YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I had another draining weekend. My wife and I have this horrible pattern of getting locked in fights/long-drawn out emotional discussions that last ALL weekend... literally barely doing anything else, hardly leaving the house, messing up sleep patterns etc. We have gone through cycles of doing this over the last several years. This has been two weeks in a row that have been really bad. We both have a lot of anger and insecurity, but she is much better at expressing it.

It is exhausting. So much of it is meta - in the sense of we are not dealing with the underlying problems and how we feel about those, it is dealing with how we are dealing with the problems and how we feel about how we are dealing with them (does that even make sense). There is shit in our relationship, including but not limited to behaviors of my wife that are due to her depression and anxiety, that have had me questioning the future of our relationship. And that makes her insecure and angry and anxious, which increases the behaviors that I can't live with any more, and I am afraid to express those feelings, and she senses my withdrawal and gets more anxious and presses me to talk and gets angry until I crack, and we both have this huge dump of negative emotion. Usually, she actually feels better after the ordeal, and I feel completely destroyed. I feel a little OK after this weekend. I'm still angry and upset that we spend the whole weekend doing that - it causes a lot of disruptions and guilt, and it is a completely unsustainable way to live. But I do feel like I got to express some things yesterday that I feel like were understood and accepted. But again, there is still a long way to go and I'm really afraid that we won't be able to make it that far before I lose my sanity. And before I could get to that point, I had to endure a middle-of-the-night angry venomous rant at 3 am on Saturday that lasted for hours and left me feeling like a piece of shit. Unlike when those episodes have happened in the past (in which my amygdala has chosen freeze or flight), I got angry and fought back a little more this time.

So I feel a little bit better even though it was (mostly) a terrible, painful weekend. I still have a lot of anger and resentment and hurt, a lot of things that I don't know how to/am afraid to talk about, a lot of conflicting emotions and thoughts about my marriage and my own self-worth that confuse the fuck out of me and make it very difficult and scary to open up to my wife or other people about. And as Paul says in the introduction to the podcast, that sense that life is passing me by as I am wallowing in all of this shit. Plus my work stress. Plus the stress I can't avoid that comes from my parents. Plus the fact that I am about to turn 40 and feel like I haven't accomplished shit with my life. Well, I've accomplished some things, but I have decided that they don't count because I have fallen short of my expectations and what others expected of me, so that means I'm a failure. And also, my plans to run a half marathon and lose 25 more pounds by the time I turn 40, which seemed realistic as recently as March/April, failed miserably as well.

I really don't know how to best utilize this board. I have a lot of specific things I want to vent about and get feedback on, but I don't want to spend my whole life spewing all of my shit on here. I feel self conscious if I post too often or my posts are too long, and I get a little nervous when I post something and nobody replies. Wow, I guess I am getting a little more secure in my insecurity to be able to admit that.

I use the board like an extension of my private notebook. I don't really expect answers a lot of times, because I am wrapped up in my head, but many times I am pleasantly surprised that I wrote something that resonated with people.

If you are devastated by a pattern of "communication", you have the right to escape that, after you plainly explain what that pattern of communication is doing to you.

My ego cracked for the second time in my life. I am now able to freely contemplate my own failure - I can imagine being on my deathbed and dispassionately discussing my lifetime failures. It is freeing - paradoxically it makes me more hopeful that I will be better able to work toward my life goals, because fear can no longer paralyze me.

Sorry I cannot be of more help. Please take care, please do right by yourself, friend.

I'm jut glad to know I'm not the only one struggling in a relationship!

My mother does kind of the same thing. Maybe sometime when you're both calm, explain how the way she communicates can be hurtful. Marriage counseling? I'm sorry I can't be of much help. Only 22 here.

During the worst of it for me I found that venting online helped a lot. By writing out your feelings you have to take something that might be all over the place and craft it into something linear and coherent. That process alone was a big help in cleaning up the mess in my head a bit. Hm... I had this teacher that comes to mind now, that said once that if what you write makes you uncomfortable, if you hate it, if it makes you feel afraid, then that's a good thing. It's a sign that you've crawled out from under the rock you hide under on a daily basis and created something authentic. You want to make it go away and take it back and hide it because authenticity means vulnerability, and that's scary. Maybe you get used to it, and maybe you don't, but that's what you should strive for.

So, maybe it's a good sign that it makes you nervous.

I would say vent what you want to. That's your voice, and expressing your own voice freely, I think, is an important (and sometimes very difficult) aspect of taking control over ones own life. It still scares the crap out of me. Maybe not in the moment, while I'm doing it, when I'm feeling passionate about something, but after the fact, I often really just want to turn back time, take it all back. Did I really just say that? Did I really have to stand so strongly on my position? Always the inner critic talking down from the stands, "who do you think you are?". I'm my own worst heckler.

