As if I needed proof
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As if I needed proof
Hi everyone,
I've been struggling the last couple of weeks. I've been pretty depressed, and feeling very lonely as well. I got some good support from posts others of you have written about handling the physical loneliness, but still...lonely is lonely. When my H comes by for picking up or dropping off kids he has lately been very sweet, smiling at me. Its hard. I know I do not want to be with him, but I hate being alone.
I know that alone is what I need to be, at least for a while, but was having a hard time being committed to that. I was having small second thoughts -- nothing that I would act on, but just little thoughts that it was nice to have someone to hold and to call when neat things happened, stuff like that.
Yesterday, though, I got a reminder of why I asked him to leave. I've kept a blog for the last few years, I don't have more than a few daily readers, most of them friends. Last year he asked me if we could pay the monthly fee for him to start a blog as well, and he started a blog. He hasn't written much in it until recently, almost a post a day. Yesterday I read his blog and the urge to not write something in his comments section was almost overwhelming. You see, he was recently diagnosed with a double gene mutation that causes his body to not process folic acid. This is not an uncommon mutation, what the biggest danger is for adults is an excess of folate in the system that can lead to cardiac arrest. For people with depression or mental illness, the symptoms are more difficult, because for some reason people with this
mutation often cannot take most of the medications prescribed for depression and anxiety. They make the person nauseated, and this was always the case for my H. But at his last appointment, his psych told him the condition can sometimes make a person feel more depressed and irritable.
So he had written a couple of blog posts about his issues with anger and control, codependence. Fine. I was glad to see he was finally starting to grapple with this. But then yesterday....ugh. He wrote this long long post about how he has this terrible condition and because 9 years ago when we decided to try and have a baby he had taken more folic acid (its supposed to help a guy with his little swimmers) that THIS must be the reason he's been a raging @$$hat. Never mind that his issues existed before that...never mind that there's nothing in the literature that says the stuff makes you a screaming, violent creep. No. He is now blaming the problems in our marriage on this condition.
:wtf2
He's also been diagnosed in the past as ADD, bipolar, OCD...and every time there is a new diagnosis, of COURSE that is the reason for his behavior.
I so badly want to say to him "If I don't take responsibility for my own behavior then I never have to change. How convenient for you that you apparently are not responsible for your own behavior." Dammit, I'm bipolar and ADHD, I know I have issues...and I am responsible for how I behave. My conditions are not. They might make it easier for me to be prone to feeling certain ways, but I'm an adult. I can control my behavior. If I lose control of my behavior, its MY fault, not my illness. And he has never ever understood this, it has always been some outside reason that MADE him behave this way.
And so I ask my HP for strength not to read his blog anymore, not to comment on what he writes, to let him own his own character defects, and today I thank my HP for reminding me that this relationship with this man is not healthy for me and even if I feel lonely that it would be a mistake to drop my guard and let him find a way back into my life and my bed.
I've been struggling the last couple of weeks. I've been pretty depressed, and feeling very lonely as well. I got some good support from posts others of you have written about handling the physical loneliness, but still...lonely is lonely. When my H comes by for picking up or dropping off kids he has lately been very sweet, smiling at me. Its hard. I know I do not want to be with him, but I hate being alone.
I know that alone is what I need to be, at least for a while, but was having a hard time being committed to that. I was having small second thoughts -- nothing that I would act on, but just little thoughts that it was nice to have someone to hold and to call when neat things happened, stuff like that.
Yesterday, though, I got a reminder of why I asked him to leave. I've kept a blog for the last few years, I don't have more than a few daily readers, most of them friends. Last year he asked me if we could pay the monthly fee for him to start a blog as well, and he started a blog. He hasn't written much in it until recently, almost a post a day. Yesterday I read his blog and the urge to not write something in his comments section was almost overwhelming. You see, he was recently diagnosed with a double gene mutation that causes his body to not process folic acid. This is not an uncommon mutation, what the biggest danger is for adults is an excess of folate in the system that can lead to cardiac arrest. For people with depression or mental illness, the symptoms are more difficult, because for some reason people with this
mutation often cannot take most of the medications prescribed for depression and anxiety. They make the person nauseated, and this was always the case for my H. But at his last appointment, his psych told him the condition can sometimes make a person feel more depressed and irritable.
So he had written a couple of blog posts about his issues with anger and control, codependence. Fine. I was glad to see he was finally starting to grapple with this. But then yesterday....ugh. He wrote this long long post about how he has this terrible condition and because 9 years ago when we decided to try and have a baby he had taken more folic acid (its supposed to help a guy with his little swimmers) that THIS must be the reason he's been a raging @$$hat. Never mind that his issues existed before that...never mind that there's nothing in the literature that says the stuff makes you a screaming, violent creep. No. He is now blaming the problems in our marriage on this condition.
