Hi Tee,

That’s ok and understandable, thank you for your post!

I can imagine that you were relieved when your father passed away. Even if you weren’t on speaking terms for years prior to his death, you never knew what to to expect from him, because he was capable of doing nasty things, such as popping up at your office and making a scene. And so you were in a constant state of stress…

Absolutely, I was always safe enough physically but I’m only just starting to see now that I’m mentally and spiritually safe too. No-one’s out there spreading untrue rumours or leaving guilt trips for me anymore (he loved dumping old childhood schoolwork and photo albums on my doorstep). I’m now feeling the physical impact of having been so on edge constantly, but it’s so good to be able to truly aim to relax now.

I know what you mean, because my mother is similar – she also doesn’t believe she did anything wrong in the way she raised me. In her mind, she is the victim and I am the villain, so there isn’t much base for an honest relationship. We do have a superficial contact, we see each other once or twice per year (I live in another country), and that’s it. Nothing deeper is possible, because she would immediately start blaming me. So unfortunately I need to keep my guard up, and our relationship is very very limited.

Yeah, I don’t blame you for keeping your guard up and I completely understand what you must go through with your mother. You try to come up with so many ways to try to make the relationship workable and ultimately the only thing you can do is distance yourself in order to have some kind of peace. I think if I had had greater distance from my father then I would have done the same but because he lived so close he would have just amped up the random visits to home and workplace.

Your father sounds like he was even more toxic than my mother. And so it’s totally understandable that you cut contact completely in the years prior to his death. Because you needed to protect yourself. Because each contact meant exposing yourself to more “poison”, and you didn’t want that.

So please don’t blame yourself for cutting contact – it’s was a self-protection measure. You did the right thing. If he had truly changed and wanted to repair the relationship before his death, he would have reached out to you. But he didn’t… It is sad, but if the parent is so blind and their heart so closed, there is nothing we can do.

Thank you for this, in the later years I became more accepting of the situation but for the first three years or so I felt awful. You’re exactly right, I recognised that I needed time and space to heal a lot of wounds but I just couldn’t do this when he was reopening them constantly (and seeming to take delight in doing so…I think that’s ultimately how I mustered up enough self protective anger to distance myself).

I hated myself for having so reactive skin because in my mind, it revealed my shame and anxiety to everyone. I couldn’t fake it, I couldn’t pretend I was fine – because it was visible on my face that I wasn’t fine at all!

That’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s wearing your heart on your sleeve (or rather, your face!) and having no control over it. It leaves you feeling so vulnerable and exposed around people who aren’t always very kind about it.

Later I’ve realized that I was so deeply ashamed of myself (due to my mother’s years of heavy criticism) that this shame became a key part of my personality. As John Bradshaw said, I was a person based on toxic shame. I was ashamed of even taking up space and walking this earth. Really. My “being” – simply sitting in the classroom, listening to the teacher – was interlaced with shame. And this shame produced a stress reaction in me, which in turned caused my cheeks to flush. This only reinforced the shame because now I had one more reason to be ashamed of myself!

Come to think about it, I was in a constant state of stress, because I believed there was something “terribly wrong” with me. And flushed cheeks only confirmed it. I was trapped in a vicious circle!

That hit home. I had both adults and other pupils be cruel about it when I was at school, then at home some of my family would mock me for it too. It wasn’t constant but I think it happened enough on separate occasions to leave a lasting impact. The kids I can forgive because they were insecure bullies, but the fact that there wasn’t a single, empathetic adult to reassure me that there was nothing wrong with me meant that it became more of a complex than it should have done. I feel so angry at them as a I recall it, which is probably a healthy reaction!

In reality, there was nothing wrong with me. I was lovable and worthy, but I didn’t know it, because my mother told me differently. I was ashamed of myself because my mother told me I should be ashamed of myself. Probably it was similar with your father. He was shaming you left and right, and you absorbed that message!

