SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I need help with how to end treating my BS based on how I was treated growing up? It is very damaging and creating major road blocks for any dialogue or resolve. Especially when it comes to triggery situations. I am really annoyed by this and need any ideas on stopping it. What I am doing is not working.

I think we might be able to help if you provide some examples or more specific insight to what "treated growing up" would mean.

Generally speaking, Behaviors and communication are a result of our thoughts. I read a book called "The power of now" by Eckhart Tolle (I am a broken record at this point but this book was an important one for me in how to go about some of my work) He talks a lot about being a conscious observer of our thoughts and how to develop that as an awareness. When I could dispel some of the stories I told myself I could react differently. It's probably the hardest part of the work because how do you monitor yourself when you don't even know what you are monitoring? He helps you understand that a bit.

Slowing down and journaling each day - about what motivates us to do certain things that day. Not just the things that are pleasant to the ear, but the uglier stuff. And then thinking about where that comes from and why. Self analysis is difficult but if you practice it, eventually you will see your behavior will change because you are cleaning up from the inside ---and that's what is guiding all of us.

I don't know what you have done to resolve your past trauma in childhood, but you may need additional professional resources for that.

Agreed, some specific examples would be helpful.

What HikingOut said is correct, it is a matter of conscience effort and choice. For me, it also took a lot of introspection in order to understand the nature of my responses.

For example, I am very sensitive to criticism of pretty much any kind, however it is really bad when I feel as though I've done something "stupid" or "weak". Something as simple as missing a turn while driving, and having someone point it out to me, would really send me reeling. I would go into a mixture of deep shame, embarrassment and anger.

I'm not sure what your FOO was like. For me, there was a lot of bullying, teasing, and demeaning. I was made to feel stupid and useless over every little thing, from my name, to my weight, my clothes, the things I enjoyed... you name it. So when I did make a mistake, it was 100 times worse, and it made me feel as though I just went and proved all my abusers right, that I WAS stupid and useless, and that... made me VERY angry and defensive.

Flash forward, and if my wife made a simple comment such as, "You missed the turn" I would go into a rage.

In order to stop this destructive pattern, I had to understand it first. Then I was able to make a conscious decision to reprogram myself. When I found myself going into a rage over feeling stupid, I needed to stop, recognize the thoughts and name them, and then choose a different way of looking at it. This is not easy, at all. And at first, it seems useless. Over time however, those new messages started to take root. When they did, there was noticeable improvement in my thoughts and reactions when something happened. I get less angry, I calm down faster, and in most cases, I don't even get angry in the first place, because I can now see that mistakes are just that - just a simple mistake.

One more question - is it just your BS that you feel you react badly to? If so, have you asked yourself why?

being a conscious observer of our thoughts and how to develop that as an awareness. When I could dispel some of the stories I told myself I could react differently.

This.

In order to stop this destructive pattern, I had to understand it first. Then I was able to make a conscious decision to reprogram myself.

And this.

Both are incredibly difficult to do when you are stuck in shame. And both are difficult to do alone. If you have access to it I recommend CBT therapy to help learn the tools to do these things. If you don't, CBT is a therapy you can read about and put into practice. "Feeling Good" is supposed to be a great resource for that.

There is also EMDR which I just started. I can't speak highly enough about what this kind of therapy has done for me. It literally reprograms your brain and unblocks all the traumas we keep hidden in our body. It's weird and a bunch of voodoo but damn of it doesn't work. If there are specific aspects of your FOO that you are replaying despite your best attempts to do better I recommend giving it a try. This however is something you can't do on your own.

