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Zelda09 Offline OP
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A very good couple of days as I approach the hearing. Feeling like STBX is firmly part of my past, not my now. Staying busy and new classes and friends help.

And I'm going to Europe for a couple of weeks after, so looking forward to a new chunk of experiences that have nothing to do with him.


Mid 30's
Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH
D 9/15; NC forever on

You can't DR your way out of abuse.



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Sounds like you are doing great moving forward despite your low emotions. You sound like you are a bit more interested in your life than the last page. I'd agree that there is nothing wrong w/ a little medication. It doesn't turn off the feelings, just makes them more bearable to explore and process while still getting on w/ life. It takes a few weeks for anti-depressants to work, and often there is a trial-and-error process finding the right drug, so you'll have to bear the depression for a while longer even with medication.

And, while I'm not in a proper setting to evaluate you, what you stated are classic signs of depression, very treatable, and medication will most likely make it easier to work through the underlying issues than make it harder. Just saying.

Enjoy the trip and all your activities. It sounds like you are certainly doing what it takes to make lemonaid out of the lemons you were handed.


Me: 50 W:43
S6, S3
M: 12 yrs. T: 17
M is bad & Not happy Bomb Mar '14
S 5 Feb '15
D Bomb 13 Apr '15 (but "no hurry")
DB Coach May '15
Wants proceed on D Aug '15
Starting 1-on-1 negotiations Sept '15
Joined: Jan 2015
Posts: 1,098
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"It is not much, but I do not believe you are one."

sorry, shoulda said 'are not alone'
I hate autocorrect and running around like a crazy person sometimes.

Europe...awesome for you Z!!!
I can imagine some amazing memories coming from that trip!


M - 40's
W - 30's
Two Sons
Living together
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Zelda09 Offline OP
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Thanks, guys.

I appreciate everyone, but I'm not doing anti-depressants. Messing with my brain chemistry isn't an option, going to do it the natural way with endorphins and real stresses and joys. I just need more life in my life.

The sudden departure of my STBX from my insides is a mystery to me, however. It's like his hold on my heart has almost evaporated over night. I know that I no longer love him. I don't quite see him clearly, not yet...but I don't miss him. He may have some power to reopen the wound at the hearing. He may not. But I'm happy he has, overnight, moved to the camp of somebody I used to know.

My IC today again confirmed that his behavior wasn't half way normal or healthy - both what she saw herself and what I told her about. She saw the twisting and put downs and manipulation. I need to hear that, I wish I didn't need it so much. I am doing a better job of staying with my experiences. As time marches on, it is sadly the negative ones, from years, that are the vivid ones rising to the top.

She had a good tip for me as I try to sort out his 'feedback' - do my open and honest friends concur? What of it has my family given me that is similar? Unless I see patterns, ignore it for what it is - likely his projections/and or playing on my fears.

I like that feedback. It allows me to own what I can, work on some of the things I first came here with, but walk away with a bit more balance.

I'm getting a tiny bit excited to get on with my life, emotionally.

My neighbor friend went through something similar years ago. I had a particularly bad Sunday, and the following morning over coffee I told her, "I'm just so sick of feeling this way."

"And THAT is the point you will turn around. When you are tired of feeling broken hearted, you've exhausted yourself, you'll make the decision to just MOVE ON."

I'm getting there. IC has warned me I may backslide around the hearing next week, but not to imagine all is lost, I'll rebound quicker.


Mid 30's
Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH
D 9/15; NC forever on

You can't DR your way out of abuse.



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Z

I personally think this isn't depression but trauma. It's a completely different dynamic, in fact some ADs are contra indicated in trauma, as that needs anxiety medication.

Z, I think you found your Spellbreaker that you can now adapt to any situation involving WH or any other abuser. If you practice it then you can adapt it.

Just a reminder:

I think my visual can be two creatures inside STBX head; a John Malcovich head. A stock photo of a beautiful 3 year old boy with the sun shining like a halo. This little boy wants to be loved and cared for, catered to, and he's amazing. Except when he's disappointed. He mostly is in control as long as things are going well.

And the gremlin next to him takes the controls when the little one can't handle things and gets upset. Gremlin coldly and angrily destroys as his mission to revenge the little guy.

