Dear confusedandsuspicious:

I am typing AS I am reading your post above:You are very detailed. I like it that you pay attention to your children, that you are involved in their lives and that you are not crazy strict about their cleanliness and nutrtion and such. Probably your experience as a child with your clinically depressed mother and a much younger brother started you on the way of detail thinking and detailed awareness of what needs to be done… especially her cleanliness phobia must have put you on the ALERT: super awareness of details…Oh, my god, about your father killing things…Your mother, like your father, is cruel: “when my mum found out she got so angry she got my dad to kill him.”

I agree with your last tiny post about being hypervigilant… and hyperventilating has something to do with it. You had a very rough childhood with a dangerous father and mother. being hypervigilant was your surivival mechanism, a necessity- pay attention, notice where the next trouble could originate and do something to prevent the danger to come. The current danger is P having an affair and you losing him and your children losing him- or you if he takes them away…. Danger. SO you are hypervigilant, paying attention to every detail.

I am so sorry for your horrendous childhood and traumatic pet killing father – and mother. I see you are very careful and very committed to be a good mother. I wonder if you had psychotherapy to deal with the traumas of your childhood- if you need it? I don’t know. You sure are trying your best.

anita