I really appreciate the responses here. I posted this at work so i wasn't able to get all of the details out, but i will definitely explain. I am the youngest of 6 with two emotionally avoidant parents. My Mother lacks empathy, lives through us as her children, and has a ton of narcissistic traits. She confessed to me recently that she was unhappy her entire 40 year marriage with my Dad and blamed him for her unhappiness. She loves to play victim(i picked up), and is controlling(me too) as heck. My Dad was abandoned by his mother at birth grew up from house to house and seemed very depressed during my childhood. He was plagued with health problems and dared to ever talk about his feelings(me too). He was a huge people pleaser(me too) and hustled for his worth(me too) the way i see it. My Mom was the worst for me with her demand for ever thing to be "perfect." I lived my life to do everything perfect and if i didn't do things right, i was not good enough. It put so much fear in me as a child to where i would sweat bullets and eat my feelings away to avoid getting in trouble if i messed something up. I would get ignored or come off as a bother and beaten if i wouldn't stop doing things that i shouldn't. I had no voice with them and eventually would just shut my true self off to be anything or do anything for their approval.

My Mom was belittling and verbally abusive to me too. Fast forward to now....Anytime my BS says expresses that I may have done something (in my mind not to perfection) even as small as "The food has too much salt in it," I literally go into a panic and shutdown and have this all or nothing thinking. I would respond with "I will just not use any salt at all." DD i am the same with driving. If i make the wrong exit or anything that is deemed not safe and get called out, i will start going frantic and making excuses. I put my head down like a child who did something wrong then to try to apologize for it but i sound like a scripted robot. My body feels like i am having hot flashes and i can hear by heart racing. I pretty much shut down. I feel like i can't do anything right and my thoughts go dark like it's the end of everything for me. My siblings are not necessarily pleasant either. I only get along with my oldest sister who has been really supportive throughout this process.

With my BS, I say things that kind of come off cold or just sit and stare and say nothing at all like my Mom would do to me. I hate it. I read the feeling good therapy book, but i will read it again because at the time that i read it, i was not in a good headspace. I see my IC on Tuesday, so i will see CBT help. In the meantime, i can get after what i can learn and try on my own time. I will buy "The Power of Now" book. Thanks HikingOut.

I am learning to understand my patterns Fearful. It's like my subconscious mind kicks in high gear like "Hey, you are doing those negative patterns again." Most of the time i make the mistake of ignoring it and doing the dumb stuff anyway. I feel like i have kicked the door in on this just a little. It's just not smart anymore to hold these thoughts in anymore. I will never get passed this if i don't.

I do want to add it's worse with my BS, but it also affects me just as worse with my family. I can handle constructive criticism at work, but only with a gentle approach. Anything more than that, i get a little frantic and go in circles on what to do to fix whatever i felt i did wrong.

[This message edited by ChanceAtLife35 at 12:08 AM, February 27th (Thursday)]

Practicing mindfulness. Take a breath and listen to your wife. If you are formulating a defensive response, you are not listening. That helps you to stay mindful and listen. Take time away from the FOO sources. Putting boundaries and speaking out on that front helped immensely. Now that you see it, practice the integrity there. If you are anything like me that grew up in a similar home...your wife is the complete opposite. Take cues from her and remind yourself she has your best interest at heart. Stop sulking and learn how to participate with her in an adult way. My wife finally just got fed up with it that she gave me an ultimatum and to stay I just had to do the hard work and grow up fast. Pretty much along the lines of she didn't want to be married to a child so start communicating like an adult or leave.

My Mom was belittling and verbally abusive to me too. Fast forward to now....Anytime my BS says expresses that I may have done something (in my mind not to perfection) even as small as "The food has too much salt in it," I literally go into a panic and shutdown and have this all or nothing thinking. I would respond with "I will just not use any salt at all."

I can relate to this. I probably didn't go as far as to say "I will just not use any salt at all" but I was hypersensitive to criticism or if I made him mad I didn't know what to do. In my house, you went away and came back when mom was calmer. So, I would avoid rather than defend. But the level of abuse may have been worse in your situation.

