I just posted this on another thread but it still applies. I am a trained counselor with degrees and all, even titles! I can use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders and cookbook any Dx I choose if I am personally involved. The way I can tell the pop psychologists is that they diagnose second hand and from afar. No professional will diagnose without a personal visit and examination. I read a lot of the labeling going on here and recently had some heavy issues with my AW. I am two years sober and until I insisted that we go to counseling or end it nothing changed. Now I am seeing her admit to anger issues and asked to have some one on one sessions with the counselor to work her personal anger issues out there instead of at home. I could not even get her to consider counseling, until I started reading here and setting boundaries for me. But it was not until I got a third party involved that I realized that I was actively reacting and without that the bad dynamics can't work. We can be at fault for what we don't do as much as what we do. I am discovering that the below quote from Reiner of all people rings very true for me right now.
Everybody talks about wanting to change things and help and fix, but ultimately all you can do is fix yourself. And that's a lot. Because if you can fix yourself, it has a ripple effect.
Rob Reiner
Protecting ourselves emotionally and even physically becomes much easier when we back away and leave if need be.
I am sorry for all the pain we sometimes go through in trying to get love and security from another. I am re-discovering those things were inside me the whole time, and I stopped sharing.
"Prejudices in disfavor of a person fix deeper, and are much more difficult to be removed, than prejudices in favor."
Samuel Richardson
The problem with crisis is that we have difficulty comprehending anything outside of ourselves and our pain. Even stickies and posts here. But it is great to have them and a place to vent a bit about instead of at, another. But for me, only great if the goal is to back and read and comprehend the stickies and posts and to move forward instead of being satisfied only with an absence of immediate pain.
It is a roller coaster, one I have been on both sides of. Fortunately I was a relatively benign alcoholic.
I think that labels are too easy and for those in the crisis grabbing for them no help at all. Being able to label a person shooting at you as a murderer and labeling the projectiles correctly as bullets is no help unless you forget the labels and duck!
My AW is fixing herself not me, and I am wise enough to let her and the counselor work those issues. While they are doing that I am working on me. No matter how it turns out, even though I think well, no matter, having done that work ourselves on ourselves, insures a happy life for each of us, together, or apart.
I hope that all makes some kind of sense.