Dear Matt:

You are welcome.

I too feel uncomfortable with intense emotions either way, if they “swing too far one way or the other.” If you interpret, (as I have done in the past), that you are a bad person for feeling this or that feeling, then that very judgment adds distress to the feeling, making it… swing further away. What we feel is not in our choosing. We cannot be guilty of what we do not choose. What we do, our actions are subject to our choosing, not our emotions.

Removing the judgment will reduce distress.

Regarding the second part of your recent post addressed to me and regarding you taking responsibility over your wife’s mental well-being, something I noticed very early on in your thread and have mentioned it early on:

Your wife’s brained was formed before you met her. Way before you met her. I like the term “Formative Years” to indicate one’s childhood because many thousands of neuropathways are Formed during those years, at an incredible speed. Many of these pathways, when involving emotions, are very difficult to undo in adulthood.

The neuropathways responsible for your wife’s dysfunction were formed before you met her.

This means they are not your doing, not your fault. It also means that no matter how hard she tries, it would be very difficult for her to undo those neuropathways. It will require a lot of work on her part, probably with the help of a quality psychotherapist, over a long period of time, to slowly… patiently, persistently weaken those pathways. There is absolutely no way for you to insert yourself into her brain and with a miniature tool box undo and redo those pathways.

The reason your positive input to her “just falls on deaf ears” is because her neuropathways reject your input, and will continue to do so.

If you agree with my point here, then slowly… you might insert this understanding into your neuropathways that have been leading you to attempt to do the impossible.

anita