News that made me mad/sad

[EternalHippo]

This morning I was preparing for a run.  I heard my DH speaking to SIL on FaceTime.  SIL shares news that BIL is planning to move to the city where we live.  SIL makes comment, "Then we would come visit every 2 months."  DH says, "That would be too much."  MIL (who was apparently in the background the whole time) laughs.  I start crying and slam the door on the way out for my run.  Most of that was to relieve my feelings but some of it was passive aggressive.  My DH and I are still working on our ability to have a conversation about his family without said behaviors.  I feel like I failed this morning.

It feels my ILs can see me and my DH doing well and want to come in the way of that.  While I am angry at them, my strong emotions come from fear and past actions of my DH.  He and I have moments we have not healed from the past.  I'm afraid of abandonment and of feeling the way I felt when I made the mistake of agreeing to live in his home town.  There I felt so alone and saw a side of my DH that hurt me deeply - he was caught up in his family's dynamic.  I think I had to go through that to learn and get where I am now.

He and I have been making strides.  I am afraid this is going to undo all the work we've done.  I am hurt that I am doubting my DH so much.  I am hurt at this reminder of how much work I have left to do. 

[bloomie]

EternalHippo - I cannot know this for sure, but it sounds like you may have been triggered by the conversation you overheard and had a bit of a trauma type response... fight, flight, flea, fawn are the 4 F's. It is completely understandable that you would possibly feel that something of ultimate value to you - your marriage and the hard work you and your H have done to repair and restore it - is threatened by overhearing that the cast of characters that brought such pain to your life may have found a way to attempt to return on a regular basis. 

I found myself dealing with emotional flashbacks like this for quite a while and though it has gotten much better it still happens. Something that was really helpful for me was to learn to recognize triggers and when I was having a flashback to a time when I was feeling hopeless and believed myself to be helpless and stuck - at the mercy of divisive and toxic behaviors from my H's family as he was deeply FOGGED. 

Having an honest and understandably strong response and finding yourself in the midst of a great deal of fear is not a failure. It is human and can be handled with deep compassion toward yourself. Your response is telling you some important things and if you listen and are willing to sort through, I am betting you will find a way to talk things through with your H in a way that will build up the relationship. This is a snapshot of how hard all of this with his family and his own choices have been for you and on you. It's real and it is raw.

When I respond out of character and flash like this, I have learned to drive right through the catastrophizing and self blame and an immediate type of abandonment of myself. Because if I get stuck there I will lose an opportunity to better understand and work with my emotions. I have learned that this is when I need to stay with myself, trust myself, and hear what my response indicating to me the very most. (I hope this is making sense?)

The work of Pete Walker around complex PTSD and flashbacks, in particular, is something I return to often. Here is a link to his work: http://pete-walker.com/13StepsManageFlashbacks.htm

Sending strength your way!

[EternalHippo]

Bloomie, you are exactly right about the EF.  I just finished reading Pete Walker's book.  Complex PTSD captures my experience and understanding this is still new to me.  It helps but has also opened up some wounds. 

Earlier I was reflecting how my journey has gone.  It started by understanding and accepting that I am an introvert and highly sensitive person.  My family shamed me for this so accepting it was the first step.  Then I took more time realizing and acknowledging that my family's shame was often neglect and sometimes abuse. I then was able to understand trauma and how it has altered my brain.  And now I see that at the root of it all is deep feelings abandonment that keep getting triggered by family and work and other things.  I just recognized this week that my job is constantly triggering EFs - I had always understood my challenges as being related to being an introvert.  They might have been somewhat but it is more correct to realize I am being sent back to a time when I was a little girl being punished for speaking up and having my own will.

My growth in understanding has shifted my relationship with my husband in positive ways.  His family still gets to me and I've noticed lately that it feels like they are out looking for blood.  They have been trying to be nice to me and yet I can't be fooled.  They don't do things out of the kindness of their heart. 

This is another step on my journey.  I appreciate the support.

[Pepin]

It feels my ILs can see me and my DH doing well and want to come in the way of that.  While I am angry at them, my strong emotions come from fear and past actions of my DH.  He and I have moments we have not healed from the past.  I'm afraid of abandonment and of feeling the way I felt when I made the mistake of agreeing to live in his home town.  There I felt so alone and saw a side of my DH that hurt me deeply - he was caught up in his family's dynamic.  I think I had to go through that to learn and get where I am now.

Like you, it was a huge mistake on my end to agree to move to where DH grew up.  I cannot believe how naive I was to think that it was the right thing to do and that we would be received well and given support.  Initially we were and then everything fell...I have never felt so devastated....and embarrassed.  I feel stupid.  How is it that I couldn't see what was about to happen?  I have felt completely abandoned as a result.

