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

I'm having a bad week. Month. Year. Decade. Life.

I haven't posted much in a long time because I just got sick of saying the same shit over and over again. That's my life. Cycles of repetition of the same endless, exhausting, draining bullshit. Except it is not complete repetition, because I am trying desperately to break the cycles, but no matter what change I can make, it's like there is a compensating shift to respond to it. A course correction. And it gets worse. I feel like I'm being sucked down a toilet or a drain, or maybe pulled into a black hole, where I know I'm past the event horizon and can never escape but haven't been pulled all the way in yet, so I am just being stressed and stretched and trying to hold on.

Sorry. Too fucking overdramatic.

I'm just stuck in the worst way. I've gone back to just shutting down to block out the negative emotions as much as I can. Not enough people that I can unload my burden of shit onto. I can only get in with my therapist once a month if I'm lucky. Group therapy is a mixed blessing and half the time I leave feeling shittier than when I went in. My wife does love me and tries to be supportive but her depression, anxiety and other shitty issues make up the majority of my stressors most days to begin with, and I don't know how to be compassionate and loving and supportive of her without undermining my own well-being, which is what I feel like I have been doing for most of the nearly 15 years we have been married. And things are really shitty career wise. And painful family issues that I have been trying to bury in the back of my mind because I don't have the time and energy to be dealing with them are bubbling to the surface.

I've been doing the things that you are "supposed" to do to fight this stuff. I have been making lots more time for exercise - running and lifting weights with friends twice a week, going to yoga 1-2x a week, even getting regular massages. My body feels better but not my mind or my heart. I have been trying to engage in activities regularly that give me pleasure and satisfaction - baking, cooking, listening to and playing music, playing video games. I can feel good while I am doing them, but as soon as I stop the channel changes back to the 24 hour shit network again. I am trying to open my heart to let in the little moments of happiness and satisfaction, whether they are at work or with my wife or coming from somewhere unexpected. And sometimes it feels good but it is never enough to get me out from under this cloud.

My life has been a complete waste and I have missed all my chances for happiness and instead am stuck with ongoing stress and misery. And somehow it is my fault, because nobody else is responsible for my feelings but me, so all I have to do is just stop feeling shitty and I will be OK, right? It's not my wife's job to make me happy, so if she does things that piss me off, that's not her fault, that's my fault. If I have needs that she will not/cannot meet, well, that's my fault for having those needs, not her fault, so I just need to stop having those needs and I will be fine. I am never going to find the stability, satisfaction, love, comfort, peace that I need. I must not deserve it. I can't even express my feelings out loud very well. It's so hard to tell my wife how upset I am because it always turns into a fight that I lose. And my marriage, and my parents, and so many other emotionally draining situations have left me helpless and weak and confused, and contributed to my career falling apart, my diminishing friendships, and just overall feeling like shit.

I hate being angry. I hate being sad. But I hate it even more when my wife or someone else is angry or sad and I feel like it's my fault or I can do something to relieve it, so I always put the other person's feelings first and screw myself over. And you know what? That doesn't even work anyway. I am so fucking sick of listening to other people's problems and having to be the strong and supportive person, but always feeling like I can't get that support back from them because they are so fucking screwed up in the first place - that's why they are always falling apart on me. I fucking hate it.

I feel like I have been coming to this board longer than most of the people on here, and used to post really frequently, and have been going to therapy this whole time and working on my issues, but I feel like my life is still as shitty as it was at the beginning. I really do feel like I have made some positive changes in myself, but they are not enough for me to deal with the shit of my wife and her problems and the hole my career has gotten into. It feels pointless and hopeless. I still want kids but my wife will never be able to get her shit together mentally or emotionally, let alone physically, to have kids and the clock has probably run out anyway. And the thing is, I could have been an awesome father, but I don't even know if I could anymore because I am so fucking broken now.

Sorry, this has been an unintelligible rant. I will probably withdraw and detach and go back into hiding again.