When I started working on myself, slowly healing the shame, realizing that I was lovable and there is nothing wrong with me… my cheeks also became less reactive. I wasn’t flushing so easily any more. I wasn’t anxious all the time when among people. I still don’t feel completely comfortable talking in front of many people, but at least I am comfortable in my own skin, being myself. And even when I need to express myself in a group, it’s fine. I can do it without freaking out because I know that I am fine and that there is nothing wrong with me.

So I believe that as you work on healing your shame, as you accept yourself more and more, your physical symptoms will lessen too. Because they are the consequence of the toxic shame that your father instilled in you… Once that is gone, the symptoms will be much less intense. And even if they appear, those symptoms will be less disturbing for you, because you’ll have greater compassion for yourself. You won’t hate yourself for your flushed cheeks and your trembling voice, but you’ll have compassion for yourself…

In fact, you may try it even now: before going into a triggering situation, where you know you’ll experience those physical sensations, try to talk to yourself with compassion and understanding. Perhaps you can talk to yourself like you would talk to a child: “It’s okay, dear. You are fine. I love you very much. And I accept you completely. Every bit of you, including your flushed cheeks and your trembling voice. You are perfect to me. And you are doing great! ”

Try experimenting with that, and see how it feels in your body….

Thank you so much for sharing your positive outcome with healing your shame, it’s so reassuring that your cheeks became less reactive as your self-compassion grew! I’ll aim to get into the habit of speaking to myself kindly before doing things I know are likely to trigger me. I think at the moment I get preoccupied with the discomfort of feeling panic and have been feeling that anything kind I try to tell myself will have no impact, so it helps to read that someone else has been through it and managed to make such inroads with healing. If you don’t mind me asking, how long do you think it took you to start noticing that your change in self-talk was having a positive impact? I can’t imagine being completely comfortable in my own skin; it feels so distant to me at the moment!

Hi Tee, thank you very much for your response.

That’s fascinating that the pandemic actually enabled you to feel safer because your father couldn’t just pop at your door at any time to harass you. Maybe this feeling of safety encouraged you to stop taking anti-depressants too? (you said you’ve been weening off for the last couple of years, which coincides with the pandemic). Which also means that the reason you were taking anti-depressants all this time was your father and your inability to say No to him, to protect yourself from his harassment, I imagine? But eventually you succeeded:

I’m trying to remember the circumstances but yes, I think I’d been wanting to come off the antidepressants for a while and mainly felt that with such a solid block of time at home it was a good opportunity to ride out the symptoms. Although it was very hard and obviously the pandemic was an awful thing, it was really helpful to have that opportunity to learn to sit with my new and difficult feelings in relative safety. I never quite felt able to do that at work, where he could turn up whenever he liked if he really wanted to.

Congratulations on distancing yourself! How is your relationship with your father now?

It also seems that unlike with your father, you felt safe with your husband – safe enough to start reducing the anti-depressants and discovering and expressing your authentic feelings, and showing more and more of your authentic self. I am happy for you!

Thank you! Yeah, my husband is kind, affectionate and dependable so I do feel safe with him. I know it is generally said that daughters of abusive fathers will often pick spouses who have the same traits. I think I turned it on its head a little bit in that I didn’t follow this pattern, however subconsciously I kind of expected more of the same.

My father passed away back in August and we hadn’t spoken for years. He wouldn’t take ownership of his behaviour or try to change it for the better, so sadly there was no way of having any meaningful relationship with him. When I learned he was ill I was considering the possibility of reconnecting with him in a way that would have been surface level and required lots of boundaries, but he passed away very suddenly. Honestly, now he’s gone it’s been easier to grieve for the lack of relationship fully and to be kinder to myself about how everything went down. For years I felt a lot of shame and blamed myself for it all but I now see that I was between a rock and hard place when it came to him.

It wasn’t silly. He was having an emotional affair with people in the cyber space, and was neglecting you… so you were totally right to make an issue of it. And I am glad that this game doesn’t exist any more, but also that he had already reduced the time he was spending on it, even prior to that. It seems it lost its emotional grip on him, which is good news.

