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[My partner] had to watch me hurt and heal.

Michelle Fisher, US Air Force 2000 - 2011, talks about how her PTSD affected her loved ones.

Transcript

I was entering a new relationship with Robin,

and one of the things that I discovered about myself

was that she was the first person that I had tried,

that I was trying to make a deep and meaningful

relationship with since Iraq, a personal relationship.

I realized all of my friendships after Iraq were just

face-value, you know, they weren't people that

I kept in my life, they were people I could push away easily

if I got too stressed out by them.

And here came Robin, and for some reason I decided that

I wanted to try to cultivate something.

And when the patterns of distress and -- I think I had

an incident of punching a door during an argument --

when they started to emerge again, I realized that

I needed something more than just the coping skills.

If she hadn't gone to those appointments with me,

like, that was one of the things that was offered,

and she took the time to come up and watched

the same videos I watched on my first appointment

so that she knew what I would be going through.

But she made the effort to do that,

I can't just credit the therapy alone.

But she really took the time out to be supportive

and go through this journey with me.

Even though it was really hard for me, I can only imagine

how hard it was for her, especially since I was,

in the first, like, two or three weeks, constantly re-living

the trauma over, and over, and over, and over again.

She had to watch me hurt and heal, but I think that helped her,

seeing that it did help me heal.

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