Can you give this post to your wife as a letter? Are you comfortable in giving her an ultimatum? She must take responsibility for her own happiness, and not put it as a burden on you.

manuel_moe_g wrote:Can you give this post to your wife as a letter? Are you comfortable in giving her an ultimatum? She must take responsibility for her own happiness, and not put it as a burden on you.

No I can't.
And no, I'm not.
That is why I am stuck.

To be fair, this is about more than her. And she is not putting her happiness as a burden on me, as in I am responsible for making her happy. She is struggling and suffering, I am struggling and suffering. What she is putting on me is the obligation to endure the consequences of the way that she copes with her struggling, no matter how bad it gets.

But I can't do the same to her. Not because she won't let me, I guess. Because I won't let me. Because, somehow, I find a way to keep my shit together more of the time than she is, because I can't afford to fall apart completely.

It hurts to stay like this. It would hurt to leave. I don't have faith that either path would actually lead to improvement and peace. There are things that I have to accept never having if I stay, there are things that I would have to accept losing if I left, and I don't know which of those paths I could actually live with. And their is loss and pain and struggle in other areas of my life that I need love, caring and support for. She tries to give it to me, but overall she sucks more emotional energy out of me with her problems and her behavior than she can provide in support and love. And it really, really hurts to say that, or think that. And it would crush her already low self-esteem if I said that to her that directly, that plainly.

You explained yourself well.

I had and have difficulties with my wife. I had some success with setting boundaries around stuff that was non-negotiable for me to thrive.

You are in a much more difficult situation. You may have to slowly make boundaries around a few strategic things, little by little, that you need to even have the _possibility_ of thriving.

weary wrote:I've been doing the things that you are "supposed" to do to fight this stuff. I have been making lots more time for exercise - running and lifting weights with friends twice a week, going to yoga 1-2x a week, even getting regular massages. My body feels better but not my mind or my heart. I have been trying to engage in activities regularly that give me pleasure and satisfaction - baking, cooking, listening to and playing music, playing video games. I can feel good while I am doing them, but as soon as I stop the channel changes back to the 24 hour shit network again. I am trying to open my heart to let in the little moments of happiness and satisfaction, whether they are at work or with my wife or coming from somewhere unexpected. And sometimes it feels good but it is never enough to get me out from under this cloud.

I loved reading this because it was the first time that I knew that you had the capability to be self-loving. It is like the first very glimmer of light before the dawn.

Please take care. I admire your progress and your commitment to be self-loving in a very difficult situation.

I loved reading this because it was the first time that I knew that you had the capability to be self-loving. It is like the first very glimmer of light before the dawn.

Thank you for saying that; I really appreciate it.
The problem is not about having the capability to be self loving, it is the feeling that it is not acceptable. That it is selfish. That if you do not our everyone else's needs before your own you are a bad person, that you don't love the other person.

I just got back from group therapy and had a bit of a venting session and the therapist said that I have a problem with feeling lovable or deserving of love. This is true. That makes the self loving hard, and it also admittedly makes it hard to accept the loving from my wife, because it is hard to take in the positive things in her behaviors and our relationship because the negative ones are so big and loud and hurtful. I got angry and frustrated because the proposed solution was that I need to focus on the positive aspects of the relationship and not the negative ones. In other words, it's my responsibility to change, not hers. So I have to somehow stop caring about the things that hurt me or the needs that aren't met and just pretend that the good things make everything ok. Isn't that denial? Isn't that subjugation of identity and self worth? Sometimes I feel like my therapist is full of shit. So the fact that my wife smiles and hugs and kisses me and is happy to see me when I get home is supposed to make up for maybe never having kids or an uncluttered house because she can't get her shit together, or when she stays up for 2 days straight and abuses her prescriptions, or doesn't leave the house, shower or get dressed for days at a time?

Yes, it is your responsibility, but with compassion for the self, you can fail in responsibility through no fault of your own and still deserve love. You can fail in your responsability totally, and still deserve love. Fulfilling responsibility is not a precondition to being lovable. Getting love first and getting love always doesn't make the responsibility less real.

