Matthew Gillogly interviews a man whose wife struggles with complex PTSD from childhood abuse, experiencing postpartum flashbacks and suicidal thoughts. They discuss somatic experiencing and Peter Levine's work as alternatives to long-term antidepressants.
I want my wife back. I want my daughter to have her mom.
Mm-hmm.
And my wife almost on a daily basis would say, I don't want to be alive. I don't want to be a mom. I don't want to be a wife. Like, she would say those things over and over almost every day. There's no conventional cure for complex PTSD. Typically, if you look at the designation, symptoms can be managed with therapy and medication.
So the PTSD, like, again, this isn't just people that were in firefights in Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Can you give, like, without— I know you don't want to— can't divulge. I don't want you to divulge a clear patient. Can you give, like, an example of some things that are, that are pretty common, I guess, that are holding people back?
Yeah. I mean, my wife— so I got into this work, as you— as I've shared before, my wife is a 3-time suicide survivor. And in—
and an accomplished author.
Yes, yes, she's a great author as well. Brilliant, most gifted writer I've ever met, an amazing mom, wife, etc. But during her childhood, she grew up with narcissistic abusive mom and stepfather. And so she was— grew up in a very dysregulated household, and she was the oldest of 11. So just, she'd be like, you know, holding a baby. Yeah. And she'd be like 8 years old cooking dinner, holding a baby in her arms, Mom and dad are running around the house with knives pulled, yelling at each other. She's called the cops on— she called the cops on her dad twice by the age of 18, put him in jail at least once. I can't remember if it was twice.
Wow.
And, even, it was just totally dysregulated, and she never got secure attachment, just even from birth age, basically. And so, her nervous system was stuck in complex PTSD. Now, she had escaped the triggering environment when we were together the first 5 or 6 years of our relationship. Then we get pregnant. Literally pregnancy starts creating flashbacks. She didn't even have postpartum. She had like prepartum. And she starts having flashbacks in her nervous system and her memory. She starts remembering screaming kids, overwhelming adults, abuse by— like her mom would be like, one week, get the kids in the car, get the kids in the car. We're leaving dad. He's abused. And, you know, dad would be chasing them out of the car with a baseball bat. And she's got the door locks in the car and she's driving as a 14-year-old.
Hey, I'm Matthew Gillogly, and I'm a maverick. Well, what is a maverick? A maverick goes against the grain. We find our own way. And if you're sick and tired of being pushed around by the insurance companies, come join us. We'll show you the way out, and you'll love medicine again. Now, I'm just curious, did your wife want to have kids?
Yeah, well, yeah, she did.
Okay.
And when we met, she thought she wanted to have 5 kids.
Okay.
I was just curious. She doesn't want to have kids anymore. But anyway, and she thought she was all good. We thought she was all good because she didn't have any real significant flare-ups. She was not depressed. She was not any of that until we got pregnant. And then as we got pregnant, then all these flashbacks came. And then once she had the baby, it was really rough. And like our daughter would cry and would trigger in her nervous system her childhood trauma. And I would literally grab my daughter from infant to toddler. Run out in the street, run it— like, initially we lived in an apartment, and when we moved out, run into the street screaming. Or I'd yell at my wife, get out of the house, get out of the house, get out of the house! Because I would see her body just start collapsing and start being like triggered, like, you know, a war veteran hearing loud pops thinking that he's in war zone. That's what was happening in her body. And I didn't understand trauma at the time. I had no idea about PTSD. I had no idea about panic attacks.
How old were you then? How long ago was this?
I mean, this is like 2020. Well, 2021 and 2022, most of it 2021. And so I started reading Peter Levine's Healing Trauma, learning about somatic experiencing, learning, you know, listen to Huberman, all the other shows around podcast or PTSD, depression. And then I started looking for a natural cure because we knew if we got— if she gets on Lexapro, she's just gonna be numbed.
Yeah, that does— or Wellbutrin, I mean. Yeah, exactly. And it's just Everything just gets shut down.
Yeah. And you might survive and some people get on and off effectively, but usually you're stuck on it. And I knew in my mind, I'm like, I'm not giving up. There's no conventional cure for complex PTSD. Typically, if you look at the designation, symptoms can be managed with therapy and medication. That's what the answer is.
Managed.
Yeah, managed. That's a broad term, isn't it? I'm like, F that. I want my wife back. I want my daughter to have her mom. And my wife almost on a daily basis would say, I don't want to be alive. I don't want to be a mom. I don't want to be a wife. Like, she'd say those things over and over almost every day.
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