Advice on how to help a struggling vet spouse
My husband served as a master gunnery Sergeant in recon Bravo team/squad/branch (I don’t know the correct term I’m sorry. He was a marine from 1994 to 2015 and saw I think it was 7 or 8 active duties between Iraq and Afghanistan.
When he left, he didn’t cope very well and became an alcoholic. He’s been clean sober now for over two years and is doing really well with his health. I met him when he got sober and we have been married for a year now.
He’s managing to keep down a steady job and do the things, but he still struggling and I’m not sure how to help him.
Whilst a lot of the things are classified, I do know he feels extremely bad about losing fellow Marines especially to friendly fire incidents. He talks about how children were caught in the crossfire too much and how much hearing them scream in his head affects him. He speaks about losing men and trying to save them and losing them anyway. Even after most of the people he served with have since died, either whilst serving or later by suicide. He said he feels guilty he’s still here.
He’s definitely suffering from PTSD and at night he talks about black diamonds and things, I will be honest, I don’t understand what they mean. But he sounds like he’s ordering troops about as he’s talking about objectives and things.
Sometimes his anxiety is really bad and he lashes out verbally for no reason and pushes me away. He says things he doesn’t mean and then when that bout of anxiety and PTSD disappears he regrets everything and that intern then causes more shame for him.
He’s 51 years old and he has been out of the marines now for 11 years and seemingly this hasn’t gotten better. I’m gonna hazard a guess it’s likely because he’s not dealt with it properly because he drank so much previously to drown all this out.
I just wondered if anyone had any advice on what sort of therapy would be really helpful for him, please? Any advice on what I can do to make life that little bit easier for him? Like I said he’s doing amazingly for the most part and I try and keep a very regimented household so he feels like he has a role and the structure for him. I found that really helped. But I hate sitting back and watching him go through this and not knowing what to do to help him.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance.