What to do when someone with PTSD pushes you away

 
You may know what it feels like to witness suffering by someone you deeply care about. You may witness emotional spiraling, unraveling, intense feelings that are up and down like a roller coaster. Or your loved one might shut you down or isolate themselves when you try to reach out. Your tender and gentle invitations on text, phone calls or in person to be supportive will probably go unanswered or answered with an intense 'no, I’m fine’ or ‘leave me alone’.

When this occurs we will often feel helpless, powerless and broken hearted as it can seem like there is nothing you can do to soothe them or help them feel better. You may even judge your loved one by labeling them ‘irrational’, ‘psycho’ or use other pejorative labels as a way for you to cope with feeling helpless or rejected.

Being pushed away and rejected for trying to help or even connect with someone who may have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) can feel confusing and you might take it personally thinking you’ve said or done something wrong.   But the more you know about trauma and how the body experiences it, stores it, and protects you from future trauma, you will find out that it makes total sense.

Types of Trauma

First, let's talk about trauma.  

A big “T” trauma is a singular traumatic event that could have happened days or decades ago. Little “t” traumas represent an accumulation of smaller or less pronounced events.  The common thread for both of these: someone experienced something really scary, painful or horrific and felt very alone in it. They were either all alone when something happened or the person or people that were present did not comfort or try to protect them. The experience of being alone, especially if the person is young, when a threat to survival occurred, IS the trauma. When the human autonomic nervous system experiences a survival threat ranging from a violent crime to being neglected as an infant, the experience is coded and stored in the body as a way to help alert you that something similar is about to happen again. This encoding is brilliant and has helped the human species survive all kinds or horrific events over the past thousands and thousands of years. However, in our modern era, it is best for all of us to understand the human defensive and protective mechanisms that respond to big or little traumas. The more we get to know how our body navigates both good and bad experiences, the more we can embrace the human condition and each other with compassion and without judgment.

Once the body has encoded an experience as a threat to survival it is remembered and stored within the limbic system, which allows it to be recalled easily and quickly as opposed to long-term memory.   If the victim of big or little traumas  gets emotional support, empathy, compassion, tenderness and an opportunity to process it with help from family, friends, or a professional than the trauma has a good chance of moving into long-term memory.

However, if the experience stays in the limbic system, for a variety of reasons, then this past experience can be triggered, or ‘lit up’, months or years later and the victim can feel like the trauma is happening all over again, even though it is not. The human body is the most complex being on on Earth and there is not one reason why a past experiences is triggered. The cause of the trigger can change and without consistency it is nearly impossible to eliminate or avoid all possibilities that could cause a trigger. Additionally, avoiding or eliminating triggers is not treatment. Avoiding possible triggers gives someone a temporary reprieve but life long avoidance does not give the body what it needs.

The held trauma is there for a reason - waiting for the right mix of internal capacity and resources plus external care from someone who can give compassion, tenderness, guidance and empathy to resolve the trauma so it can then be moved to long term memory. However, so many people are living their lives with held trauma and it has not been seen or acknowledged by medical or behavioral health professionals. Diagnoses of personality disorders or chronic illnesses are often mis-used labels for buried traumas.

Why PTSD lives in the body for years after a traumatic event

At Flourish! we sometimes call our amazing autonomic nervous system ‘the danger detection system’.   The reason why someone with PTSD can get triggered months or years later is that our danger detection system picks up a perceived threat and rings the internal alarms so that this time around we can be better prepared to fight, run, scream or freeze in an attempt to survive.  For some, when the danger detection system gets activated and engaged, it can be really hard to disengage from it. The danger detection system relies on messages received from internal and external sources that tell the body the danger has passed and there is safety. This means we can just tell the body with our own thoughts to calm down. Nor can someone else just command you to stop responding in a panicked or withdrawn state. Learning about the danger detection system, the ‘hacks’ we can do to our nervous system to get the messaging going to disengage, and working to resolve the held traumas with an experienced and trauma-informed therapist are the best ways to release the trauma.

Here are some things you can do to support someone with PTSD who pushes you away

Communicating your support

If your loved one has entered into a sympathetic nervous system state they are behaving in accordance with their wiring if they get angry, confrontational or want to run away from you.   Their physiological state does not allow them to just calm down; they need to be seen and acknowledged that they are experiencing something really frightening and letting them know that you want to be by their side while they go through this can be very helpful.  

Use non judgemental language

If they still push you away, please respond with tenderness and especially without judgment!  Let them know you love them, can see and feel their suffering, and want them to know they are not alone.  If your loved one can see your face, hear your voice, or physically be close to you during this interaction, all the better, as your grounded and non-judgmental stance can help them feel safe, connected and protected.

Here is some specific language and phrases you can try:

• “I can see that you are really upset right now and really feel for you.  Please know I love and adore you, even when you are upset.  Would you like me to stay close by or would you prefer I leave?” 

• “It looks like talking with me is really hard for you right now.  My feelings are not hurt and will respect what you need from me, even if you would feel better if I leave.   I will check in with you tomorrow or earlier if you’d like.”

• “I know you and know that sometimes you get overwhelmed or angry and want some alone time.   I don’t take it personally and hope you will text or call me when you are ready - I just want to know that I’m here for you in whatever way you feel is best.” 

Once your person has come out of the fight/flight or freeze response, which could be hours or even a few days,  you may want to talk with them, in a non-judgmental and compassionate way, about seeking help from a trauma-informed mental health professional if this behavior seems to be happening more frequently.  

Try to see their view through their window, not yours 

Feeling empathy, or ‘walking a mile in someone else’s shoes’, is hard when someone you care about is raising their voice, talking with run-on sentences and not looking at you, or literally asking you to leave them alone.  You are human, after all, and it stings when we extend a helping hand and it is pushed away. 

However, if you take a moment to pause and consider what your friend or loved one is experiencing, rather than focusing on your experience of being pushed away, your empathy can help them come out of their fight / flight state.    Once you shift into empathy, you can give them non verbal empathetic and compassionate cues like a warm tender smile or a hand over your heart that can send signals to their nervous system that you are not a threat.

When your person can sense, hear, see or feel your empathy their nervous systems will probably allow their bodies to soften. 

If they do not respond well to empathy the first time please try it again, and again if needed, as this person might need to know your empathy is real and consistent, not a trick to get them to let their guard down.