The sweet little guy bakes and creates and tinkers with his toys. The gremlin leaves him alone and watches lots of porn, amuses himself with being angry over world affairs and getting women to feel sorry for him. Enjoys studying people for where they are weak and making fun of them. Mostly they ignore each other. The little one doesn't know how to have conversations with himself or the Gremlin and the ugly one doesn't care to think about things like that though he's certainly intelligent.

We all have our angels and Devils on our shoulders; usually there is a core personality in the center.


I think a wise decision to make change without AD and I am so delighted. You are pulling your own strings.

V

Last edited by Vanilla; 08/27/15 12:37 AM.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose.
V 64, WAW


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Zelda09 Offline OP
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Thank you, V. I googled difference between depression and trauma and this came up, I related to it said as difference between dreaming and remembering:

ut when we continue to experience fear and flashbacks, too much cortisol can damage the hippocampus. This is part of the short-term memory system, where memories of events up to about two weeks ago are temporarily stored, waiting until they are woven into part of our story about ourselves. A lot of cortisol in the hippocampus means we have especially vivid memories for highly emotional events, like remembering exactly where we were on 9/11. But too much cortisol short-circuits the hippocampus and interferes with the process of weaving together short-term memories so they can be put in long-term storage. Thus, the PTSD sufferer relives, rather than remembers, traumatic experiences. It’s like the difference between remembering and dreaming. When I remember something, I’m aware that I’m in the present, looking back on the past. But when I’m dreaming, the only “I” there is is back in the dream.

Was I ever scared for my life? No. I had those weird day dream flashes where I saw my STBX and I passing in a door way and he'd suddenly pin me and stab me. It was a startling and vivid visual that increased with time. Nothing like that ever happened, and the night before his settlement check was the most direct violence I'd ever experienced.

I have felt like I've been living a very raw day over and over again where I woke up and realized that nothing that was real was real at all. It was very different than the first BD, when the M just seemed to be on the rocks. Him sneering at me on the couch, it was a sudden realization that STBX had been acting for a very long time. We have a poster here with name Uturn, and that is the trauma, the sudden boomerang for me. H had been telling me how much he loved me and how lucky he was only hours ago, before the big violence. And then he looked so cold and unfeeling and happy with himself at the mention of D. It defied what I believed possible out of him, and everything I thought I knew about 'us' and the last six years, about what I meant to him and what kind of man he was.

So that is layer 1, the immediate emotional trauma of being set up, told to trust, used and discarded with that kind of violence.

Layer 2 is the years of being told I was selfish, unable to relate to people, unable to understand myself or him, I had an inability to listen, I was not a soft person, I was not capable of meeting his emotional needs. It is in the walking on eggshells wondering when te next outburst would be, how to appropriately frame a request so that it didn't set him off. Feeling like I was approaching it too wrong, too emotionally, too unemotionally, too suddenly, having it in the back of my mind I would drive anyone to these upset moments.

I am trying to work through Layer 2 where it is valid. Where I can improve, being less judgemental - and I think I've made some progress. Less critical. Listening more deeply to everyone.

But the rest of it was bs. I loved him well and was far more patient with his irrational and nasty behavior than I should have been. And this is the feedback from friends and family.

Layer 1 is the sharper trauma. Everything I know and trusted suddenly upside down and laughing at me. It says I was worthless, worth only using. It says my own judgement about the man I chose was dramatically off.

Layer 2 says someone else out there will make him happier just by virtue of being not me, that I wasn't enough.

To work through these very alive feelings, I am trying to keep my own experience more central. So, what does that sound like?

Layer 1 - getting angry. I do not deserve to be treated that way. I am worth more. He is an a$$hole to have been so violent, unapologetic, to steal from me that week and sit there sneering about it. It's that simple. He is a number of names. It is not a reflection on me. It's sad that it happened that way, but it's my past. Everyone was duped. My family and our friends, they also believed he was lovely. They all saw real STBX come out, each in their own way and time, and no one is saying I've lost anything great here. I deserved more and I stood by ground.

I need to hold on to that and tell my hurt and worthless feelings, it was abuse. Him. Not me. I wasn't discarded, or less, awful, or any of that...it was only what he was trying to make me feel through the violence and silence afterward.

