Therapy for Spouses
of Partners with PTSD and High-Stress Careers
Your Pain Matters Too
What happened to the person you fell in love with?
Who have you become in this relationship?
Supporting a loved one with extreme stress takes an emotional toll. You may feel like you are walking on eggshells, that their emotions and needs dominate the household. Your partner may be distant, on their phone or video games, short in conversations and emotional intimacy. You feel exhausted, isolated, angry, and stuck. You do not know how to support them, or if you even can anymore.
You also see how hard they work, love them deeply and want to care for them, and trust in them as a protector.
You have borne invisible burdens that few can understand. The high-stakes of their careers, constant uncertainty and little conversation, overwhelm of managing life at home and balancing reintegration, can leave lasting scars. Their trauma can cause you trauma.
Your healing deserves the same support you’ve given over the years. Your commitment is extraordinary — now it’s time to reclaim your strength.
How can therapy help?
Supporting a partner with PTSD and/or in an intensely high-stakes career is a deep honor, yet quite the challenge. Often the partner’s struggles becomes the focus of care and support, and somewhere along the way your own need of care and support seems to have taken the backseat.
As the wife of a Purple Heart combat veteran, I live this life too. I understand all too well the complexities that come with caregiving for, parenting with, and loving someone whose service affects every day of family life. I work with you as a therapist, but I relate to you as the partner.
In therapy, we will work to gain insight about specific challenges and triggers, identify bodily cues of emotional distress, and validate and honor the pain that this situation creates (which, importantly, you did not ask for or know what you were getting into). We practice various skills for regulating your distress, communicating your needs, and reconnecting with the compassion and nurturing you bring to this relationship.
Individual therapy, exposure therapy, and intensives are available for this type of work.
Supporting them shouldn’t mean losing yourself.
How do you continue to provide empathy and compassion when you are also stressed and overwhelmed, maybe even traumatized? I understand this pressure you feel under. You did not cause this, and you are not alone.
I can help you reconnect with yourself, your partner, and the strength that brought you this far. It is possible to:
Redefine yourself as a partner and an individual
Develop healthier communication and reactions
Rekindle intimacy and vulnerability
Process your own stress and trauma over the years
Build trust in your intuition and reduce overthinking
Experience peace, contentedness, and calm