My mother's criticism really spurred my perfectionist tendencies. It meant that I would beat myself up for not being pleasing rather than speaking up. I would look at anything I did as representative of me, and if it wasn't perfect it was so humiliating. So, that meant I was always doing some sort of perfecting of something. I couldn't have friends over if my house wasn't cleaned from top to bottom for example.

Anyway, I didn't mean to go into all that, but I wanted to at least say I relate to what you have described. I think Zug is right, try and be mindful. In this case try and reframe what she is saying and why. That takes time to master. It's not too hard to learn new pat phrases in the meantime to replace old ones. "Oh I am sorry about that", "I thought so too, I guess I got heavy handed that time" "Okay, I will take that into consideration". The pat phrases will allow you to feel comfortable with responding until you can learn to reframe what is being said.

DD i am the same with driving. If i make the wrong exit or anything that is deemed not safe and get called out, i will start going frantic and making excuses. I put my head down like a child who did something wrong then to try to apologize for it but i sound like a scripted robot. My body feels like i am having hot flashes and i can hear by heart racing. I pretty much shut down. I feel like i can't do anything right and my thoughts go dark like it's the end of everything for me.

I relate to that too. Some pat phrases could be "I am overwhelmed right now please give me a few minutes to regroup". You just need to have some place holder there so you have time to process it. This will create at least a better dynamic for you guys.

This doesn't yet fix the problem, so I would recommend continuing working on this in therapy. You need some tangible things from them that can help you feel that your self worth is not based on being perfect. You need to resolve the thoughts behind these things. Self talk is a difficult thing to reprogram. I would ask myself if I were your best friend what would I tell you in this moment? Would you talk to your best friend the way you are talking to yourself? We are hardest on ourselves. You are reacting to what you are telling yourself, not your wife.

My siblings are not necessarily pleasant either. I only get along with my oldest sister who has been really supportive throughout this process.

Yeah, same here. My sister needs 3 Xanax's to go to a restaurant to eat. She is pissy and her anger is always on the surface. She displays many of the narcissistic traits my mother does. I have looked into it and I think that what was wrong all along. My mother was/is a narc. She makes everything, and I do mean everything about her. There is a lot of reading material out there about dynamics they have with their children. My sister was the scapegoat child, I was the golden child. It's not that I wasn't abused, but I think I had slightly more balance than my sister was given. I love her, but I can't interact with her for long because it's like she is from a different planet.

Chanceatlife,

I was always 'emotionally constipated' as my BW would say, looking for validation form others, never wanting to say 'no', etc.

One thing I learned in IC that helped me start to improve post D-Day was I would share only with my BW what I was thinking/feeling about a specific topic - strictly as a vent. I wasn't looking for advice, or a response from her. Just for her to hear me. It started off slow but I got better and just venting - I would complain about my younger son's attitude or whatever about someone at work. I felt better. I didn't act on what i was venting, I was just venting. In time though I started to ask for my Bw's opinion. Then we started discussing.

Baby steps.

Zugz you nailed it with every word said. I should know better by now about the extreme importance of mindfulness. Again, I know the backstory, I have all the answers. I admit I have been obsessing over my FOO stuff. I have sat with it, but I am holding to tight on it. It's the emotional process that I have to complete. It actually gets in the way more than it should.

HikingOut, I am sorry you had to go through that experience. You said some things that I do too especially with the house needing to be cleaned before people came over. I know I am too hard on myself. It's way overdue to push the stop button on it. I am so overwhelmingly exhausted right now, but I truly appreciate everything that is being said here. All I ever wanted was to be an authentic person and live life they way I always wanted. I can't push myself against the wall anymore. Just reading some of the things here already I have applied them to how I am thinking and functioning at work. So far so good. I know it will take baby steps, but these steps feel like giant steps to me.

MrCleanSlate,

"Emotionally constipated is a good way of putting it. I will use these process as fiber to get it all out.

Thank you again for your continued support. All of this is very helpful.