Yeah, you’re right. For many months this game and these people seemed to be his world and he was always looking for opportunities to hang out with them…the comment he made to that woman was only a small part of the bigger picture. I’m relieved that the game no longer exists in all honesty because it means a clean break as far as I’m concerned. I now have a better idea of where my boundaries with gaming and the associated social scene lie and if something like this ever comes up again the future I hope that we can both approach it in better ways.

It’s great that you don’t trust the inner critic any more, and when you hear those deprecating words, you try to talk to yourself kindly. That is the way to counter the harsh voice of the inner critic: to talk to yourself with warmth and compassion, like a good, loving parent. You are doing a great job, and all I can say is: Keep up the good work!

It will take some time to stop the automatic thoughts from popping up, but it’s important that you notice them and sort of observe them, but not identify with them.

Apparently it was Martin Luther who said “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair“. So you notice the deprecating, harsh thought, but you know it’s your Inner Critic, and you counter it with the voice of the Inner Good Parent, or the Inner Coach, as some call it. Someone who loves you and cheers you on, rather than someone who judges you and puts you down.

Thanks for the encouragement, I’m currently keeping a log of my daily negative judgements as part of my DBT workbook and it’s eye opening how negative my thoughts are on the whole and how willing I’ve been to just go along with them. Meditation is helping with this a lot as the emphasis has been on just allowing thoughts to come and go. That Martin Luther quote is a great one, I’ll have to write it down somewhere and keep it! I think just identifying in the first place that my inner critic is behind these thoughts has been quite profound for me as for a long time I just didn’t see it and took everything I thought as being significant.

Hi Tee, thanks very much for your reply. There’s no need to apologise about any delay in responding, I tend to take a while myself as I prefer replying when I have quiet stretches to do so without interruption.

No wonder you didn’t allow yourself to feel anger – because had you felt it, your father would have probably punished you. Aggressive, misogyinist men don’t take well when a woman opposes them. He might have even become physically violent if you hadn’t done as he told you?

That’s great btw that you finally managed to stand up to your father, even if later in your life!

Oh definitely. My father wasn’t heavy on physical violence, but the threat of being slapped or prodded really hard in the ribs was enough. Bad enough to really hurt, but not bad enough to leave a mark and incriminate him. He would use psychological punishment too, recording some perceived slight against him in his memory and finding a way to punish me via humiliation months down the line. Not a nice man. Thank you, distancing myself from him was the hardest thing I ever had to do as an adult but to allow the psychological assaults to continue would have been just as bad.

I agree that my mother set a bad example in not showing me how to protect myself. I have a lot of compassion for her and know that she was in an extremely difficult situation, but if only she had known how much damage it would all cause years down the line.

It seems to be that you were afraid of being completely honest with your husband – maybe projecting some of your father’s criticism into him – and so you didn’t really tell him when you started taking anti-depressants (you were still dating at that time). And you didn’t tell him later either that you were weening off. Do you think that the reason could be the fear of judgment?

Please don’t think that I am judging you or anything, I am just trying to understand the dynamic in your relationship. You said you had communication problems. It could be that a part of it was your fear of being judged by your husband? Even though he might not have been judgmental, or at least not as judgmental as your father (you said he would probably support you in doing what you believe is right for you)?

Yes, I think I’ve been projecting my father’s actions on to my husband a lot! It makes me feel a bit sick because as people they’re nothing alike. I was fearful of being judged, that makes a lot of sense. I think I was worried that I would come across as being hysterical and off the rails if weaning off anti-depressants didn’t work out.

And hmm, I’ve just realised that being “off the rails” was the image my father tried to portray of me to other people when I was a teenager. He would play the victim and pretend that I was uncontrollable and rebellious, when the reality was that I was a quiet, well-meaning girl who liked reading and walking her dog. I think it probably harks back to experiencing that kind of treatment. There was the whole element of being stuck in the house for months over the pandemic too, which mirrored my experiences as a teenager where I was unable to leave. It all seems trauma related.

Right. So for the majority of your marriage, until about 2 years ago, you couldn’t feel fully because you were on anti-depressants and you were only going through the motions, a little bit like being on an auto-pilot, right? You worked a lot, felt exhausted most of the time and in your spare time you just wanted to sleep. You didn’t feel resentment towards your husband, mostly because you didn’t feel much anyway, you didn’t pay attention to your feelings, nor to his feelings too much, I guess?

