Hi Tee

I see the confusion. I was very small as a tween because I was starved. The sexual abuse was fairly minor. I didn’t really notice it until I started to hit puberty when it started to escalated and I developed a sense of modesty.

It was when I started to fight it that the drowning and suffocating started. As an adult now, looking back I see myself then as a small child. I wasn’t a toddler.

Hi Frozenfireflies

Unfortunately, Anita has chosen to leave the forum. I’m not sure if she will return.

Your thread reminds me of arguments that I’ve had with my husband.

Common themes, criticism, feeling unheard and the difficulty with compassion and empathy. Feeling hurt during disagreements.

For us, we both have previous histories of abuse. Having disagreements is a trigger for us.

It has been particularly hard for my husband to stop raising his voice because his family culture is quite loud. It’s been quite a long journey before he was able to make headway.

It’s unique because difficulties with verbal abuse which sarcasm, hostility and criticism can fall under are very common in society.

It’s sounds like you are trying very hard to help him change his behaviour. It sounds like he feels defensive when that occurs during arguments.

It is easy to feel blamed on both sides when someone critiques our personality or behaviour. You expressed feeling this too.

I was researching somewhere about this issue for myself and I read that these behaviours only stop when we refuse to interact with them.

This is actually what calmed things down and helped with my husband. When things start to get heated I just say we can talk about this later when we’re both feeling calmer and walk away for a time. I don’t ignore him. I just do something else in the house and wait until we’re both feeling calm enough and ready to talk.

Frequency of arguments is really important too. Too frequent and it is hard to recover. Calm times are needed. This might especially be important for someone such as your husband who feels overwhelmed a lot. Is he the one that often initiates arguments?

It helped him to understand that my intense fear of raised voices is because of my previous abuse. Instead of feeling like I was afraid of him he began to understand that I was afraid of the memories raising his voice triggered.

Another thing that helped is trying really hard to manage my own behaviour. That way he didn’t feel like he was the only one with issues to work on. We did it as a team together. I have pain issues and can get argumentative when I’m in pain because it distracts me from it. By noticing when that I’m in pain after physical activity and just not talking during or afterwards I was able to cut down on arguing. Now, there is no talking we just relax and watch tv then.

I wonder if there are any common times arguments occur for you both?

You mentioned that your husband finds it difficult when you are emotional. This doesn’t mean you need to change who you are or suppress your emotions. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with being emotional. But perhaps helpful habits to help with this can be developed since he expressed difficulty with his own emotions when this occurs?

I hope you don’t mind me using that as an example.

Communicating needs can be helpful too. It seems that chores are something he complains about. It’s good that you have been trying really hard. It’s difficult when people have different standards. “Could you please do X?” instead of a disagreement I would imagine could be helpful to you.

This could be framed as “I find it helpful when you remind me to do something because I forget when I’m busy. When there is something you would like me to do could please remind me… Insert your name did you remember to do X?

Again this is just an example. Please let me know if any of this is helpful or unhelpful. I’m not trying to blame anyone, just share what helped us.

I’m sorry to hear that there are difficulties with intimacy. It’s a challenging situation that you are in.

If you shared pictures of your relationship on social media for Valentine’s day I would consider it to do with the date. Giving her the bag you expressed anxiety about too.

I’m just curious how she responde and trying to understand what happened. Last I heard you were unsure about posting online. Did you go through with it?

Hi Eric

Slow down a minute? How did the date go?

Circling back to the misunderstanding there was also another element. There is a reason I was suffocated and drowned. But at the time it seemed like my experience of that alone was too extreme to be believed. It’s really only the tip of the iceberg. I understand now that this wasn’t intended.

I was drowned and suffocated by my mother for trying to fight against sexual abuse in my early teens. I know it’s considered rare for mothers to sexually abuse their daughters. It was a tougher topic than people realised.

Anyway, we don’t have to talk about that. I’m sorry if any of that was too intense.

I think one of the best things to help anxiety is to have lots of positive experiences and meet kind people.

Aside from therapy, this was the main thing that helped me.

Hi Tee

Thank you for your feedback!

I am aware that this is a public forum, and there is a risk of cyber bullying, as well as the risk of members replying to the original poster (me in this case) angrily, impatiently, inattentively, and/or dismissing the OP’s abilities and successes and focusing on the OP’s inabilities and failures, sometimes insisting on the latter.

This quote from Anita on the School Bullying thread is her reference to our argument. This was the reason I spoke to her on that thread.

I didn’t accept her apology related to the misunderstanding because it didn’t make sense to me. She basically said that she found my experiences so shocking they didn’t seem real. But at the same time she didn’t disbelieve me. As I’ve said before, I take things quite literally. It’s not the first time I’ve had a disagreement based around understanding of language. Your explanation was very detailed and broke down things more. I found that helpful in understanding Anita’s reasoning.

For me, the mutual apology situation didn’t work out because I was ignored before the apology and I was ignored after the apology. In my mind, you don’t ignore people that you’ve forgiven.

I guess I just have a different perspective. I don’t see anxiety as something to be ashamed of. I noticed some patterns of avoidance and the only way to overcome avoidance is to face those feelings. I can be blunt sometimes and I can see how what I said can be interpreted as unkind or not supportive. I did understand why Anita was upset though. I wasn’t aware that Anita had difficulties related to personal posts. If she had shared that I would have taken a more gentle approach.

To be honest, I don’t see either Anita or myself being upset by any of those things as being too sensitive. I think it’s human and understandable to be upset at times. Do we get more upset than people who don’t have PTSD, sure. I don’t really see it as a problem though. It is a part of life. Usually, people communicate when they’re upset, there’s an apology and things move on.

Your feedback is always welcome Tee. Please feel free to share whatever you wish! I’m curious to hear more about your thoughts. 🙏

I think the only other thing I would add is that. I spoke to Anita for a while before the initial disagreement. She was very kind and helpful. I looked up to her a lot and saw her as a friend and equal. When trust is broken I have a hard time recovering from it. I have difficulty trusting people in general.