Feeling anxious needed to purge my thoughts
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Feeling anxious needed to purge my thoughts
I’m at work feeling very anxious and need to get my thoughts down… so this is going to be pretty long.
Something my therapist said last night has stuck on to me. She said that xabf would not be behaving in passive aggressive ways if he didn’t still care, and that the digs he makes at me, and the attempts at bringing me down are him at HIS low points, because he is most likely going through his own grieving process. She said that it would most likely take him longer to get through it, if he gets through it at all and it made me feel so sad for him.
He is already distracting himself and this is going to be compounded on top of whatever else has been bothering him all these years. I hope that someday I don’t feel such utter sadness (pity?) for him.
My therapist and I have been talking more about the way I grew up. I can’t believe it’s never really sunk in before, my FOO is messed up. I always knew it was, but as with xabf now I SEE. Neither of my parents was there for me. My mother is an A and I’m pretty convinced at this point my father is suffering from a Cluster B disorder, at the very least has heavy traits of… his mother (my grandmother) was quite frankly a MONSTER; insanely physically and psychologically abusive.
Xabf’s mother grew up with a violent A for a father, and a mother that treated her children as an extension of herself with “favorites”. Xabf’s mother (in her 60s?) still often said, “so and so is the favorite, she’s always the favorite”. They are just as sick as my family =(
I weep for all of us… it was like xabf and I were doomed before we were in existence. Why aren’t more people talking about this? We need to break these cycles! We end up on these tracks and have no clue what we are in for or what it looks like or how it feels until it’s too late.
I feel like I missed out on half my life because of what, alcohol? Really? I know that people need to want change and work on themselves but the denial is a thick mask of mud that is not always conscious. People don’t know they don’t know, so how any of us reaches this point is nothing short of a miracle if you ask me.
I get mad at myself, WHY, after all of the horrible things he has done or said to me, why do I still give a flying f*ck about how he feels? Why do people like him get to wander the Earth so selfishly and people like me (us) deplete ourselves trying to make THEM happy? This is so twisted.
I am trying to foster that love from within. I am scared that I am going to go my whole life looking for a man to fulfill the love I never received as a child. Bosses and strangers treat me loads better than my parents ever did… with basic respect or care.
Omg… there it is… I am crying for myself. After all those years of wishing that others weren’t so sad and crying for their pain I am finally crying for mine. My parents were not okay, the way I was raised was not okay.
I used to compare my family to xabf’s all the time. To me, they represented stability and being “normal”. His parents have been married for decades, they eat dinner at the table together and go on vacation every year. As I work on my codependency issues I see the red flags… mother is an extremely passive aggressive unrecovered ACoA who didn’t want to go to a meeting with me until she was “better”. His sibling is a full grown adult that’s never left the house or had a job, and the father has sort of disappeared into the background. This is not meant to smack on or put them down but to shed light on what I once deemed as “family goals”. Their dysfunctions were there too, they just looked different from mine.
I understand that no family is perfect and that is not what I am looking for, what I am looking for is a unit/friends/partner that can look at themselves and think some variation of, “hmm, that doesn’t seem healthy, maybe I should work on that”. At the very least, SEE ME. Listen to me, acknowledge that I am my own person with thoughts and feelings and know that MY feelings are not an INSULT to YOU/THEM.
I have been going on epic rants lately. It’s very therapeutic and the thoughts just kind of flow. It’s nice because instead of everything trying to get out at once in a confusing way, they are coming out coherently in a stream. This is exciting and going to sound weird, but I feel like I am becoming an actual person.
It’s hard to explain because I never realized that I didn’t feel like a person. I am gaining a sense of self, of boundaries, and I am honoring those boundaries. There is no longer an enmeshed “us” (and this “us” could anyone really) but a clear and distinct ME and YOU. I am quite literally figuring myself out and as someone mentioned earlier, rediscovering who I am.