You can't change the past and you can't spend your life wishing for something the FOO people can't give. Just let that go. That might mean making some hard lines and demands when you interact with them. My mother for instance, when she acts like a wayward (I just liken to how I used to act) I call her out on it. If she gets pissed off, I just let it go. I don't fall into the trap of reassuring her like we all did our whole lives. We have cut her out of our lives much more than when she used to be in it. I guess in a way, we 180 her.

I want to circle back around to something DaddyDom asked you:

is it just your BS that you feel you react badly to? If so, have you asked yourself why?

If I missed your response above I apologize. His question stood out because in my experience it was always my BS who I reacted to badly. I rarely if ever have treated other people like I have treated my wife. Pre-A and otherwise.

I came to realize it was because she is the one who is there for me. She is the one who would never give up on me. She is the one who loved me unconditionally in a way that I didn't know how to process. She was and is the one I had waited my whole life for but never felt like I was worthy of having. So my reactions to her were and still are extreme in a way that don't happen to others.

Also, I can relate to many of the things you describe with the extreme black and white thinking, the staring straight ahead being checked out, the frenetic panic of making a mistake, even a tiny one. Again, most of these things only happened in response to my wife. It is a lot to manage. Honestly the thing that has helped the most with regulating that is mindfulness CBT. Well, that and mood stabilizers lol.

I feel like i am sitting across the table from you guys. Ya'll got me down to a T. Your words just keep chiseling away at what i have been holding onto my entire life.

Dammit Zugz, that is so true. I keep holding onto the past, hell I obsess over it. I wish sometimes my Mom would just fucking get it, but she won't. I know she won't change, no point in thinking she will anymore. I actually called her out recently when i had the chance to go visit her. Her reaction was priceless to where i swear her skin color turned pale. I called her out about how she treated my siblings and I and she is the main reason why we fight about most things. She treats us all different and takes advantage of our weaknesses. I confessed to some of my traumas too. However, i did have a moment where i had some compassion for her too. She raised us the best she could based on how she was treated. I was able to release a lot of resentment, but there is still some there. So, yes i need to let it go. It is a huge part of my self-destruction. It's like groundhog day every time i wake up with this part of my life. I commit to the 180 with her Zugz.

FearfulAvoidance,

Your response made me cry. My BS has and is the only person to ever truly love me. I mean LOVE the shit out of me. Invested her whole being into our relationship. She uplifted me, guided, me, pushed me out of most comfort zones, and tried to get me to see life outside the box. I was the opposite of course. I was so closed off and pushed it all down because i wasn't used to it and felt i never deserved it. I was blown away by how healthy her friendships were too because i was never used to or surrounded by that. Selfishly, i was envious of that too. She trusted me more than anyone she has ever known. She hasn't given up on me yet, but if i stay stuck, i know she has to do what's best for her and our children. And yes, my BS is the one i react to the worst. HURT THE WORST EVER. Cold. Pre-A and after. I was a ticking time bomb during our relationship and it just got worse as i continued to internalize and avoid what i was hiding from us. Myself. She too, was the one i wanted to be with she blew my wishes through the roof. I don't deserve her now, not like this.

I am definitely going to look into CBT. It comes up a lot on here and everywhere else. Mood stabilizers lol. I hope they are stabilizing you to the moon and stars.

Latst night BS and I had a conversation about my A and my FOO and I wondered if you could relate.

A lot of my FOO has to do with my mom. She left after the divorce when I was young and was mostly physically and entirely emotionally absent on weeknds with her. My little self carries around a lot of anger towards her even though as an adult I have forgiven her. With my A I abandoned my wife emotionally in full and was barely physically around. She asked me if my A was in some way me trying to get my power back. By leaving BS little me felt like she was reclaiming power that was stolen from her as a child. Adult me had formed a secure attachment to BS but little me had been fighting it the whole time because of my avoidant attachment to my mother.

