I don't know. I have to figure out some way to do this or I am not going to make it.




He just did...take it, that is.

Once it stopped (today), and he was away from me, he did tell me in an e-mail that he felt consumed with rage and even screamed while he was alone in his car.

He's completely justified.

However, the anger and rage seemed to magically dissipate when he was around me and he suddenly says he has no negative feelings towards me.

Sick as it sounds, I actually advised him, in future situations such as these (should they occur), to say to me "When you are willing to be respectful, I will respond to you. While you continue to be disrespectful, I will not".

Crazy.

froz, I just gotta say...
you're pretty hard on yourself... you know that?

Wow, and I was refraining!

Acutally that is not sick, that will likely work to shut you down. Let's talk about self soothing a bit. One of the things that work for me is to get away from the sit a bit to cool down and I have to stay away from MB or I get even angrier. I think that is because there is so much pain here it just adds to my rage. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> I have found that finding something to make me laugh helps. What works for you?

It doesn't sound sick?

It kinda seemed to me like making him responsible for controlling me. My mindset when I said it was that I wanted him to protect himself, even when I wasn't (protecting him). Obviously, it would be better if I would just do it myself, but at the time I just wanted the job done in any way.

As far as self-soothing goes, when in doubt and you don't have the answers...there's always GOOGLE!

Found this...

Self-soothing is taking deliberate steps to calm oneself while facing a stressful situation. Often this can involve traditional stress management techniques such as relaxation, deep breathing or healthy self-talk.

Besides just the goal of outwardly handling a situation appropriately, self-soothing has a deeper purpose that can be different from traditional stress management: to calm oneself enough in the anxious situation in order to do the self-confronting.


What is self-confronting (I didn't exactly know)?

The idea here is to ask yourself why you are upset and learn what this tells you about yourself. Specifically, what is your growth issue in this situation? One example of this can be, "Am I depending on someone else to validate my sense of self-worth?", "Do I have my sense of myself too heavily invested in this situation, so that when it changes I may lose myself?".

Once you've identified where you need to grow, the next step is to figure out what the "hard thing" is that you need to do to grow, and make yourself do it. Make yourself respond to the situation in accordance with your core values and beliefs and depend on those for your self validation.

Example 1: Joan
Joan has a supervisor, Al, who is driving her nuts. Al is frequently in a bad mood and when he comes into the office, Joan's stomach knots up and she feels herself get tense all over. It has gone on long enough that Joan is noticing that she doesn't sleep as well. She is tired when she gets up in the morning and on top of it, is starting to hate going into a job that she used to enjoy. It has just happened again, and Joan decides that enough is enough. [Joan has reached "critical mass", the point at which she really decides that she has to do something about the situation, but isn't sure what.]

Self Soothing:
Joan mentally takes a step back
Closes her eyes
Takes a deep breath
Self Confronting:
Joan asks herself some questions that seem at first to be silly:

Q: Why do I get uptight when he walks into the room?
A: I'm bracing for a possible attack.
Q: Why am I afraid of a possible attack?
A: Because I don't like being made to feel that I'm stupid or a bad child.
Q: Do I need him to validate that I'm not stupid or that I am competent?

Joan mulls this one over for a few minutes and decides...

A: NO! Although he is my supervisor and he does evaluate me as such, he doesn't get to decide in my mind whether or not I'm stupid or competent. I know that I am competent. Further, I know that I am a good worker whether he thinks so or not.

Conclusion: Joan decides that her view of herself is not as dependent on her boss' opinion as she thought, and sees herself in a new light. As a part of this new view of herself, she decides that she needs to ask Al to not treat her rudely anymore.

Self Soothing:
Joan talks to herself in her mind:
"I am a competent worker even if he doesn't agree!"
"I don't have to make his problem my problem."
"I can get through this as a mature adult."


Self Confronting:
[Out loud] "Al, I need to talk with you about something..."