You can work on compassion for your wife, or you can work on compassion for yourself - it doesn't matter which you start with because they are different parts of the same thing. Why not work on compassion for yourself, first? A younger version of yourself feels that promises were broken about what life and success is, that part of yourself needs to be hugged and listened to and loved and validated. That younger part of yourself is not bad.

Speaking for myself, the only part of myself that I had to repudiate was the part that thought that a proper response to not getting what I "deserve" was to try to destroy myself. All the other voices of pain I try to hug and sooth and gently guide through the rigors of life, like a loving parent guiding little children through a treacherous woods.

A younger version of yourself feels that promises were broken about what life and success is, that part of yourself needs to be hugged and listened to and loved and validated. That younger part of yourself is not bad.

I am really bad at doing this. There are a lot of losses, real and potential, that I have not had the opportunity to process and mourn. I feel so alone, even though my wife desperately tries to connect and be compassionate, I have a hard time letting her in, because I am so angry and resentful and frustrated towards her. I guess I don't believe the validation, whether it comes from me or from her. I don't believe it anymore when I tell myself that everything is going to be OK, or she tells me that.

Speaking for myself, the only part of myself that I had to repudiate was the part that thought that a proper response to not getting what I "deserve" was to try to destroy myself.

If I can't meet my own needs or get them met, it feels like by definition that makes me a failure, and makes me unworthy, unlovable, whatever. It must be my fault. And therefore I don't deserve to have my needs met after all. It is so fucking hard to not get sucked into that thinking.

It is so hard to trust that love or even friendship is genuine, that it isn't fair-weather, or with strings attached. And I guess that is because I have programming that makes me feel like relationships of all kinds are transaction based - I do x amount for you, then you owe me x amount in return - whether in love, loyalty, service, sex, whatever. That in a "true" friendship or love relationship, each person gives proportionally to what they get out of the interaction. But that is bullshit. So what do you do when you realize that the way you think the world works is wrong?

You may have to slowly make boundaries around a few strategic things, little by little, that you need to even have the _possibility_ of thriving.

I just don't know how to do this anymore (if I ever did).

My god, I want to thrive. I want to thrive professionally (and I do in some areas, but being excellent in one area does not seem to unfortunately compensate for not living up to expectations in another). I want to thrive personally. I want to thrive in friendships, in love, in autonomy. I barely thrive in anything. Just getting by, settling, surviving. It sucks. It sucks to feel like that's all there is and that's all there will ever be.

What happens when you mourn the promises about life and success that were broken? What happens when you listen to the younger version of yourself that howls about these broken promises? I worry that you are beating and beating that younger part of yourself, trying to make it stop howling crying.

What happens when you listen to the younger version of yourself that howls about these broken promises? I worry that you are beating and beating that younger part of yourself, trying to make it stop howling crying.

Replicating the scripts of my childhood. Not literal physical beating, but emotional rejection of those feelings. If I had to identify a single most frequent quotation of my parents from childhood, it would be "nobody ever said life was fair." The message was clear. If you feel sad, angry, disappointed, let down, rejected, whatever, suck it up, stuff it down and get over it. Nobody likes a whiner or a crybaby.

Ironically, I have tried to do the opposite with my wife and with other people over the years, being extremely sensistive to their anger and tears and doing whatever I can do to prevent them from suffering or relieve their suffering, even at great cost to myself. And of course, I can't communicate the pain that it causes me to do that, because then I'm back to being a whiner or a crybaby again.

I want to treat that younger version of myself with compassion, but I am really terrified to do so, because stuffing it down has been a way to maintain control of myself and my life and continue to function as an adult. I am afraid that if I really stop stuffing down those feelings and acknowledge the hurt, the anger, that I will completely fucking fall apart. That I will hurt other people with my rage and my behavior. That I will embarrass myself. That I will cause irreparable damage to my marriage, to my other relationships, to my career, to myself.