Whew! I feel that I have been emotionally stuck for over a decade and a half, and now things are happening so fast the last two days that I can literally feel the pressure in my head. First, to acknowledge some of your recent posts...
Bunny and serena, thanks for your compassionate posts. I think that I haven't felt compassion in so long, I'd forgotten it truly existed anymore. I agree that there is something holding me back from ending my marriage. I don't know exactly what it is yet, but am getting a better idea every day.
Bunny, you asked if I'd had therapy. Yes, individual and group for 7 years. The immediate diagnosis was moderate major depression, but see below for more on that.... Therapy definitely helped, but since S would not participate, I had no way to really address my relationship issues at the time. And in hindsight, I probably wasn't ready then anyway.
Sunnie, you suggested dissociative disorder, but that doesn't really ring true, see below for more...
Guest who suggested "Tears and Healing". Thank you so much. I've ordered the book after reading the excerpts. I think it's exactly what I need right now.
bkkabri. I have been reading your posts on some of these other threads. Hang in there until you figure out which way you want to go. Not to diminish you pain one bit, but it could have been worse. You could have married someone who is violently opposed to personal growth and not realized it until afterwards, and then gone into denial yourself for many years. Trust me, it's something I wouldn't wish on anyone in the world. But, I always look on the bright side, that there's always someone worse off than me out there and there but for the grace of God go I.
Guest and serena about me being a father. I don't feel like I've done a very good job. I've been so stuck in my own stuff that I haven't been there for my daughter the way I really have wanted to be. I've been working on that more recently by spending more time alone with her and talking about some deeper subjects when they come up. She's 16 and pretty mature in a lot of ways for her age, and not so mature in others. She's human too! I think my daughter is the neatest person I know and am completely amazed by her. I try to make sure that I let her know that on a regular basis now.
On the other hand, part of why I stayed in the past was to protect her from her mother. S's mother forced her to be a certain way and S tried to pass that to our daughter. When S would devalue my daughter's feelings or thoughts (after my daughter came and shared them openly with us, how great is that!), I would tell my daughter that I had some of the same feelings/thoughts, or that everyone is unique and has their own feelings and isn't that great. S stopped doing those things after a few years, in front of me at least. I did find out during this last year that S had told my daughter that since she didn't feel comfortable talking with me, that if my daughter didn't feel comfortable talking with me, she didn't have to. Ouch, no wonder there had been more distance between my daughter and I than I liked. When I talked with my daughter about this, she had no problem talking with me, and once it was out in the open, we have been a lot closer. I could go on more in this vein, since I've realized that I still have a lot of anger toward S for interfering and sabotaging the relationship between my daughter and I. She would get in the way and insist on acting as a go between when there was any conflict between my daughter and I. I finally told her to butt out and that if she had any caring for, or wanted it to look like she cared about our daughter, she needed to let us work things out between us. Turns out that's been no problem at all, S was creating all the problems based on her fears of her own past. Well, that's a rant for you....
For just about everyone who posted, I have only just gotten started looking for the love of my life. While it is remotely possible it is the person I am married to, I really doubt it. Most of the feelings of being soulmates while we were dating were based on her lying that she agree 100% with whatever I said. I have realized that one thing which has kept me here is the hope that if I can work my issues out, then so can she. However, my preferred method for working things out these days is awareness and hard work. Form what I have seen, hers is still heavy denial. I think my way has a better chance of success. Another thing which has kept me in this situation (technically marriage) is the fear of what she will do when divorcing. If she was that nasty when we were married and she was "trying" then what will it be like. Not an excuse, I know.
Alright onto the latest news. While surfing the internet, I have run across two things that fit me to a T.
Avoidant Personality Disorder. I don't know how I missed this in the past. I'm sure I must have seen this information before, but maybe just wasn't ready for it. Have you had the experience where you "discover" something only to find that you knew about it years ago, but just didn't really pay any attention to it at the time? Anyway, this fits so much it's scary.
My parents never, ever talked about their feelings. At least not whenever I was around. They also never, ever supported my feelings. Even as a kid, I was to scared to meet people, like guests they sometimes had in. They didn't really talk about it, but I think others made comments like "Oh, he's shy." When I tried to talk to them about being bullied at school, I usually got something like "you'll have to figure out a way to deal with it." I got no emotional/social teaching, no examples or demonstrations and no support. I literally believed that I was an alien who did not belong on this planet. The kind of world that I pictured from my parents made no sense to me at all. Here I was, a little kid of 6-8 when I was trying to figure all this out, with no help at all from my parents.