Comments on the example:

We don't know where the situation will go from here. Joan doesn't know, and there are no guarantees for any of us. The main point here is that Joan took her resiliency and maturity up a notch by doing two things:

Deciding not to depend as much on what others think of her for her self image
Standing up for herself where she might not have before.
While Joan confronts Al and follows up on this, she will initially feel a lot of anxiety. In time, however, Joan will begin to feel herself less vulnerable to the stress of the situation. Al may never change, and Joan may eventually leave the position. But with her view of herself being different, Joan will feel more freedom of choice about how to respond.

Alternate Scenarios

There are many other questions Joan could have asked herself that would have gone in many different directions. For example, if Joan has a history of working with people who are angry around her, she might confront herself about whether or not she contributes to the problem. In acting on this possibility she might make herself vulnerable and ask Al if she does anything to feed this pattern of conflict.

Example 2: Jorge
Jorge's department has lost several workers. As a result, he finds that he is doing the work of three people. His supervisor, however, is still expecting him to get all of his work done on time. To compensate, Jorge is coming in earlier, skipping lunch and staying later. But he's starting to wear out and is becoming resentful of his supervisor and others who don't seem to recognize the load he's managing or to care. What he thought was a temporary situation is becoming routine life, and Jorge's resiliency is being depleted.

Self Soothing:
Reminds himself that not meeting unreasonable deadlines is not a true reflection of his character
Reminds himself that he decides what his integrity is based on, not other people
Reminds himself that he is diligent in his work
Reminds himself that he will leave the job before he loses his sense of himself.
Self Confronting:
Jorge realizes that he is letting his work consume him; he needs to start taking back his life:
Starts taking his lunch break again, and leaves the building completely
Goes back to his old, normal schedule (40 hours, no more)
Closes his door when he has to focus and not get distracted
Decides that he needs to remind his superiors that this situation cannot continue indefinitely because of what its costing him and the department
Begins to think of solutions he can suggest and timelines for implementation
Adjusts his self-expectations back to a reasonable level while maintaining his attitude as a team player.

Good stuff froz. Much like Pep has asked FL to do..identify what is causing her anxiety at the moment she is feeling it. Finding our triggers I suppose

Yikes!!!

Patriot is out of town until Wednesday and to keep thoughts occupied, I decided to do some home improvement projects that have been on my list.

I'm REALLY good at painting, faux finishing, and wall texturing, but my brilliant self thought to surprise him by taking the accoustic texture off the ceiling and re-texturing and painting it and re-painting the living room.

WHAT A MESS!!!!

I don't even know what to do now. I have about 1/4 of the accoustic crap off the ceiling in the living room. Most of it is on me! I'm not kidding - I am sitting here covered in it. Chunks of it are hanging from my hair and my face.

I hope he doesn't read this, but you are supposed to wet the ceiling, so I got the garden hose and put a sprayer attachment on it and brought it in the house and went to town.

I don't even want to go back in that nightmare of a living room.

He's going to be surprised, alright!

I wish I had some help. I should have waited to do this when he was here to help me.

I feel like crawling back into bed. I don't even care if I get this stuff all over the sheets.

I'm never going to make it through the next two days. I wish he were home.

Froz, tell me you are wearing a respirator while working with that stuff? Some of it has abestos in it. Hopefully this does not. Get a dry/vet vaccuum and clean up the mess. You will make it through and truly I am impressed you took on such a big project.

I didn't wear a respirator, but the stuff was really, really wet (garden hose, remember).

I hope I didn't breathe in a bunch of yucky stuff, because I'm asthmatic.

I really bit off more than I could chew, as is customary. I called Patriot and he talked some sense into me. I am going to leave the living room, as is, until he gets home to help me. The only thing bad about that is that I really, really, really wanted to surprise him.

I talked to Patriot for a while, went to the gym, sat in the sauna and went to the grocery store and I am feeling much better now.