So what if what you want to talk about something that's not the picture of perfection, if you don't want to paint a pretty picture. An author I kind of like once said about writing that it's like going to the toilet. You don't ascend to the porcelain throne unless you have shit that needs to be said. Shit happens. That you have stacks of it piled up you need to get out of your system somehow doesn't mean you're going to do that forever. Maybe all it means is that you need to take an emotional dump right now rather than being dumped on. There's a good chance that the venting is finite, and will have you, eventually, one day, feeling relieved. ... by the way, I'm so sorry for all this imagery. I'm going to hit post now before I take it all back

manuel_moe_g

but many times I am pleasantly surprised that I wrote something that resonated with people

That's why I like my therapy group and I like texting with the friends that I have met there. Getting and giving support and feeling like you're not alone in your feelings/thoughts. Still doesn't always feel safe opening up. A lot of my feelings and thoughts are confusing and conflicted, and I don't want to put the wrong ones out there and realize that I've fucked something up. My wife's reactions to things that I do connect with her about, as well as the fact that she went through my private therapy journal and took pictures of every page and still brings up things that were in it as if they were things that I said to her face rather than difficult, confusing things that I was trying to process on my own, add to unsafe feeling sometimes.

If you are devastated by a pattern of "communication", you have the right to escape that, after you plainly explain what that pattern of communication is doing to you.

Trying to set boundaries with limited success. The problem with trying to remove oneself from a situation is that if the other person has serious abandonment issues, that pours gasoline on the fire. But I am working on it.

lawlifelgbt

Maybe sometime when you're both calm, explain how the way she communicates can be hurtful. Marriage counseling?

Spent ~ 1 year in counseling. The opinion of the counselor (as well as our individual therapists) was that we need to work on ourselves before we can fix the marriage. That has created somewhat of a paradox. Basically, we would go to the counselor, she would usually be very sad/angry and I would shut down, we would get all worked up, then after an hour in the office in which we would go around in circles and neither of us would be satisfied, we would sit in the car and be angry and cry together for 1-2 hours in the parking lot before I would go back to work and she would go home.

bestia - thanks for the encouragement to vent, and I can relate to being my own worst heckler. Also worst editor and adminstrator of punishment. I guess I just don't want people to get sick of all of the stuff that I have to say. There's a lot, and some of it may seem like rambling. My therapist keeps insisting that it is about process and not content in our therapy group - it's not really as important to explain all of the situations in one's life and have people understand all of the details and the whys and wherefores - it is just important to connect emotionally. Emotions, not logic and rules.

It's hard, because I feel like the situations are so fucked up and so intertwined and have so much history, and it is hard to explain how I feel and why without providing a great deal of explanation and context. I guess the lesson there is that I don't have to explain why I feel something in order for someone to connect with me on the feeling. But that's something that is not easy for me to understand. I guess I am set up that feelings need to be "right" and need to be justified, and if there is a conflict or a difference of opinion, if the other person can "justify" their feeling better than mine (or even just make a louder argument), then my feeling must suck and be wrong and I'm a bad person for having it.

See, I can write something like that and feel like I am getting some real insight from my therapy and my self-work on how all of these things are working in my head, and that can feel a little good, but when it comes to implementing them to actually change situations and interactions with people - especially my wife - I don't know how to do it.

Thanks for all the encouragement and feedback.

weary wrote: I don't want to put the wrong ones out there and realize that I've fucked something up. My wife's reactions to things that I do connect with her about, as well as the fact that she went through my private therapy journal and took pictures of every page and still brings up things that were in it as if they were things that I said to her face rather than difficult, confusing things that I was trying to process on my own, add to unsafe feeling sometimes.

Whoa, this is a MASSIVE violation and MASSIVELY unfair. No wonder you are shy and scared to write out your feelings. If I was your defense attorney during this stuff I would say "OBJECTION. Bringing up stuff from a photographed personal journal is unfair to my client", and the Judge would say "SUSTAINED". You may have to stick up for yourself here. I am scared if you don't stick up for yourself here, the same way I would be scared if a battered wife didn't stick up for herself. This is too much. Please do right by yourself and take care of yourself.

weary wrote:The problem with trying to remove oneself from a situation is that if the other person has serious abandonment issues, that pours gasoline on the fire.

You can't do right by the other if you don't first do right by yourself. The same way in an airplane the parent is supposed to put their oxygen mask on first before putting the oxygen mask on the child. You not being able to leave when things get unfair or too debilitating is like saying "if you loved me, you would hold your hand inside the raging campfire". Not putting your hand in the raging campfire does not mean that you don't love the other person, it means that you are not willing to be a participant in the violation of yourself.

weary wrote:See, I can write something like that and feel like I am getting some real insight from my therapy and my self-work on how all of these things are working in my head, and that can feel a little good, but when it comes to implementing them to actually change situations and interactions with people - especially my wife - I don't know how to do it.

For me, personally, the process has been slow as hell - slow as a snail on the back of a turtle on the belly of a sloth. It sucks. I will pray for you to have a faster process than me, but since God doesn't exist , you may have a slow slow slow go of it. I am sorry. You deserve better.

Please take care.