Your marriage survived this “auto-pilot” phase, and only started shaking when you started weening off anti-depressants. I might have an idea why is that, but I don’t want to jump into conclusions. If you feel it’s relevant, and want to share some more about that phase of your marriage, please do so.

Yes, this is exactly how it was. There were good times in there too of course and I’ve always loved him and enjoyed his company. I’d never had any practice in setting boundaries or expressing problems though and I think they all culminated into a bigger issue. Also, fear of my father was always the biggest issue in my life and I spent many years being afraid of him showing up on my doorstep or workplace and creating a scene, so anything else seemed insignificant in comparison. The first time I had truly felt safe in years was when the pandemic happened and we were forced to stay home for months as it meant that my father couldn’t turn up out of the blue and harass me. With that, the seemingly more insignificant issues in my life which I hadn’t paid much attention to came into my awareness a lot more. I think it was only with feeling safe that I could really reflect on how my life looked in the present moment rather than being in fight or flight constantly.

What is important is that now, after a rough patch, you started opening up towards your husband and that he reciprocates, and that you can laugh together and talk more sincerely with each other. If your emotional intimacy is growing, that’s fantastic!

Has he reduced his Discord dependence? Because based on what you’ve shared, it did become an addiction already, with him spending every single moment using the app…

Absolutely, we seem to be reaching a far better place. I think we needed to endure the discomfort of conflict in order to develop more emotional intimacy. I certainly couldn’t keep quiet about the things that were bothering me anymore, regardless of how silly they might or might not have been. I was feeling so insecure about it.

Yes, his online game actually no longer exists as of a couple of weeks ago, but even prior to that he had greatly reduced the time he was spending on there and was spending far less time on Discord. I think it was an addiction and that some of the habits I was witnessing daily were similar to those that you might see if someone were having an online affair, so I’m giving myself some compassion for jumping to that conclusion. Living and breathing a computer game and the related online social scene just didn’t make sense to me, so that’s how my brain rationalised it. He did confide recently that he misses his friends and I think as an extrovert he missed going out and seeing people over the pandemic, so without many other distractions I can see why it took such a hold. I’m aiming to forgive both of us for any dysfunctional behaviour over the last couple of years, it was such a stressful time for everyone.

Hi Tee, thank you for your comments. I’ve spent some time answering your questions below.

I would imagine that as a people pleaser, you weren’t actually easy-going, but that you pretended that you were happy to accommodate them and do whatever they asked of you, even if it went against your wishes. So you might have worn a mask of “kindness”, saying things like “sure, no problem, I’ll do it”, but underneath you felt miserable and probably resentful too?

Yeah, it was the way my mother acted around everyone and I learned from a young age that this was how you got people to love you and treat you well. I think I believed that kindness from other people had to be earned and that it wasn’t something that I was just automatically worthy of. It was only when I entered the workplace and was working full-time that I recognised that other people didn’t behave the same way, and I started to see see how much it was limiting me. It was a shock to find that people actually respected me less for being a doormat. I don’t think I’d ever fully allowed myself to even feel anger until I was in my late twenties. I had been miserable and resentful for many years but I’d suppressed these emotions so much that I had never even known it until I started to stand up to my father as an adult.

If I am counting right, you started taking anti-depressants about 14 years ago (one year into your relationship with your husband), and you have been taking them for 12 years. In the last couple of years you have been weening off anti-depressants. This has caused problems in your marriage, since you couldn’t feel anything for anyone, including your husband. You also had heightened anxiety. You now can feel again and the communication with your husband has improved in the last 3-4 months.

You haven’t told your husband that you were weening off anti-depressants, which you now see as a big mistake because it would have explained your poor behavior. Does your husband now know that you’re no longer taking anti-depressants? Does he support you in that decision?

