[fitness4life]

Post traumatic stress disorder. Anyone have experience with this? My boyfriend survived a tornado by laying face down in a field while his truck and trees were carried away. Well, his truck just went about 30 yards away, but anyway, he thought he was going to die.

That was Sunday night. He has not been himself all week! And yesterday, just when I thought he was getting better, he woke up screaming in the middle of the night. He was reliving the part of his experience where he thought he could not hang on any more and would die.

I've had PTSD experience related to domestic abuse, but all that I researched to rid myself of that had to do with abuse. I don't know how to help him get through such a different traumatic experience.

Any advice?

[M0vingon]

How terrifying!
There is a somewhat predictable process to trauma recovery and right now he's in the crisis phase. Everything you're describing is normal. It's actually good that he's processing it, but it's a scary process.
Encourage him to seek a good trauma counsellor! If finding a professional to work with him isn't an option, looking at info for catastrophe survivors might help. 9-11 or veterans, that sort of thing. Google "trauama recovery self help" and encourage him to read.
Anti anxiety methods (deep breathing, lots of self care, living a healthy lifestyle) will all help. Trauma recovery is a process that takes time, but he'll be OK. If you need more help, feel free to PM me and I'll do what I can.

[sacha]

Have to agree with M0vingon. Now, since it's been less than a week, it's far too soon to see if there's any PTSD or if he is still just very upset/disturbed by what happened. Seeing a trauma counselor ASAP should help him. It might take him some time, I know it took me a lot of time to even admit that I should seek any help (my son almost died in labour, I relieve that often, very upsetting).

[fitness4life]

Cindy, thanks for pinning down key search words. I will get right on it.

He will be fine. We had already planned a trip before the twister and we're leaving Sunday. I'm pretty sure 4 nights in Vegas can help. He also has a really good sense of humor about it. We were test driving a new truck and when I turned on the radio, a CD was already playing. It was the soundtrack from the musical "Wicked". We about died laughing.

The main part that concerned me was that at 4 in the morning, he was sound asleep, he stood staight up and yelled.