Helcat & Anita,

I am sorry for the grammar errors.

And Anita, I have a question for you that came up as I was re-reading. How did you begin to see yourself? Because I admit I am realizing I often rely on others to see myself, and think I base close relationships on this feeling. What’s interesting is Helcat, when I responded to you about soulmates, I think this feeling of them turning on a light in a dark room so that I can see myself, is part of what I associate to someone being a soulmate of mine. That is why I mentioned my mom possibly being a soulmate because she does see me, and she reminds me of who I am when I need it, same with my sisters and my close long time friends.

I feel that same impulse to let people know they have been heard, it also hurts me deeply when I am the cause of someone else being on the “unseen” end of an interaction with me. I find that with people who do not have this sensitivity I can come across as if I am over doing, like my partner, when I lived with him I would make sure he heard me and make sure he felt heard and it was almost like I was being too proactive because he would respond as though I had already asked the question, like “yes yes you are all good baby just be.” I still do this and even feel unsettled to let a text message go without responding, but he does not get that feeling and is fine not responding, which used to really bother me cause it made me feel unseen, I am still working on reminding myself that doesn’t mean he doesn’t see me, he just simply isn’t letting me know he sees me. (like my Dad did with me! just realized this now, My dad felt unseen and would internally accuse me of not seeing his pain and empathizing with him, all because little to my knowledge his insecure self needed me to literally tell him he was seen. I literally began to do this for him, he would say he felt  I was ungrateful for what he did for me, so much that I started to send him random texts like “I love you” “I am thankful for all you do” (he paid my tuition so I would thank him for that randomly and often). I think seeing a therapist is definitely a huge reason my self awareness is where it is at today, but also my dad training me to care for him how he needed, made me have to be hyper-aware of how he was feeling so that I could proactively be what he needed so I didn’t get criticized later, a defense mechanism that lead to awareness of the people around me and what they need.

*this is probably one of the reasons you chose my thread to invest some of your time and mental energy to, because I began my post expressing how I felt unseen in my last thread I started in the forums. Just a thought but I am curious on your thoughts here?

It is so interesting that you bring up the mirror metaphor, I had never heard this before until just today, right before this post I am writing, I read the thread from Caroline on “self doubt, not being sure of myself.” In it I saw your metaphor on your mother being a mirror and I thought alot about that. I related to Caroline in her feeling helpless and feeling small tasks are more daunting for her than others due to her mother, and it made me wonder about my own mother and I need to reflect more on this but my immediate thoughts are that she used to make small tasks look more daunting, she had a huge shopping addiction with my dads credit card, which money was a huge argument they had all the time. Anyways she revealed to me many coping mechanisms for when someone hurts you, she drank wine, shopped and turned to other men. She was deeply empathetic which I appreciate seeing in the mirror, but she was also very insecure. I don’t think she knew who she was, and was insecure in group settings, but would act confident because she was a beautiful woman and she knew it and would flaunt it for validation.

Wow, what you said about your mother and long tirades about how you don’t care for her, as if you were out to get her, like she was paranoid. This is so hard, dealing with a parent with trust issues that they project onto you is so unfair. We were so young, trying to discover who we were and our own parent tells us we are someone who doesn’t know how to show someone we care about them. I would cry every time my dad would go on this tirade, because I am someone who cares so deeply for people, so that he accused me of the opposite made me feel so lost, made me wonder if I knew myself at all. I wonder if this created self doubt in you? and how you overcame/ are overcoming this self doubt? My dad to this day still very often misinterprets what I do and who I am and it hurts every time, he thinks I am selfish and is probably why I have fears of being selfish or narcisstic. It is scary when someone tells you that you are coming across a certain way that is unbeknownst to you, it makes me self conscious about how I do come across, which if I let myself overthink this I become awkward in social situations.

Helcat, on your last point, I would love for this to be a continual conversation, one of my fears is being stagnant in self improvement, but I can feel how effective this conversation is for me, and I hope you are benefiting from it as well?

Dear Helcat,

“Have you considered that as you struggle with your issues, your partner struggles with feeling he’s done something wrong? … People who are less stable can struggle when people express difficult emotions sometimes.”

Yes he constantly thinks he has done something wrong, but I can totally see how he felt that way with how I would communicate him pressing a trigger. I would ask him why he kept hurting me. At the time, and quite honestly still, during the trigger response I feel upset the pain could have been avoided by him being more in-tuned with my feelings. I will literally tell him exactly what triggers me and sometimes he just goes and obliviously does it again and that makes me so upset, has he done something wrong in this case? When I have very clearly told him certain things are very touchy for me, him being late to dates is a common argument we have. That feeling of being forgotten by him, and therefore being unseen, hits me hard whenever he is late which is at least once every two weeks or so, if not more. I get upset, then he gets upset cause to him he is on time 80% of the time and I should accept that, but that’s way easier said than done, I cant just turn off the trigger or I would. But he thinks I should just be mentally stronger, like he seems to be.