I know you've been stuck in your FOO for a while and so much of it revolves around your mother. Do you think the treatment of your BS ties into your attachment style to both of them? If so, maybe having that awareness might help your adult self be able to regulate some in moments of reaction Or maybe I'm offbase and projecting. Either way I thought I'd share because it helped me see some stuff I was blocking.

Wow, reading all these responses makes me wonder if we've all been collectively raised by narcissists.

Really, does anyone have a recommended book on being child from a narcissist home? There's so many out there, and frankly my reading time is limited, so I was hoping someone would have a good place to start.

My biggest fear is becoming the woman my mother is.

Fearfulavoidance,

I am so sorry to hear of your experience with your mom. I hope you are finding ways to heal through it. I know for a fact I treated and still treat my BS like my Mother. It's the worst experience for her. Downright cruel. I am still doing it now and she calls me out every time. I have not completely healed form FOO issues with my Mom, but it's also keeping me from my A work. I have to be pulled in all directions to talk about my A's and that's ridiculous. I created and caused this mess so owning up to it and doing the work for it has to be first for a while.

Do you think the treatment of your BS ties into your attachment style to both of them?

Absolutely yes. My relationship with her was and still is a parent child dynamic. I react to her like that child did with my Mom daily. Working on trying to counteract with healthy reactions instead of going to that awful place(projecting, denying, excusing, going frantic, justifying, etc.,).

MIgander,

I don't have any books to recommend, but I can see what's out there. Oh my Mom is a certified Narc. If I don't stop doing the crap I am doing, I will for sure be her for the rest of my life. It's crazy how I didn't see any of this until my A's were revealed. I know who she is to herself as to do with how her Mom treated her. I am slowly starting to have compassion for her because I resented her for a long time. I am getting to a point where I am stopping myself from seeking her approval and acceptance. Also, coming to the reality that I cannot change her and accept that this is who she is. We can sometimes have conversations where I discuss what I am learning, but it's up to her on what she wants to do with the information. I only learned all this stuff through my BS because of all the work she has done since this Dday. How is the relationship with you and your Mother?

No stop sign ...

I think it's best to treat your BS the way she wants to be treated. The best way to find that out is to ask.

If you want to offer something - a touch/hug, an act of service, quality time, words of affirmation, a gift - I urge you to say something like, 'I would like to _____. Is that something you want?'

If it isn't, don't give it. I know that may seem counter-intuitive, but it will be empowering to you both.

If your BS looks sad, you can say, 'You look down. Is there something I can do to help?' If your BS doesn't come up with something that you're willing and able to give, do nothing.

If she looks angry, ask if she's angry, and ask if she wants to work on it now.

You can't read your BS's mind.

My reco is to ask. Asking does wonders.

[This message edited by sisoon at 1:35 PM, March 2nd (Monday)]

The reason I asked if it was happening with everyone, or just your BS, is because I felt the same way. Lots of people did upsetting things to me on any given day (e.g. Everyone's job sucks and people are assholes) however none of those things really seemed to knock me off kilter. If my wife said even the smallest thing to me however, I'd lose it. It just seemed as if, no matter what I did or said, it was always seen as me being selfish, or uncaring, or not thoughtful, or even just plain rude or dangerous. I used to joke that if I had said, "Good morning" to her, she'd probably respond with, "Don't tell me what kind of morning to have". (Yes, I was an asshole.)

I was not able to realize it at the time, however I was so desperate, so very desperate to be happy, for her to be happy, to fix the mess I made, to just make it all go away... If you had asked me, I would have said no, those aren't the things I wanted. I would have said that I loved her and just wanted her to be happy, and that I was willing and able to accept the damage I had done to her. I believed those things with all my heart and soul. But I was wrong.

But the truth was, in many ways, I was just as wayward as I was during the affair.

The way I stopped the defensiveness and anger, and even dealt with the empathy issue, was that I needed to actually deal with that black hole inside of me, the one that needed my wife to make me feel whole, the one that I needed others to fill in order for me to cope with life.