It sounds so cheesy and cliché but I really am finding myself. I am no longer an extension of someone else. I am me, and you are you. How xabf feels is not my responsibility. I am not responsible for his pain (most of it anyway, there were times when I was awful), and it is up to him to figure that out and heal himself. If he never accepted any of my apologies, or couldn’t, that is not my fault! He brought up things from years ago that he was clearly not over yet… it made me sick to my stomach that someone could on to such anger for so long, but now I see that I have been doing that too.
I am letting go of all the illusions. There were many and they did me no good.
Thanks for listening
Something my therapist said last night has stuck on to me. She said that xabf would not be behaving in passive aggressive ways if he didn’t still care, and that the digs he makes at me, and the attempts at bringing me down are him at HIS low points, because he is most likely going through his own grieving process. She said that it would most likely take him longer to get through it, if he gets through it at all and it made me feel so sad for him.
He is already distracting himself and this is going to be compounded on top of whatever else has been bothering him all these years. I hope that someday I don’t feel such utter sadness (pity?) for him.
My therapist and I have been talking more about the way I grew up. I can’t believe it’s never really sunk in before, my FOO is messed up. I always knew it was, but as with xabf now I SEE. Neither of my parents was there for me. My mother is an A and I’m pretty convinced at this point my father is suffering from a Cluster B disorder, at the very least has heavy traits of… his mother (my grandmother) was quite frankly a MONSTER; insanely physically and psychologically abusive.
Xabf’s mother grew up with a violent A for a father, and a mother that treated her children as an extension of herself with “favorites”. Xabf’s mother (in her 60s?) still often said, “so and so is the favorite, she’s always the favorite”. They are just as sick as my family =(
I weep for all of us… it was like xabf and I were doomed before we were in existence. Why aren’t more people talking about this? We need to break these cycles! We end up on these tracks and have no clue what we are in for or what it looks like or how it feels until it’s too late.
I feel like I missed out on half my life because of what, alcohol? Really? I know that people need to want change and work on themselves but the denial is a thick mask of mud that is not always conscious. People don’t know they don’t know, so how any of us reaches this point is nothing short of a miracle if you ask me.
I get mad at myself, WHY, after all of the horrible things he has done or said to me, why do I still give a flying f*ck about how he feels? Why do people like him get to wander the Earth so selfishly and people like me (us) deplete ourselves trying to make THEM happy? This is so twisted.
I am trying to foster that love from within. I am scared that I am going to go my whole life looking for a man to fulfill the love I never received as a child. Bosses and strangers treat me loads better than my parents ever did… with basic respect or care.
Omg… there it is… I am crying for myself. After all those years of wishing that others weren’t so sad and crying for their pain I am finally crying for mine. My parents were not okay, the way I was raised was not okay.
I used to compare my family to xabf’s all the time. To me, they represented stability and being “normal”. His parents have been married for decades, they eat dinner at the table together and go on vacation every year. As I work on my codependency issues I see the red flags… mother is an extremely passive aggressive unrecovered ACoA who didn’t want to go to a meeting with me until she was “better”. His sibling is a full grown adult that’s never left the house or had a job, and the father has sort of disappeared into the background. This is not meant to smack on or put them down but to shed light on what I once deemed as “family goals”. Their dysfunctions were there too, they just looked different from mine.
I understand that no family is perfect and that is not what I am looking for, what I am looking for is a unit/friends/partner that can look at themselves and think some variation of, “hmm, that doesn’t seem healthy, maybe I should work on that”. At the very least, SEE ME. Listen to me, acknowledge that I am my own person with thoughts and feelings and know that MY feelings are not an INSULT to YOU/THEM.
I have been going on epic rants lately. It’s very therapeutic and the thoughts just kind of flow. It’s nice because instead of everything trying to get out at once in a confusing way, they are coming out coherently in a stream. This is exciting and going to sound weird, but I feel like I am becoming an actual person.
It’s hard to explain because I never realized that I didn’t feel like a person. I am gaining a sense of self, of boundaries, and I am honoring those boundaries. There is no longer an enmeshed “us” (and this “us” could anyone really) but a clear and distinct ME and YOU. I am quite literally figuring myself out and as someone mentioned earlier, rediscovering who I am.
