fbw

As I pull myself out of autopilot I am starting to notice odd physical responses to certain tasks.

I am afraid to check my mail. I am physically nauseated when I think about it.
I never really noticed this before.

I remember a terrible altercation over me putting the mail on the table after a return from our cabin. He asked me where the mail was... Given I just right in front of him picked up the mail I assumed he meant cabin mail. I said " I wish you had told me you wanted the mail, I left it at the cabin" he lost it. When I realized he meant house mail it was too late. Apparently my motherinlaw told him his mail was not safe from me so she only sends him mail at work. This incident was evidence she was right.

Rationally I know the whole thing was insane. How can I heal myself from this though? I think I want to tell him how it has impacted me. I am afraid to be told I am over reacting. There must be away to regain this piece of myself with out his help....

LifeRecovery

I have found that just like my mind remembers things (especially hard ones), my body does also.

I often hold in my both the hard emotions, sensations and experience that my body experienced in the moment that a bad situation was happening.

For me I really started to get somewhere in my life when I started to do somatic (body) focused therapy....because it forced me to stop rationalizing and get into my body.

I also did body work (like massage) and had all sorts of things come up. Learning meditation also helped.

If those are not options my only experience has been that I need to use the Three As, Awareness, Acceptance and then Action before I can do something constructive with it.

honeypig

Your recovery is dependent on NO ONE except yourself. Just as with the A, if you are working on your own recovery, there is nothing anyone can do to stop you, and you most assuredly can regain all the pieces of yourself with or without your A's help.

I understand where you want to tell the A how his treatment of you has affected you, but it sounds like you know exactly what it will get you. It seems to be pretty common for us to want the person who hurt us to be the one to heal us--I know I've surely been down that road many times myself, and with predictable results. That is referred to as "going to the hardware store for bread", when we go to someone for something we need, hoping they can somehow give it to us even though past experience has shown us they simply don't have it to give.

I think Liferecovery gave some good suggestions. Are you getting some kind of support for yourself, like Alanon or Celebrate Recovery? That would likely be helpful also.

Welcome to SR--I hope you find help for yourself here, and I wish you strength and clarity.

lillamy

fbw, I still get low-grade anxiety every time I check my e-mail, even though AXH is under court order to not contact me. And hasn't. For over a year.

I think this is exactly right:
As I pulled myself out of stuffing all my feelings, I started noticing reactions -- emotional and physical -- that were at times really overwhelming.

With a thing like your mail, and my e-mail, I've just talked to myself like I was three and convinced there was a monster under my bed. Sort of taken myself by the hand and shown myself that while I have fears, there's nothing in reality to motivate those fears. Every time you do pick up the mail and nothing bad happens, you build on your new reality where mail doesn't equal mayhem.

I think of it as cleaning up the debris after the storm is over.