I think that timeline is about right, yes. The lack of feeling was chronic and such an odd thing, because logically I knew that I loved him and couldn’t imagine wanting to be with anyone else, but my emotions were so flat. I never really made a big thing about taking anti-depressants in the first place, so I don’t think he’s aware that I no longer take them. I think generally he trusts me to do what’s right for me and would be supportive of it. I think I didn’t tell him a couple of years ago that I was weaning off them because I knew that it was potentially going to be a bumpy ride for a while in terms of side-effects but I’d hoped that it wouldn’t last as long as it did.

You still cry when thinking about your mother, even if she died 20 years ago. This tells me that the wound is still raw. I think it’s because a part of you (the child and teenager that you were) still feels helpless and horrified at the thought of living without your mother’s protection, alone with your father, in an environment full of hatred and cruelty. A part of you is still stuck in the past, and this is probably the part that needs healing the most.

It’s great that in the last couple of years, you are learning about trauma and getting better at self-care. And that you’ve made more progress in those 2 years than in the 12 years of being on anti-depressants. Are you attending therapy? Because I would assume that if one wants to ween off anti-depressants, one would need therapy to support that process…

It’s very raw still, yes. As a teenager I didn’t have a safe place to express my emotions after she passed and for years after I suppressed a lot of emotion, so there’s a lot there to process. I made sure that I was confident enough in my coping skills before I stopped taking anti-depressants (yoga, meditation, journalling, etc.) but I hadn’t been prepared for how intense the emotions would be. Therapy is something I’m aware that I’m very much in need of, but unfortunately it’s too expensive for me right now. I think the relational aspect of it would be really healing for me and it’s definitely something I’m working towards doing, hopefully next year if I can get together a more stable income.

You said that once you started weening off, you’ve experienced loss of emotions – you couldn’t feel anything for anyone. Maybe this was a protective mechanism – to cut off all emotions, so they wouldn’t overwhelm you?

Since you’ve started this thread due to an issue with your husband, I am wondering about the dynamic between the two of you. From what you’ve shared so far, he is a decent man who has behaved “out of character” recently. You are thinking that it was because he had a crush on some girl online, since you weren’t emotionally available. May I ask – is he in general a good husband? Does he respect you? How was your relationship while you were on anti-depressants? Please answer only if you feel comfortable talking about it.

This would make sense as the emotions were intense. It was only after getting comfortable with little acts of self-care that I started to feel able to express any emotion other than irritability.

I think in general he’s a good husband and recently I’ve started to feel more confident that he does respect me. For a while I didn’t feel that he did. When he was frequently playing his online game it felt like it dominated both our lives as when he wasn’t playing it he was using Discord on his mobile, chatting about it and socialising with the other gamers, which I wouldn’t have minded now and again but it seemed to be every spare moment. I have the app too so could see that he was logging in regularly, even at work, plus he would take his phone to the bathroom and be chatting in there. It’s this kind of thing which made me paranoid and it was what triggered our last discussion about it. I found myself getting frustrated often because it seemed like he was more interested in the game/his Discord social life than he was with spending time with me. I also felt like I was taking too much responsibility for household chores and being taken for granted in that respect.

Our relationship was fine while I was on anti-depressants, but I wasn’t feeling fully and was going through the motions with day to day life. I didn’t think I had any resentments at the time because I was largely so tired and work focused that it didn’t seem to matter. I just wanted to sleep! I think all the things which did matter to me and needed to be addressed became more apparent when I stopped taking anti-depressants.

Something has just occurred to me – you asked who you are (since you are not and shouldn’t be a people pleaser!) Well, your true self is a compassionate self, having the voice of a gentle, kind and loving parent. If you can find such a voice within yourself, this is the voice of your True Self. If you get anchored in self-compassion, the pieces of the puzzle will start coming together, and you’ll be discovering more and more of your authentic self.

Thank you, that’s reassuring! I’m doing the work but the concept of self-compassion is still so new to me and not easy. I do have faith that I can get better at it though.

Oh my word, what did I do to the formatting in that last post?! Sorry, hope you can make head or tail of that – face palm!