Layer 2: I can own some of that. I could have been a better partner. But the things he told me about me, and about what he needs...get a grip, Z. Rational me knows that he simply has never demonstrated constructive, reparative communication skills with me, friends or professionals he had to work with. His R problems will not stop with me. I am changing what I can and he point blank told me he wasn't interested in looking at himself or his past. This wasn't about me, not all these years of psycho-analytics and gas lighting and all the other bs.

I am stronger than him. I always was and I forgot it. I swam out there and tried to help a man flailing in the water drowning, and he was slowly taking me down with him. I allowed for all that, I even went out multiple times again and again after him.

But no more. I choose to see him as his split, reactive personality and I know I cannot change another person or expect different outcomes. I choose to honor my pain and experience as more important than his 'pain,' which I now see as a tool of manipulation that turned me into a doormat.

I know I am getting stronger because I now see a choice in either sitting in the 'dreaming' re-living it feelings - OR - shrugging and saying I'm better than that. I've made that choice for two, almost three days in a row, and it feels so good. I just have to stay with it.

Allowing it to all die as part of my past instead of fighting so hard to make it make sense in the present.


Mid 30's
Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH
D 9/15; NC forever on

You can't DR your way out of abuse.



Joined: May 2015
Posts: 1,119
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Originally Posted By: Zelda09
Thanks, guys.

I appreciate everyone, but I'm not doing anti-depressants. Messing with my brain chemistry isn't an option, going to do it the natural way with endorphins and real stresses and joys. I just need more life in my life.



You've heard the advice, and I respect your choice on how you proceed au natural. You've got a good handle on things, and I know you'll make the right choice for you in this.

I'll look a the rest of what you posted, but I wanted to underline that so that hopefully everyone will back off that line of discussion.


Me: 50 W:43
S6, S3
M: 12 yrs. T: 17
M is bad & Not happy Bomb Mar '14
S 5 Feb '15
D Bomb 13 Apr '15 (but "no hurry")
DB Coach May '15
Wants proceed on D Aug '15
Starting 1-on-1 negotiations Sept '15
Joined: May 2015
Posts: 1,119
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Systematic abuse becomes traumatic, and what your H was telling you about you being selfish and turning things back on you does look like abuse. The hippocampus shrinks and doesn't work well an stressful environments, even if those aren't traumatic, so don't worry too much about whether or not it is trauma. It will have at least that similarity, of difficulty processing memories and resolving emotional turmoil/struggle regardless. It's more complicated, and not just about the hippocampus, but some of the other pro-stress physiological responses that interact with the hippocampus, but that's not really important.

That said, trauma and depression are often interlinked, as the anxiety can lead of the long-term stress that leads to trauma can contribute to what we call anhedonia (lack of ability to feel happiness) because your body is moving to help you not feel anything as a defense to the overstimulation of the stress.

So, good times can seem as threatening as bad times. This is why it takes a slow approach, gentleness, self-compassion, and patience to ease back into the positive stimulation of life. You can't just throw yourself into exciting times and expect to snap out. In fact, that is more likely to make things worse as your body and psyche move to protect you from the threat of that overstimulation stress.

What you are doing is great, so what I'm saying is in no way telling you to change things. Rather, it is just some insight as to why to not expect too much too quickly, and be a bit sensitive to the fact that too much good stimulation may produce some counter-intuitive reactions for a while.

Slow & steady, just like you are doing. I don't have any doubt about you getting through this and coming out smelling like a rose from what I'm seeing.


Me: 50 W:43
S6, S3
M: 12 yrs. T: 17
M is bad & Not happy Bomb Mar '14
S 5 Feb '15
D Bomb 13 Apr '15 (but "no hurry")
DB Coach May '15
Wants proceed on D Aug '15
Starting 1-on-1 negotiations Sept '15
Joined: Dec 2014
Posts: 755
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Zelda09 Offline OP
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Thank you Asitis. I am sure I will be fine in time.


Mid 30's
Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH
D 9/15; NC forever on

You can't DR your way out of abuse.



Joined: Dec 2014
Posts: 755
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Zelda09 Offline OP
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This post ends the work week. I am feeling good, strong, and above it all.

Actually looking forward to my hearing next week and being done with STBX in every sense. He was one of the worst things that happened to me and now that the 'love' feelings are almost all dissipated, I know that much for sure.


Mid 30's
Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH
D 9/15; NC forever on

You can't DR your way out of abuse.



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