My wife went away for a week on a business trip. I was already in a bad way and we had been arguing quite a bit in the previous weeks. She had been upset with me the week before because I was reaching out to her while she was gone and busy (and to be honest, I think she was enjoying the break from me) and me calling her several times a day was making her crazy. So when she went away again the next week, I made a plan to not call her for the whole week. Not to be a jerk, rather because she had said I was driving her nuts asking for her attention over and over, and my IC agreed that I needed to let go. That was a rough week. I not only did not call her, I did not reach out to anyone. I just wanted to see what life was like absent anyone else. I wanted to see if I could self-soothe myself, if I could be okay with just me.

It didn't go super well. By the time she got back (it was only about a week) I had convinced myself that she was ready to leave me (I later found out that was true) and by the time she got home, I had a talk with her, and asked her if we should just split up already, that I was tired of hurting her and tired of feeling hurt myself.

Sorry for the oversharing, but here's the thing I want you to understand. I had to get myself to a point where I was no longer "needy". I no longer needed her. I had spent the whole week trying to picture my life in my head, divorced, on my own, making my own way through life, how it would affect her and the kids, how I would maintain a job and feed and house myself when there was no "backup", and most importantly, how would I address the problem of needing others in order to love myself? Every bone in my body was screaming that I would need to find someone new, and fast! Because the thought of being alone felt awful, suicidal. But some kernel of dignity existed with me. I promised myself that I would NOT just run off with the first person I met. That I might, in fact, see if I could live on my own for several years, if not the rest of my life. And in order to do that, I needed to be okay with just myself. I had to be, because the alternative was just no longer acceptable. I was no longer willing to live like that.

And that... changed EVERYTHING.

Whatever switch in my head that needed to flip, it flipped. I was ready to throw my life away, but that was, in a weird way, a good thing, because it meant that I was able to accept myself for who I was, and that no matter how my life turned out, that I'd be okay. The reason that was so important was because it formed the basis for me to stop "Needing" my wife to be there for me. I could be there for myself instead. And when that happened, I was suddenly able to see her. I was no longer so busy worrying about myself that I could actually worry about her instead. It no longer mattered if she stayed or left because I knew I'd be okay either way, and that mindset allowed me to stop living in fear and defensiveness. It allowed me to own who I am, what I did, and why I did it, and still be okay with myself. The shame spiral disappeared completely. I still felt guilt and remorse in droves, but the shame was totally gone, and with it, the fog that had kept me trapped (and kept her in pain).

I think the reason you get so angry and defensive with her is because you are still so damn scared to lose her. And while your brain might tell you that it's because you love her, your body knows that it is still about you. You try to make her happy, try to do and say the right things, try to live your own life but somehow it's still tied to her... you aren't your own person and so you can't be her partner, or anyone's partner. When you can walk in your own light, and stand on your own two feet, and be someone who is okay with who she is, no matter what, then I think things will change for you as well.

Keep talking to your IC, and keep working on loving yourself. It takes tons of effort, courage and humility to change this shitty programming we WS's live by, but it CAN be done, and when it happens, I swear, it's like losing 100 lbs overnight. Everything changes, for the better, and no one can really hurt you anymore, because you are never really alone, and always strong enough to handle what life throws at you. For me, it felt like waking up from a really bad dream.

I know you can do it as well, CAL35. Stop trying to make her happy, and stop trying to control the outcome. Just work on yourself, and work on being proud of yourself. You did a shitty thing. I'm not going to say that it's okay, but I will say that it's not the end of the world, and that you can and will go on to do many wonderful, loving things that you are super proud of. Focus on that. Let the shame go and just focus on being someone who you are proud of being, right now, today.