Hi Anita,

“– no wonder you were so troubled by the comment. In my first reply I answered your question (“Am I too uptight?”), this way: “more uptight than I currently am, but less uptight than I used to be“. I used to get similarly triggered as a woman because I too grew up in a home where I was criticized a lot,  hated, really. I too walked on eggshells, bullied (mostly by my mother), and… I too had a “general quietness” about me. I was introverted, anxious and oh, so jealous of bubbly, outgoing girls: I so wished I was them, or like them. That childhood/ teenage jealousy carried into my adulthood.

Try to practice compassion toward yourself every time you get triggered this way, perhaps say to yourself something like: no wonder I get triggered. Anyone in my place, with my past experience, would get triggered this way… I suffered so much. I don’t want to suffer anymore. When you talk compassionately to yourself, you get motivated to no longer suffer unnecessarily simply because you don’t deserve to suffer.”

Thank you and I’m sorry to hear that you had to go through similar experiences when you were younger. I do carry a lot of shame and fear in me and have actually very recently realised that self-compassion is probably key to developing more emotional resilience (I started a workbook on self compassion just the other week!) so it’s reassuring that you’ve advised this. I think I’ve harshly judged myself all my life for the reactions I have and felt like there was something wrong with me. There’s a difference between knowing that and believing it though, so it’s something I definitely want to work on further. I’m starting to study dialectical behavioural therapy more too to get a better sense of what’s happening when I react so emotionally and to figure out how to cope better.

Hi Pink24,

“It’s obvious your husband does think he said something wrong (not hugely wrong, but a bit off color honestly) else he wouldn’t have told you/confessed it to you. So don’t put it all on you, you know?  Sure there might be previous pain–hence your large reaction–but, he could also have said something he probably knows wasn’t the best thing, else he wouldn’t have told you. Both things can be true.”

Thank you for this. There had been a lot of behaviour on his part over the last few months which did come across as a bit odd and out of character, so a lot of this has been me trying to figure out what exactly was going on. I can be very black and white about things and jump to extremes though, when the reality is that it was probably a grey area thing all along.

“Just don’t put it all on you, you know? If you had made the same comment to another guy, I don’t think your husband would be too enthused. Being married is tough, and these things do happen. But they’re not the end of the world, rather par for the course. We’re all human!”

Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. I guess when you’ve been together a long time if there’s something missing from the relationship and there have been previous problems that haven’t been addressed then this kind of thing can start to happen. He probably did have a crush on this woman and his behaviour wasn’t entirely appropriate, but at the same time I acknowledge that I wasn’t emotionally available for such a long time, so ultimately it’s not that surprising that this happened when it’s all considered in context. I think if I told him that I’d made a comment like that to another man then he would be as surprised as I was to learn of it, since I’ve never acted that way. So yeah, I’m giving myself some leeway about my reaction.

Hi Tee,

“I am not completely sure but still, there is something about this situation that doesn’t sit well with me. I mean, it’s okay if he finds a woman attractive, you can’t blame him for that. But it’s less okay that he expressed it to her, even if “everyone in the community talks like that about one another”. Why would members of a gaming community need to talk to each other in a flirty, sexualized way?”

Thank you, this is largely how I see it. I think that generally the online gaming scene can be very sexualised. Many gaming girls on Twitch tout for views by being scantily dressed and provocative, then set up these Discord groups which are like fan clubs where their viewers can chat to them personally. A lot of the men on there are either teenagers or in their twenties, so I think generally the chat can become quite immature. There’s such a thing as self-awareness and rising above it though, so I feel disappointed.

“Well, is he talking like that with his female colleagues at work? Or with his female friends? Are there sexual undertones in his interaction with women? There are many places (work places included) where it is the case, but when I worked at such a place, I felt very uncomfortable.”

No, I’ve never known him to act like that around females, though his hobbies have been largely male dominated until he started playing this game regularly and I don’t think he’s really had any female friends while we’ve been together, though he had a few before our relationship. This is why it came as such a shock to me as it just seems so out of character, but maybe this has always been how he’s interacted in female friendships. Who knows? I don’t want to deter him from having friendships with other women but at the same time I think there is a need to have some consideration for your partner’s feelings, even if you do think they’re overreacting.