Whoa, this is a MASSIVE violation and MASSIVELY unfair. No wonder you are shy and scared to write out your feelings. If I was your defense attorney during this stuff I would say "OBJECTION. Bringing up stuff from a photographed personal journal is unfair to my client", and the Judge would say "SUSTAINED". You may have to stick up for yourself here. I am scared if you don't stick up for yourself here, the same way I would be scared if a battered wife didn't stick up for herself. This is too much. Please do right by yourself and take care of yourself.

It was in response to my own massive violation - entering into an emotional affair with another woman (a stripper), sneaking around and lying about it, and seriously contemplating a physical affair or even leaving my wife for her. My wife was devastated, angry, hurt, very scared. I panicked too, and withdrew and shut down. It was really hard to talk to her about it, yet she relentlessly interrogated me day and night for weeks. She didn't believe/trust that I had told her everything and went after my journal, which I had been keeping for several years. I first started to suspect that she had gone through it when she would bring up very odd, specific things that I didn't remember telling her, but I was so fried, exhausted, guilty, ashamed and scared that I would just assume I had forgotten discussing that with her. Then eventually during one fight she showed me a picture on the phone and asked me to explain what it said (because she couldn't read my handwriting). She apologized, she felt guilty about it, and she explained it that she had been so hurt and scared and angry and she needed to know EVERYTHING. This is a big boundary issue for us - sometimes I feel like she wants to know every thought and feeling in my head all the time, and she feels that if I am withholding ANY of it that I am being deceptive/deceitful. She says and emotes every thought and feeling that she has, which is exhausting.

So back to the journal - she said she kept wanting to delete the journal pages, but would get so scared/angry that she couldn't. She thought about asking her therapist to do so for her, but didn't. Finally, about six months ago, when upgrading her phone to the latest OS, something got screwed with the backup and she lost all of the data on her phone - pictures, contacts, etc. If not for that, I think they would still be there.

At that earlier time, I had also given her all passwords to my email accounts, etc because that was what you were "supposed to do" to rebuild trust after infidelity. I was angry and reluctant to completely give up my privacy, but I understood her need to confirm that I was not communicating with the other woman or any other women and I was willing to do that for her. At the time, I had only my therapist and one friend with whom I could confide to discuss these issues - both the situation with the other woman as well as the hell I was dealing with at home. And that one friend was in the military and deployed overseas, so the only way to communicate with him was by email and text. After one fight, I wrote a long e-mail to my friend in which I was venting about a lot of things and talking about a lot of very confused and mixed feelings and MY WIFE READ THE EMAIL AND CONFRONTED ME ABOUT IT. I felt like I had no outlet for my pain and thoughts. Almost a year later, I still do not put pen to paper very often. This board, as well as my therapy group, has been the only way to get out of my head. One time about six months ago she found a piece of paper with some notes that I had made before a therapy appointment and confronted me about it.

I am scared if you don't stick up for yourself here, the same way I would be scared if a battered wife didn't stick up for herself.

I can stick up for myself to a point - but she is so hurt by what I did, and she is so depressed and anxious to begin with, and both of us have such low self-esteem. She is in the right as far as the violation I committed. It is hard to explain - her emotions just overwhelm mine and I can't make boundaries stick. I have really been trying hard to understand my extreme conflict avoidance, which I have in general and especially in my marriage. We both grew up in families in which there was a lot of emotional manipulation, but it took different forms, and we have meshed together over the years to create a painful dysfunctional system in which nobody wins.

She constantly accuses me of painting her as a monster. To my therapist, to my group, in my journal, even to the stripper. Sometimes she sounds like she was more upset about how I was portraying her to the stripper than about the other things. I'm not in denial about my problems. I'm not blaming all of my misery on her. However, I do feel like her behavior hurts me, it's intolerable, and it is preventing me from breaking out of the negative patterns of thoughts and behaviors that I am gaining insight into.

But I don't think she's a monster, and I'm not trying to portray her as one. I am unhappy with specific behaviors and situations. There are lots of great things about her and there are things that she does that I love and that I am grateful for.

You brought up the battered wife analogy, though, and I think that we both feel like the battered wife in our marriage. Like I said, no winners, just two losers.

Whoa, this is a MASSIVE violation and MASSIVELY unfair.

Thank you for saying this, by the way. I have a hard time trusting my judgment/instincts as to what is fair/unfair or reasonable/unreasonable.

I am ignorant about the subtlety of the situation, and I am stupid about relationships too, but if denying you any place to process feelings privately is a response to you contemplating infidelity, the cure is worse than the disease. It is easier to imaging a relationship surviving infidelity than it is imagining a relationship surviving if one person has ABSOLUTELY no private place to process feelings. If your therapists cannot see that, you are going to horrifically misguided therapists.

Plenty of relationships survive infidelity. Having absolutely no space or privacy to process feelings and thoughts is akin to sleep deprivation torture. I am mad at your therapists for not sticking up for you, it seems nearly criminal.

Like I said, I am ignorant about the subtlety of the situation, and I am stupid about relationships too - you are the expert on your own situation. Please take care.

[My own situation is not much help to you, I guess I am like your wife, I put everything out there and say everything out loud, that is why almost everyone considers me exhausting ]