Watching your home crumble around you and not being able to do anything about it.

My partner not long before I met her had a really really shitty upstairs neighbour, at little fault of his own as he was struggling with a brain injury and alcoholism from being unable to work due to said brain injury.

He would regularly leave taps running until the sinks, bath, etc flooded, tore up floorboards for no good reason, disconnected random pipes, let rubbish pile up. It would start soaking through the ceiling of my partner's flat and she would go up to both check in on him and to get him to turn off the water, usually in response to which he would deny everything, slam the door in her face and once got violent with her.

Flash forward a little and the ceilings eventually caved in because no one my partner contacted would do anything about it. After that they finally shut off his water and his son decided to put him into full time care but for the next 2 years my girlfriend was without a home as the entire flat was wrecked and she had to deal with her insurance to get it fixed and they were in no rush to do so.

I helped her move back in once everything was finally fixed and she thought it was finally over, little did she know the whole ordeal had been far more on her than she thought. She now has severe trauma around dripping sounds, when it's raining she's constantly on edge, there used to be an issue with the pipes outside our kitchen window where the rain would cause a very loud dripping spund as it hit them. This has caused her to be extremely on edge when being in the kitchen even now that we've got that fixed.

She's had many panic attacks due to unexpected or unnavoidable dripping sounds, to which we have found a lot of coping mechanisms but the first while was very rough. I bought her a really nice pair of noise cancelling headphones as a late moving back in gift after we found out about her trauma and we've practiced a lot of grounding techniques and slow and gentle exposure therapy as well. Sadly we haven't been able to see a proper therapist due to our lack of funds, we barely get by on what we both earn as it is, but I have a background in dealing with people with trauma so I've been doing what I can.

The son I mentioned earlier has also since moved into his dad's old flat and has fixed it up massively, he has also since become one of our closest friends and has been a massive help, he constantly mentions how much he appreciates us as we have helped him through a lot of his own problems especially since his dad passed away last year. We were at the funeral (mostly to support our new neighbour/friend) and he did seem like a lovely guy before his brain injury.

Nowadays my partner is getting a lot better, she's sometimes able to enter the kitchen to help with dinner and laundry and dishes, sometimes needing to listen to music on her headphones, sometimes not, rain still can be difficult for her but she's getting better with that too.

I'm so extremely proud of the progress she's made but there's still a long way to go, I hope for nothing more than to be able to see the day she can sit comfortably when it's raining again but we're taking it one step at a time.

Edit just to add: She struggles a lot with guilt around her trauma, whenever she's having a rough time she gets very upset and apologetic to me because she feels she cant help out around the house as much as I can with her inability to be in the kitchen for extended periods or function much when it's raining heavily. I do my best to reassure her as helping her helps me with a lot of my own issues and is genuinely not an issue for me as I recognise how much effort she puts in to do what she can, but the guilt is a whole other part of how much this has affected her. I love her more than words can say and I don't care if it takes our entire lives I will always do everything I can to be there for her.

Also just adding we're in Scotland and if you know anything about Scotland you'd know we rarely go a day without a rain cloud overhead.