:wtf2
He's also been diagnosed in the past as ADD, bipolar, OCD...and every time there is a new diagnosis, of COURSE that is the reason for his behavior.
I so badly want to say to him "If I don't take responsibility for my own behavior then I never have to change. How convenient for you that you apparently are not responsible for your own behavior." Dammit, I'm bipolar and ADHD, I know I have issues...and I am responsible for how I behave. My conditions are not. They might make it easier for me to be prone to feeling certain ways, but I'm an adult. I can control my behavior. If I lose control of my behavior, its MY fault, not my illness. And he has never ever understood this, it has always been some outside reason that MADE him behave this way.
And so I ask my HP for strength not to read his blog anymore, not to comment on what he writes, to let him own his own character defects, and today I thank my HP for reminding me that this relationship with this man is not healthy for me and even if I feel lonely that it would be a mistake to drop my guard and let him find a way back into my life and my bed.
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A couple of quotes come to mind:
This was a big hurdle for me. I would do almost anything to avoid uncomfortable feelings. My therapist helped me learn to sit with the discomfort. Whether it was loneliness, anger, sadness, or whatever. It's still not easy, but it keeps me from doing something I may regret later. 
L
Codependency is about having a dysfunctional relationship with self. With our own bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits. With our own gender and sexuality. With being human. Because we have dysfunctional relationships internally we have dysfunctional relationships externally. We try to fill the hole we feel inside of our self with something or someone outside of us - it does not work.
It is so much easier to accept life as it is and make the best of it - there is a catch however. When we accept reality, and let go of trying to force our will on life and other people, there are feelings to deal with. One of the reasons we keep trying to control someone else (to get an alcoholic to stop drinking for instance) is because with all that frustration and anger, mental obsession and rumination, we don't have time to stop and feel how much it hurts, or how scared we are, or feel the grief of letting that other person go. The reason we try to control other people is to protect ourselves from our feelings - and it is important to admit that. Of course we want what is "right" for them, what is good for them - but we don't know what their "right" path is. Some people are supposed to die of Alcoholism - that is their path.
--Robert Burney
It is so much easier to accept life as it is and make the best of it - there is a catch however. When we accept reality, and let go of trying to force our will on life and other people, there are feelings to deal with. One of the reasons we keep trying to control someone else (to get an alcoholic to stop drinking for instance) is because with all that frustration and anger, mental obsession and rumination, we don't have time to stop and feel how much it hurts, or how scared we are, or feel the grief of letting that other person go. The reason we try to control other people is to protect ourselves from our feelings - and it is important to admit that. Of course we want what is "right" for them, what is good for them - but we don't know what their "right" path is. Some people are supposed to die of Alcoholism - that is their path.
--Robert Burney
L
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Join Date: Aug 2009
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Originally Posted by LaTeeDa 
I would do almost anything to avoid uncomfortable feelings. My therapist helped me learn to sit with the discomfort. Whether it was loneliness, anger, sadness, or whatever. It's still not easy, but it keeps me from doing something I may regret later.
L
L
Did your therapist give you specific exercises to do, or did you learn to just stop doing anything and sit there? How did you approach it?
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Originally Posted by Cowgirl1265
LTD, you hit the nail on the head. I have never been comfortable just sitting through what feels painful emotionally. And so that is the path I've got to take, and the path my brain keeps trying to steer me away from because I do not like feeling my feelings.
Did your therapist give you specific exercises to do, or did you learn to just stop doing anything and sit there? How did you approach it?
Did your therapist give you specific exercises to do, or did you learn to just stop doing anything and sit there? How did you approach it?
Also, a book call "What Happy People Know" taught me a lot about how to just give yourself time before you react. There is something like a tenth of a second delay between when your mind decides to do something and you actually do it. In that split second, you actually have the choice of whether to go through with it or not.
I will type more later. Today is my last day at work before a week-long vacation and my boss is being a P.I.A. demanding a bunch of stuff before I go. Might have to get back to you tomorrow.
L
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Thinking about how much that book helped me inspired me to reread it today. What a great book!
In the book, he talks about pain. How it's a part of life. There is no life free from pain. It's how we deal with it that matters. We have the power to take events and turn them into experience. That is where wisdom comes from.
We always have a choice when anything happens. We can choose fear, or we can choose spirit and intellect. Fear destroys us. Spirit and intellect lifts us up. Anger is fear wearing the mask of aggression.
There are some amazing stories in that book. I'm so glad I read it again.
L
BTW, the author is Dan Baker PhD. He is the lead counselor at Canyon Ranch.
In the book, he talks about pain. How it's a part of life. There is no life free from pain. It's how we deal with it that matters. We have the power to take events and turn them into experience. That is where wisdom comes from.