Today, I am in a different place.  I have worked hard to detach myself from DH's family.  I have also learned to put myself first...so much so that if something were to happen in our marriage or to DH, I would be able to easily move forward....and probably I would be smiling.  Because I would be relieved and free.

Don't get me wrong, I love my husband very much.  But I am in love with a different man....the man I used to know....not the man that is bogged down with obligations to PDmil and other members of the family. 

The only thing I can offer is continued self care.  Focus on yourself.  Give yourself what it is that you want that others cannot give you.  Fill your time with that and I am certain that no one will be able to hurt you. 

And....massive boundaries with the above.  I rarely visit PDmil and absolutely no to other family members.  DH can go on his own.  And our kids are old enough now and have sniffed out the toxicity. 

[roughdiamonds1]

I very much agree with all that Bloomie said.

You're not failing at all by having a human moment where you have tapped back into old pain. It's an absolutely natural response.

I had a similar outburst this week, though mine involved ugly crying and sobbing on the street outside my house a passer by actually stopping to see if I was okay! All because my NC ILs are suddenly pressuring to make contact with me again. Just the thought of seeing them again caused a complete meltdown.

The one thing I might suggest is that when you're in that trauma response, or you're extremely triggered, it's not the time to necessarily make decisions. Be gentle with yourself, give yourself time, and allow the huge wave of emotions to pass without judgement. Then see where you're at after that. I think the key as Bloomie said is to stay with yourself and trust yourself and figure out what your response is telling you.

For me, when I think about my NC MIL, I don't have a big stress response but I'm not sitting comfortably about it. But I have a HUGE fight or flight response when I think about my NC SIL. It tells me that now is not the right time to see them.

[UglyLove666]

hi, eternalHippo.  I'm sorry about your experience (i can SOOOO relate!) but happy to read that you're learning from Pete Walker. I am working my way through his C-PTSD book right now, and my DH is reading it with me. I believe that you should be proud of yourself for having the courage to do self-work, and the fact that you understand emotional flashbacks is, IMO, leaps and bounds beyond what those troubled ILs could even begin to approach in terms of self-awareness, sadly. I'm fading out from contact with ILs and DH is going very, very low contact - but it's a pretty new experience for us.

At this very minute, I am riding out an EF of my own, and so I took a deep breath and decided to login to the forum and here was your post. After reading through your post and the replies, I am starting to feel calmer. The cliff notes version of my EF that hit me this afternoon is due to the fact that my DH went to visit MIL and SIL, and has been gone much longer than he said he would be. I am only about 50 pages into Pete Walker's book, but this is not my first therapy rodeo (I've read tons of books and had all kinds of therapy) so I am able to recognize that my feelings of abandonment are being triggered along with some other icky stuff.

It is amazing how I can be in our kitchen preparing 'extended holiday weekend food' by myself while he is gone; just normal stuff... Then I look up at the clock and realize he's not back at home at the time we agreed upon, so I start to picture the worst. One minute I'm just humming to myself happily and the next minute I'm plunged right back to my neglect/abuse/abandonment childhood.

Reading about your (and others') experiences makes me realize that I am not a failure for having these reactions or emotions. It's what happens. We do get triggered this way, especially when we know people who have been abusive toward us (and in our case, my DH has been the victim of his mother's abuse also) are looming closer. Hearing a voice (a sarcastic, cackling laugh), seeing a photo, sometimes even a text message - those things can send me right into an EF.

Please know that you are totally normal, sweetheart, and you will get stronger and stronger. Allow yourself to be human who experiences a range of emotions. You've clearly been through a lot. Nobody deserves to be treated unfairly. I am really sorry this happened to you.

[Leonor]

Oh, EH, that would send me over the edge too.

But feeling the pain and identifying the wound and tending to the healing *is* the work. That is not failure- that is what healing looks like.

There's no finish line in healing. There's no check box. There's no medal. There's no end of year grade.

Healing is everyday, like breathing is everyday. Like eating is every day. Getting mad at yourself for "having to" heal is like getting mad at yourself for being tired when you just went to sleep yesterday.

Every day you heal is an opportunity to let that little child who was so abandoned and hurt to know that *she* is important, that *she* matters very much, and if she does not want to  be nice to grownups who are mean to her, she doesn't have to. She doesn't have to be nice or polite or well-behaved or act like whatever. Instead you can take her out for a run or a walk or an ice cream cone.

And grown-up EH can close the door behind her, knowing that DH us a grown-up and he can deal with the ils, you're busy doing something you enjoy with a very, very special person ... You.

(PS I admire you. If I heard dh say "that's too much" I'd probably chime in with something loud like "every other year once hell freezes over and pigs fly would be too @#$ much!")

[UglyLove666]

 

Keep moving forward, all4peace. You're doing great!!!