My father was so nonexistant that it was like he wasn't there even when he was physically home. I remember my mother being angry and critical most of the time. Basically, my therapist said that he believed they were both clinically depressed. My dad the more typical withdrawn type, and my mother depressed with anxiety.
I have a pretty good relationship with my parents now (after counseling), but we still can't really talk about what things were like back then. The only thing my mother will say is that "You wouldn't let us hold you." At this point I can't imagine parents not wanting to hold and love their baby. I'm still not sure whether what she says is true, or if its guilt/justification. It is easy for me to picture her being too wrapped up in her own pain to even notice me, let alone have the energy to soothe me. If it is true that I didn't want them to hold me, then I wonder whether it could have been a touch of something like Asperger's, or if I was aware enough on some level to know that my parents weren't safe to be around. I remember one time when I must have been around 2 years old, going into their room and asking to get up in bed with them. I remeber them saying no, and telling me to go back to my room. Now, I'm sure that it was early on a weekend morning, but still, I have a hard time understanding that. I was doing my best to express that I felt lonely and needed comfort and got nothing. On the way back to my room I got a chair, pulled it up to the closet, and pulled down a soft blanket and took that back to my room with me. That became my security blanket for quite a few years. I don't remember asking my parents for that kind of emotional support again until I was a teenager. It didn't really happen then, either. OK, the censor part of my brain is telling me that this is too long and depressing, but I'm deliberately ignoring it for now.
The other thing I found was HSP, Highly Sensitive Person. This is pretty new, and not established in official therapy circles or the DSM guide. Basically, it says that everyone has different sensitivity to stimulus from a biological perspective. Some of us are more sensitive. I remember as a little child my parents taking me to a high school baskteball in the old style gymnasium. I remember putting my hands over my ears and telling them over and over agian that it was too loud, until we left early. It's still like that today. Where some people go to the crowded club with the flashing lights and the loud music and find it exciting, I feel like I'm in a horror movie, where there's nowhere to turn and something jumping out at me everywhere I go.
Of course, by the time I got to school, I was bullied a lot. I felt overwhelmed as it was. Of course, I reacted when I got bullied. Basically, my face would turn bright red when I got angry. I couldn't understand why those kids wouldn't leave me alone. After all, I just wanted to be their friend. The teachers told me that it took two to tango and that I must be causing them to bully me. Argh! They told me to not react. In otherwords, suppress your feelings so your face doesn't turn red when you are angry. Even though it wasn't a conscious action, I unfortunately did find a way to supress my feelings. It took the first almost 2 years of therapy before I could really just talk. Before that it was like trying to talk through the eye of a needle.
I remember telling my therapist that I felt like I was more sensitive and couldn't shut things out very well, that I was distracted and disrupted by things more than other people. He just brushed it off and said that he didn't think I was more sensitive than anyone else. I think more than ever that there is something to it. HSP is correlated to shyness and introversion, but not directly lcaused/causal.
I think that I developed the ability to hyperfocus to compensate for all the stimulus that I get. I can watch TV and not even hear what my wife says. Ok, Ok, maybe that's a man thing.
Serisously though, when I concentrate that way, I lose track of everything else around me, including my sense of time passing. You have to get my attention first, or I won't hear a word you say. In fact, I wouldn't even notice that you had come into the room. I can sing one song while another plays on the radio without a problem. I think this hyperfocus is the primary thing that has allowed me to be successful in school and at work. When in that state, I literally don't experience anything else. Funny, I guess that's my own form of denial, to not experience it in the first place. Anyway, the down sides of this hyperfocus are that I'm not aware of myself physically or emotionally. I get neck and headaches from sitting in one position for hours. I obviously am not connected with anyone else, even in a mental/emotional connection way during this time. Also, it's exhausting and I can't keep it up forever. When I stop, then everything seems to come crashing back in and it's hard to cope again. In the meantime, I haven't been even remotely emotionally connected with myself or others. I've really come to see the downsides of this and have been thinking about changing careers to something more people oriented that won't require that level of focus.
This HSP seems so familiar to me and makes so much sense. Between being more sensitive than average to my environment, coupled with an emotionally neglectful environment, coupled with getting bullied at school, would leave me in a state not really believing that true intimacy is possible. In fact, I still unconsciously believe that people are basically out to get me and noone cares enough to stand up for me. Throw in my poor choice of spouses and it's no wonder I am where I am today. Sheesh!
longtire
