrating, irritability, impulsiveness, heightened vigilance, and a sense of perpetual danger.
• Coping with additional mental health challenges like depression, anxiety, or substance abuse which can coexist with PTSD symptoms.

By exploring the depths of PTSD’s influence on relationships, you can start to understand why those affected may push away their loved ones, unintentionally creating rifts that strain interpersonal connections.

• Difficulty regulating emotions: One of the hallmark features of PTSD is the struggle to regulate emotions effectively. This symptom can manifest as sudden outbursts of anger, intense irritability, or emotional numbness, making it challenging to maintain stable and healthy interactions within relationships.
• Isolation tendencies: PTSD often drives individuals to seek isolation as a means of coping with overwhelming emotions or avoiding potential triggers. As a result, they may withdraw from social activities, family gatherings, or even intimate moments, inadvertently creating distance between themselves and their loved ones.
• Intimacy challenges: Intimacy, both emotional and physical, can become fraught with challenges for individuals with PTSD. Trust issues, fear of vulnerability, and past traumas can hinder the ability to form deep connections, leading to strain in romantic relationships and friendships.
• Substance misuse: Many individuals with PTSD may turn to substances such as alcohol or drugs as a means of self-medication to alleviate symptoms or numb their emotional pain. Unfortunately, this coping mechanism often exacerbates relationship problems, as substance misuse can lead to erratic behaviour, impaired judgment, and strained communication.
• Altered perception of reality: Trauma can distort perceptions of safety, trust, and reality, leading to misunderstandings and conflicts within relationships. Both parties must recognise and empathise with these differences.

Understanding these profound effects of PTSD on relationships lays the foundation for navigating the complexities with empathy and patience.

If someone you care about has PTSD, there are actions you can take to strengthen your bond and encourage them to seek support. In addition to developing a deeper comprehension of their symptoms and behaviours, it’s crucial to communicate openly, offer practical support, avoid judgment and consider alternative interventions like hypnotherapy.

Communicate Openly and Patiently

Communication matters for any relationship, and when navigating the complexities of PTSD, it becomes even more crucial. Foster an environment of open dialogue where your loved one feels safe expressing their thoughts and emotions without fear of judgment or rejection.

Be patient and attentive, listening to the words they speak and the unspoken messages conveyed through body language and tone.

Offer Practical Help and Support

Actions often speak louder than words, especially when it comes to supporting someone with PTSD. Offer tangible assistance in everyday tasks or responsibilities that may feel overwhelming for your loved one.

Whether you’re running errands, preparing meals, or providing a listening ear, your presence and support can serve as a lifeline in times of need. Try your best not to overthink it.

Avoid Judgment and Criticism

Approach interactions with your loved one from a place of empathy and understanding, free from judgment or criticism. Recognise the profound impact of trauma influences their behaviours and reactions rather than as a reflection of personal shortcomings.

You create space for healing and growth within your relationship by fostering an environment of acceptance and compassion.

Understand The Body Keeps the Score

When a loved one is going through these experiences it’s important to understand in any traumatic situation the body keeps the score. The body remembers and recalls the situation like it is still occurring in every moment. The individual has unconsciously attached the trauma, memories, feelings to this moment and it still sits in the cells of one’s body.

The person cannot help but react like it is still happening, as the trauma is still in the body. It’s like the body has frozen in time and it’s on a constant replay loop.

Change the Focus

Changing the language and focus around any kind of situation allows us to view it differently and gives us high hope that it’s possible to heal fully. 

If we see PTSD as something that happened to our loved one (not dismissing what happened either), and the experience is still there because the memories have not been healed. Once the memories and associated feelings are healed it is no longer present or can be accessed in the same way.

So change the language and focus and take the view point that it’s possible to recover and lead a completely different life without it.

Remember to Take Care of Yourself

It’s easy to overlook your own needs when focusing on supporting someone else. But your health and well-being are vital to the health of your relationship. Make sure your needs are met, make time for self-care, do things you enjoy, and seek support.

When someone you love is ready to seek support they will, we can only encourage them and never make them change. If this is a difficult task for you, the most important thing is to look after yourself and book a Hypnotherapy session to assist with the emotions arising in you.

Supporting a loved one with PTSD is not a solitary endeavour. It requires resilience, patience, and a willingness to extend grace in the face of adversity.

Trauma affects the entire human organism – body, mind and brain. In PTSD the body continues to defend against a threat that belongs to the past.

Being traumatised means the person is constantly organising their life, as if the trauma is still going on. Every new event or circumstance is contaminated by the past, and the person has a different nervous system due to this past.

When we are under threat it triggers the oldest parts of our brain into an escape plan. The amygdala of the brain is activated by processing the incoming information from all our senses. It propels our body to flight, fright or freeze response so quickly that our conscious mind does not have time to catch up.

Just the same way our ancestors brains triggered off when a tiger was chasing them in the jungle. Our brain continues to be wired in the same way, to survive when there is a perceived threat.

When these situations are so dramatic our body remembers the incident. Not the entire story but associated feelings, images and pictures. A similar loud sound to a gun shot, can immediately activate the same response to when a person experienced this trauma. Or even witnessing an ambulance driving past in an emergency, the brain defaults back into a flashback of the car accident they were in.

This then sets off the same physical responses like they are in the event again. Stress hormones are activated, heart rate increases, sweating and more.

Our brain believes it is threatened again and for it to survive it automatically sets off the same pattern it did when the event occurred the first time. Even though it’s not the the traumatic situation, because the trauma has not been healed, it keeps replaying the old ways of survival.

Understanding this information, helps us with being compassionate towards out loved one and have a knowing that their body and nervous is still stuck in a trauma loop. With the help of therapies like Hypnotherapy, the body and mind can be rewired out of this loop to feel safe once again.

Recognising the complexities of PTSD and the impact it can have on our relationships is a crucial first step for reconnecting when a loved one pushes you away. Every gesture of understanding and compassion (to yourself or your loved one) can strengthen your relationship’s bond.

Hypnotherapy can offer a powerful avenue for healing and symptom management. Hypnosis can help individuals with PTSD access and reprocess traumatic memories in a safe environment, healing the intensity of associated symptoms. 

These sessions will help the individual to process emotions, so the feeling associated with the events will no longer be there. As a result any avoidance mechanism will be completely eased, any flashbacks will go as the body can finally knows it’s safe.

The nervous system and brain can relax and move out of flight, fright or freeze mode, by healing with hypnotherapy. As it will know the event has passed, the feelings are no longer attached into the cells of the body.

Encourage your loved one to explore this option under the guidance of qualified professionals.

If you feel hypnotherapy could help you best care for yourself or someone you love, my practice can help. Reach out today and receive the support you deserve.