I was reading a book I purchased some time ago while I was in the sauna. It's called Receiving Love . It talks a lot about Imago Relationship Therapy, though I don't know if it is a good method or not. I haven't even gotten very far in it, but so far my name is figuratively written in just about every sentence. It would be nice if it made a difference for me.

I am so mentally and physically exhausted tonight.

Sometimes this feels like such a sinking ship, like it was doomed before it even started. No matter what we try, it always seems to end up right back to this big hopeless spot.

Missed you. So did he help you fix the livingroom? What's up? Want to vent or talk?

It is very nice to hear that I was missed...thank you for that.

He did more than help fix the living room. He did it all while I was at work.

I did clean up the mess. It took about a week. He helped me a lot, even when he was very sick last week with strep throat. He's feeling better now, though we are really having a rough couple of days.

As far as talking, I just feel so unbelievably alone and afraid.

Froz, sorry had a really, really busy day at work. I always look for your posts but have been remiss in keeping up with you.

Email if you want to talk off the boards. Still busy but hopefully not as bad today.

No need to apologize for having a life. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I understand.

Things have been pretty rocky. I won't go into specifics, as I don't wish to speak more freely than Patriot is comfortable with.

Sometimes it's difficult when your FWH posts here, too. Not that I wish he wouldn't read or post here. In fact, I wish he would post more often so he could get support and/or feedback. I'm just saying it sometimes makes things complicated because I have to be more cautious about what I say.


We just never seem to get past a certain point in Recovery and sometimes it just feels like we are closer to the beginning, instead of a year + post D-Day.

There was an incident. It hurt me a lot and hurt even more that I perceive that he hid it from me. He may hold a different opinion about it - I don't know.

It makes me feel so terrified, and I am so torn between feeling like I want to reassure him and feeling like I want to hide from him so he won't hurt me anymore.

What he did hurt me and in addition, the dishonesty hurts me VERY MUCH! It hurts me to my very core and makes me feel so unsafe. It also makes me feel rejected because it feels as though he doesn't trust me enough to show me who he really is.

We are supposed to have MB study tonight. I guess we will, but I don't really see the point. I am too afraid to let myself be close to him and it makes me angry and I don't want to learn how I can better protect HIM and make him feel safer, much less meet his needs.

I just want to heal and I'm so tired of being stuck.

Thanks for the ear. I do appreciate it.

{{{Froz}}}
I so totally relate to the above statement. The dishonesty hurts so much and does so much damage. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> I really don't know what to say except I think Pat has some walls that still need to come down. I have such hope for you two.

It feels nice to talk to you.

I feel very, very lonely.

Thank you for always talking to me.

You are a very special person little slushy, don't you know that? I enjoy talking to you. Funny how some things in life have a common thread. The lonliness has echoed in my life for a long time too. That is one of the reasons I like this place and my other cyber friends. I can "talk" them anytime and then I am not so alone.

Thanks for the compliment. I want to argue with you, but I won't. I'll just say thank you for saying that.

How do you know when it's time to just leave?

Not sure, but I think it is when you know in your heart you have done and tried everything. You can't make those decisions when your emotions are on the down swing..I think you need to make them when you are thinking clearly not reacting. Does that make sense? How is your love bank balance? Are you two talking about this?

Yes.



Honesty & Openness is #1 and it's pretty low. Conversation (#2) feels rather low, too. We did talk some last night for MB Study Night. We read from a book and had conversations on it, but the time went too fast for me and then he fell asleep.



I'm not sure what you mean. Talking about the incident? Talking about how I feel? Talking about honesty?

We did discuss the incident. He knows how I am feeling. As far as honesty and openness go, I guess all he could really do was say "From now on...", which I have heard many times.

I want to be understanding and I want to be patient. I do understand why it is difficult for him, but it still hurts me very much. It makes it almost impossible to trust him or believe anything he says.

If he won't protect me, when is it acceptable to take measures to protect myself? How can I protect myself in a marriage and still be a "vessel"? They seem like conflicting concepts.

I'm really not sure what to do.