Dear Sadlyconfused:

You are very welcome. The excess print is not a problem for me, it’s okay. It happens to my posts when I copy text from outside tiny buddha and paste it into my tiny buddha posts.

“I think I’ve harshly judged myself all my life for the reactions I have, and felt like there was something wrong with me“- same here. What I learned is that at least in-the-beginning, that is, when I was a child, there was absolutely nothing wrong with my reactions. What was wrong was in the actions I was reacting to. When I fully understood this, I was able to understand why and how I reacted inappropriately as an adult and felt empathy for myself: for the wrong that was done to me, and for the resulting pain and dysfunction that I experienced as an adult.

“There is a difference between knowing that and believing it though“- to believe that there was nothing wrong with you in-the-beginning, you have to go back in time to your beginning, so to speak, and give the wrongness (the guilt) back to whom it belongs.

“I’m starting to study dialectical behavioural therapy, more too get a better sense of what’s happening when I react so emotionally… 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“- DBT is tailored for extreme, all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinkers. It is about cognitive moderation. With cognitive moderation comes emotional moderation.

“He probably did have a crush on this woman… but at the same time I acknowledge that I wasn’t emotionally available“- men, including married men, get crushes even when their wives are emotionally available. The crushes often have to do with the man’s emotional experience as a boy, way before he met the woman he married.

“He mentioned her nickname… I looked her up on social media and was able to see for myself.. My husband didn’t go into any depth about who she is“- good, I was concerned that maybe he did go into depth. This makes me feel even better about your husband.

“I feel quite bad currently about getting so upset about it, as I think the game itself was a fun outlet for him… it (childhood) wasn’t the best start I could have had“-  the way you emotionally reacted to your husband’s comment was not based on thinking that the game was bad, and/ or that he shouldn’t have fun. The way you reacted was based on your painful experience in the start of your life.

“I became a massive people pleaser to get through it, which has been really difficult to emerge from as it’s pretty much been my identity my whole life. Without it, who actually am I? What do I stand for?… people naturally assumed that my easy-going, people pleasing habit was my core personality, rather than the trauma response that it really was“- in regard to people pleasing: every young child is naturally a people pleaser (and a massive people pleaser, at that), particularly eager to please her parents and other adults. As adults, we still want to please other people. People pleasing is a genetic characteristic of all social animals. It is not a trauma response.

When as adults we practice extreme people-pleasing, it is a trauma response. But when you try to figure out who you are (“who actually am I?”), remember the topic of extreme thinking: it is not that you are either a people pleaser (and that’s bad) or you don’t have any people-pleasing tendencies (and that’s good). Reality is that you are a people pleaser (people are people-pleasers), that’s really who you are and it is your core personality!

“I need to learn how to process my feelings… I have so much unresolved grieving to do, particularly around the death of my mother. I can’t openly talk about her without crying, and it happened nearly 20 years ago“- I don’t know if it is a good idea, but maybe it is (you decide): if you want to, you can talk about your mother here, tell me about her and about what hurts so much. If you choose to do this, you can italicize all the parts you don’t want me to respond to, and to the parts that are not italicized: I will make sure to respond empathetically and respectfully.

“I didn’t tell my husband that I was weaning off anti-depressants“- when I read that, my first thought was: how nice of Sadlyconfused to not burden her husband with this information.

“.. which I feel was a massive communication error on my part, as my poor behaviour had no explanation. I have such a bad habit of just trying to deal with things alone“- how indeed you judge yourself harshly (see your words in the quote with which I opened this post): a massive error, poor behaviour, bad habit…?

Here is an empathetic reframing of this sentence: looking back, I can see that I made an error not telling my husband because if I told him, he would have become aware of the withdrawal symptoms that I suffered. I have this habit of dealing with things alone because I was so alone for too long,  as a child and onward.

“(Walking on eggshells is) a very difficult habit to break! .. I’ve let little things fester into resentment and they’ve then turned into bigger issues in my head“- how about forming a new daily habit: every day, locate a tiny resentment and appropriately voice it?

“It’s hard to balance (old trauma) with things that are genuinely a present day problem though and which might require an assertive response“- when confused about a current problem or situation, you are welcome to share about it here and get my take on whether it requires an assertive response.

anita