It sounds so cheesy and cliché but I really am finding myself. I am no longer an extension of someone else. I am me, and you are you. How xabf feels is not my responsibility. I am not responsible for his pain (most of it anyway, there were times when I was awful), and it is up to him to figure that out and heal himself. If he never accepted any of my apologies, or couldn’t, that is not my fault! He brought up things from years ago that he was clearly not over yet… it made me sick to my stomach that someone could on to such anger for so long, but now I see that I have been doing that too.
I am letting go of all the illusions. There were many and they did me no good.
Thanks for listening
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 3,699
It's A LOT huh?! And it can be overwhelming!
I felt like I was hit in the face with a baseball bat on information overload and self and FOO and my dysfunction discovery for a while...Above all, this helped me:
EVERYONE has done the best they could at the time and with the tools they had. EVERYONE.
You, your parents, him, his parents....EVERYONE. That's hard to accept sometimes amidst all of the damage, destruction and pain, but it's true. It DOES NOT mean you can heal them, or give them the same awakening you are giving yourself, nor does it mean that you owe anyone anything. <3 Thanks for sharing this bit of your journey with us.
I felt like I was hit in the face with a baseball bat on information overload and self and FOO and my dysfunction discovery for a while...Above all, this helped me:
EVERYONE has done the best they could at the time and with the tools they had. EVERYONE.
You, your parents, him, his parents....EVERYONE. That's hard to accept sometimes amidst all of the damage, destruction and pain, but it's true. It DOES NOT mean you can heal them, or give them the same awakening you are giving yourself, nor does it mean that you owe anyone anything. <3 Thanks for sharing this bit of your journey with us.
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2016
Posts: 384
It feels cruel that I have to just walk away, knowing what I know. It's like the ultimate codependency test. I just want to help and I have to detach from pretty much everyone I love in order to heal myself.
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Join Date: May 2010
Location: USA
Posts: 13,560
You are making good progress.
I found myself needing the why's so very often. However, one day it clicked with me, the why just does not matter. My XAH's behavior is his behavior. It does not matter why he does this or that. What matters is that I broke the chain for my children, have educated them through education and therapy.
Cluster B's rarely, if ever, change. They also rarely, if ever, see that they have any issues themselves. They are too busy blaming everyone else. That's not to say there is not the odd one in the mix that can recover, but it's few and far between.
I am super impressed with your recovery, you are doing some great work!
I found myself needing the why's so very often. However, one day it clicked with me, the why just does not matter. My XAH's behavior is his behavior. It does not matter why he does this or that. What matters is that I broke the chain for my children, have educated them through education and therapy.
Cluster B's rarely, if ever, change. They also rarely, if ever, see that they have any issues themselves. They are too busy blaming everyone else. That's not to say there is not the odd one in the mix that can recover, but it's few and far between.
I am super impressed with your recovery, you are doing some great work!
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Join Date: Apr 2016
Posts: 384
Thank you all 
It doesn't always feel like it. Some days I wake up and it feels as though I went backwards. I'm trying to learn how to have fun and trust again because right now I'm really struggling with both.
It doesn't always feel like it. Some days I wake up and it feels as though I went backwards. I'm trying to learn how to have fun and trust again because right now I'm really struggling with both.
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Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: northern michigan. not the U.P.
Posts: 15,281
awesome stuff! sometimes i think it would have been great if the learning and healing i had to go through wasnt painful. but would i have gotten the results ive gotten without pain and discomfort? would i have learned as much about myself and have become comfortable with myself and love myself?
idk, but when i didnt go through that -avoided it or was in denial about my problems- i wasnt happy or peaceful
something from your OP:
"Something my therapist said last night has stuck on to me. She said that xabf would not be behaving in passive aggressive ways if he didn’t still care, and that the digs he makes at me, and the attempts at bringing me down are him at HIS low points, because he is most likely going through his own grieving process. She said that it would most likely take him longer to get through it, if he gets through it at all and it made me feel so sad for him."
me also being the drunken arse i agree to a point: my passive aggressivness was because i cared- i cared that i was losing my hostage.
it was also an act of low self esteem- i hated myself and wanted whoever iwas in a relationship with to feel as bad about themselves as i felt about me.