Sisoon,

I appreciate your response. I am definitely trying to treat her the way she deserves. She has expressed over and over and over how she wants to be treated, honestly since i met her. I was just too damn selfish and making it about me to ever truly notice. Of course, acting waywardly. I have stopped saying and doing a lot of things and give her the reigns on how most days goes where as before, she would compromise and put up with my controlling ass on what to do. It's what i am not doing that doesn't help. I feel i am still very much stuck in shame, denial, and the illusion that this is not happening sometimes. I can't hide anymore. People see me now, including you guys. I do my best to treat her with consideration and respect and not the shitty stuff i used to do. It would be amazing to get to a point where it would be empowering for us both as we have never been there. I will definitely take your advice to ask more questions.

DaddyDom,

Firs of all, it takes a lot of courage and integrity to open up the way you did and for that i am truly grateful for your share here. You have struck many chords with me with your story. The dark hole is still very much there and has been there for many years. And just like i had just about anyone to try to fill it for me, i tried to do the same with my BS. To fill every void and give me everything i couldn't give myself. I am so happy for you that you had the experience to allow you to have "switch" moment.

It's the worst with my BS at work, however i am really hyper sensitive because of my low self-worth, so if people crack jokes towards me or if i get called out about something i made a mistake on, i get a little overwhelmed, but no where near how i react with my BS.

While in my relationship with my BS, I wanted her to give me friends, give me worth, a boost of every kind, give me the love, care, nurture, and whole life that i never felt. That was never her job to begin with. When i felt she didn't, i pulled away, treated her like crap, and eventually committed A's. This was an attack on her and a vicious one at that. This is my battle to fight and mine alone. Speaking of alone, i have never lived on my own. I remember in IC, my therapist told me that i don't know who i am to myself after i told her i have never lived alone. I would like and do whatever else others did putting my likes and wants on the back burner. All this did was brew hurt, anger, and later resentment. I became ice cold especially to my BS. I revolved my life around hers, not because she wanted me to, but because i too needed her cope with life. I have pictured myself living or being alone. At first, i start off looking happy, being out in nature, go out and about enjoying the simple things in life. And then i go numb, because there is no one to come home to, my place is empty, there is no peace. I go dark, wanting to go back, wanting to use people, feeling suicidal, sleeping my days away. I literally shake my head and tell myself that's not what i want.

I am afraid to go back. I will get what i have always feared, being alone still this same person. People that truly love and care about me forever pushed away and no relationship whatsoever with my BS and kids. I am really feel like i am on the edge of what you guys are asking of me. I really am tired of myself, I hate how i feel inside. I feel aches and pains daily. My mind can't even hold the negative and draining thoughts. They come and i do everything to fight them. The other night, my daughter asked my BS if i have talk to the AP anymore. I got back in the car from being in the store, and she told me what she said. I told her no and i don't ever want to talk to her again. Another moment of reality. My daughter doesn't deserve to worry or wonder about something like this.

I can do my best to try to have moments of alone time. To not get angry and defensive because i am too scared of losing her(i didn't think about this one). I am needy and have been as long as i can remember. I will fight for the my "switch" moment. I go to IC tomorrow, so i can present all this very insightful information. Thank you being there for me.

I know you can do it as well, CAL35. Stop trying to make her happy, and stop trying to control the outcome. Just work on yourself, and work on being proud of yourself. You did a shitty thing. I'm not going to say that it's okay, but I will say that it's not the end of the world, and that you can and will go on to do many wonderful, loving things that you are super proud of. Focus on that. Let the shame go and just focus on being someone who you are proud of being, right now, today.

No words, thank you..

The thing i want to ask before i forget, do any of you really get these things on here versus when your BS drills the same things over and over in your head? I literally apologize to my BS for the fact that i don't freaking let this stuff "click" in my head until i read it on here. I feel it's because when she is saying i go into kid mode or the shame spiral.

*sorry for any typos*

[This message edited by ChanceAtLife35 at 8:32 PM, March 2nd (Monday)]