We always have a choice when anything happens. We can choose fear, or we can choose spirit and intellect. Fear destroys us. Spirit and intellect lifts us up. Anger is fear wearing the mask of aggression.
There are some amazing stories in that book. I'm so glad I read it again.
L
BTW, the author is Dan Baker PhD. He is the lead counselor at Canyon Ranch.
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I just remembered something my therapist taught me about feelings. You can "talk yourself down" whenever your feelings take control.
The example she gave was driving on a dark empty road at night. All of a sudden, the car dies. What is your reaction? Fear! Oh crap! So then she said imagine that scared person as the little child inside. Now imagine you are the adult sitting in the other seat. You can calm the fears of the child. You can talk reality to fear. We have a cell phone, we have AAA, we have a spare tire, etc.
So she said whenever the feelings feel scary, you can bring yourself back to reality, which is always less scary than the imaginary stuff your mind conjures up.
L
The example she gave was driving on a dark empty road at night. All of a sudden, the car dies. What is your reaction? Fear! Oh crap! So then she said imagine that scared person as the little child inside. Now imagine you are the adult sitting in the other seat. You can calm the fears of the child. You can talk reality to fear. We have a cell phone, we have AAA, we have a spare tire, etc.
So she said whenever the feelings feel scary, you can bring yourself back to reality, which is always less scary than the imaginary stuff your mind conjures up.
L
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Okay, more on this. It's not really the feelings that are the problem, it's our reaction to the feelings. The lower parts of the brain (reptilian and mammalian) take the feelings as a threat. The reptilian brain is in charge of the fight/flight/freeze response. The mammalian brain is in charge of storing emotional memories. So, when a feeling is uncomfortable, the reptilian brain starts triggering the emotional memories of the mammalian brain, looking for something similar in the memory banks. Loneliness, for example, might bring to the surface memories of abandonment, which then tell the reptilian brain you are in danger, which triggers the fight/flight/freeze response.
All of this happens in minutes or even seconds. And it's all very much integrated with the physical body. As the fear is triggered, adrenaline and cortisol are released, pumping up the heartbeat and blood pressure, which in turn makes us feel anxious, which leads to more fear, etc.
So, the key is to engage the higher brain (neocortex or frontal lobe, the thing that makes us different from animals) which houses the reasoning and spirit. This higher part of the brain can distinguish real danger from emotional fear. We can use this part of our brain to reason through the situation and come to a rational decision. i.e. Feeling loneliness right now does not mean I will be alone forever. It does not mean I will die. It does not mean I am unlovable or worthless. It simply means I am alone for now, and feeling the need for human contact. How can I go about meeting that need? Do I even need to meet it right now, or can I simply wait for the feeling to pass? Is there something else I might need to do that this loneliness is covering up?
The spirit and intellect of the higher brain will lead to logical productive action, whereas the reptilian and mammalian brain will lead to knee-jerk reaction. This is not something we can change. We are hard-wired in this way. The only thing we can do is consciously engage the higher brain before the emotional/physical reactions carry us away in a reactive spiral.
This does not mean we stuff our feelings. It simply means we learn how to apply our higher reasoning to them.
L
All of this happens in minutes or even seconds. And it's all very much integrated with the physical body. As the fear is triggered, adrenaline and cortisol are released, pumping up the heartbeat and blood pressure, which in turn makes us feel anxious, which leads to more fear, etc.
So, the key is to engage the higher brain (neocortex or frontal lobe, the thing that makes us different from animals) which houses the reasoning and spirit. This higher part of the brain can distinguish real danger from emotional fear. We can use this part of our brain to reason through the situation and come to a rational decision. i.e. Feeling loneliness right now does not mean I will be alone forever. It does not mean I will die. It does not mean I am unlovable or worthless. It simply means I am alone for now, and feeling the need for human contact. How can I go about meeting that need? Do I even need to meet it right now, or can I simply wait for the feeling to pass? Is there something else I might need to do that this loneliness is covering up?
The spirit and intellect of the higher brain will lead to logical productive action, whereas the reptilian and mammalian brain will lead to knee-jerk reaction. This is not something we can change. We are hard-wired in this way. The only thing we can do is consciously engage the higher brain before the emotional/physical reactions carry us away in a reactive spiral.
This does not mean we stuff our feelings. It simply means we learn how to apply our higher reasoning to them.
L
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wow, what a great thread. Cowgirl, thanks for honestly sharing your struggle with yourself and with us. I'm starting to relearn lonliness, too. Only this time I hope to learn how to live alone successfully without immediately going out and finding a man. To learn that I can be alone and be okay. Sounds easy in theory, but ya, the struggle is real and tough.
LTD, great posts, too! Love learning from what you out down.
LTD, great posts, too! Love learning from what you out down.
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Originally Posted by tigger11
Sounds easy in theory, but ya, the struggle is real and tough.
L
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