of course, i didnt see or know that until i got sober.
i was justa wee bit of a mess!!!!
idk, but when i didnt go through that -avoided it or was in denial about my problems- i wasnt happy or peaceful
something from your OP:
"Something my therapist said last night has stuck on to me. She said that xabf would not be behaving in passive aggressive ways if he didn’t still care, and that the digs he makes at me, and the attempts at bringing me down are him at HIS low points, because he is most likely going through his own grieving process. She said that it would most likely take him longer to get through it, if he gets through it at all and it made me feel so sad for him."
me also being the drunken arse i agree to a point: my passive aggressivness was because i cared- i cared that i was losing my hostage.
it was also an act of low self esteem- i hated myself and wanted whoever iwas in a relationship with to feel as bad about themselves as i felt about me.
of course, i didnt see or know that until i got sober.
i was justa wee bit of a mess!!!!
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Join Date: Apr 2016
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My therapist seems to have a lot of compassion for him. I tend to dehumanize him as this unfeeling entity that just used me and sometimes she'll say things that swing the other way and remind me that ok, I guess he is a person with some human like parts in there...
but
I do feel that he used me. I agree that he's grieving in his own way but not in a romantic type of way. Kind of like what you said, tomsteve, in a, "I'm losing a source of energy" type of way. As if he has dehumanized me
but
I do feel that he used me. I agree that he's grieving in his own way but not in a romantic type of way. Kind of like what you said, tomsteve, in a, "I'm losing a source of energy" type of way. As if he has dehumanized me
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Lotsa good growth going on there Expanding....[big hug]
Regarding passive-aggressiveness: I think maybe it's something many folks learn in childhood. Perhaps when they tried to be open and honest about how they REALLY felt and tried to express themselves honestly, it got shot down by parents, siblings, other adults in their life, friends, relatives, church members, etc.
For some folks, just being who you are gets shut down EARLY on life...and they don't really 'FIND' their selves till they can somehow get away from people and things that have always "told" them how they should be instead of just loving them for who they truly ARE!
Well, most people want love, right? So in order to GET LOVE, and to BE LOVED, they will start behaving in ways that they think will bring love into their lives.....thus forming MUCH of the behaviors that we see in ourselves and in others...IT'S a game of needs, but it's really NOT a game!
Much of what drives a person to be passive-aggressive is to get the attention they want.
Regarding passive-aggressiveness: I think maybe it's something many folks learn in childhood. Perhaps when they tried to be open and honest about how they REALLY felt and tried to express themselves honestly, it got shot down by parents, siblings, other adults in their life, friends, relatives, church members, etc.
For some folks, just being who you are gets shut down EARLY on life...and they don't really 'FIND' their selves till they can somehow get away from people and things that have always "told" them how they should be instead of just loving them for who they truly ARE!
Well, most people want love, right? So in order to GET LOVE, and to BE LOVED, they will start behaving in ways that they think will bring love into their lives.....thus forming MUCH of the behaviors that we see in ourselves and in others...IT'S a game of needs, but it's really NOT a game!
Much of what drives a person to be passive-aggressive is to get the attention they want.
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Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: America
Posts: 4,136
Originally Posted by Expanding 
It feels cruel that I have to just walk away, knowing what Iikhw's like the ultimate codependency test. I just want to help and I have to detach from pretty much everyone I love in order to heal myself.
It's actually good to be alone...and a lot of folks are afraid of being alone and will instead get into serial relationships; never quite healing from them in between. This is why is soooo "frowned on" to just get right into a new relationship before the old has completely been gotten over, which take time. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people say they "just couldn't help it" , they just couldn't resist the "new person" they got into a relationship with so soon after the last one.
It's almost as if there is this relationship addiction thing going on with or without the presence of addiction. They call it 'rebound' relationships for a reason. So, for right now just feel free to be detached...it doesn't mean you are weird or anything. Will you have some trust issues that need to dealt with at some point? Sure...that's to be expected. It also doesn't mean you are weird. I would think that based upon what you've been through if you DIDN'T have trust issues...now that would be kinda odd.
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