“You felt comfortable when he was comfortable because when he was uncomfortable he would make you feel very unwanted.”

-Exactly.

“Your mother taught you to be very in touch with your desires because she attempted to go above and beyond to meet your desires at times.”

-Very interesting and feels true.

“At the same time you feel like you’re indecisive. Potentially, you are in two minds about things when this occurs?”

I feel like I am always in two minds, or at lest the majority of the time. Do you know of helpful techniques to focus and be in unity with one mind?

“They believe that if they act perfectly in certain ways that they can prevent abuse by managing their parents mood.”

This is definitely a mentality I remember happening, but I also remember feeling like no matter how hard I tried I fell short and something was wrong with me for it.

Helcat,

“When I get triggered during disagreements I shut down. I stop talking for about 20 minutes. This helps me to calm down. This in turn triggers him because he’s had previous partners ignore him for a long time.”

I am sorry you endured that from your mother, I feel for your past self there. I relate to the part about shutting down and needing time, but this triggers my partner as well. He’s told me his mom would give him the silent treatment quite often, I am not sure what he would do to make her do this I will have to ask now that I think of it. When I need space he has seen it as withholding affection from him, like his mom. I have told him I just can’t be touched while I am upset, but I try to break this as soon as my mind can re-ground, seems this happens faster as I work on it.

“It wasn’t easy to get to this point. It’s been a journey figuring out how to communicate with each other in the relationship. We even went to couples therapy.”

My partner is supportive of me seeking therapy but does not believe in it, he has said “someone who doesn’t know me or my situation can’t help me.” I have tried many times to tell him the benefits of therapy, and even told him that therapy is not someone talking at you, it is a listening ear that re-phrases your own words and actions back to you so you can understand yourself. But he will not go to couples therapy with me, I think if I just make an appointment and tell him it is important to me, that he would go, at least once to try. However I am afraid of him getting a bad first impression and never wanting to go again, and I also don’t have the funds.

“Are there times when he handles your trauma response well? What does he do differently in this case?”

Yes, infact I feel lucky in this way, but I fear I will lose his patience and he will stop, more on this later. On fourth of July I was upset with him, honestly I cannot remember what he did, but I remember feeling like he didn’t care about my feelings and was putting other things ahead of me. I remember this causing deep feelings to which I cried and wanted to just run away for a while, but as I tried to turn to walk away he grabbed my arm and gave me a hug and this made me feel better. There were several times while I lived with him that I would be having a trigger response that lead to a panic attack and I would go into our big closet with the lights off and sit on the ground, this helps me to calm down. He would come in and sit next to me. He also has pulled me out of a panic attack by whispering in my ear “be nice to my girl,” directly communicating with the voice in my head telling me I was unseen and uncared for.

But lately he doesn’t grab me or hug me as much like that, and has said he feels he is always consoling me and sometimes does not have the patience to do so and instead feels falsely blamed for my pain. I fear that he is holding resentment for how much he has “consoled” me and will retaliate by making me pay him back for it in some way, like getting lazy in his effort in the relationship and make me mom him. I just want him to be seeking self improvement like I do, and not mistake consoling me and my still active triggers for me being mentally weak and lazy, leading him to be purposely that way with me.

“Regarding the lateness, does he text you when he is going to be late? Or does he just let you wait for him? Perhaps there are some things that you could plan to do, to make you feel more comfortable when he is late?”

He sometimes doesn’t text me and just lets me wait, which feels quite tormenting. Then the times he does let me know, his reasoning just feels like excuses and are all things that come before me, and leave me feeling unprioritized. So far the only things that makes me feel better are talking about it and feeling he understands why it bothers me, otherwise I also get an impulse to pull away and cancel our date, this hasn’t happened, but it has ruined dates before, where I feel unsettled/triggered the whole time and struggle to move on, and become irritated how quickly he moves on without validating my feelings. Even typing this out I feel like it is all because of my triggers, which exhausts me because it has been a while that we have had a full weekend without triggering me in some way. I think it is wearing on us both.

“When you are feeling calm, how do you feel about your partner and the difficulties that you’ve both experienced in the relationship?”

I was going to get back to you on this because I am not feeling in my most confident state right now and can tell my answer may reflect that, but I am going to challenge myself to answer it now and compare it to possibly a later edit:

I feel I am falling out of love with him because of how worn out I feel from being triggered at a faster rate than I can heal. I am hoping me moving out will help and not harm us. It allows me more processing time, but in the meantime I do feel more disconnected from him, and quite honestly relieved he is not always around… This feeling concerns me as I thought distance made the heart grow fonder. I think so much of our relationship in the last year has been about me and my triggers and him learning them, and he has said he doesn’t bring things up because he would rather ignore it than do any more talking. This worries me because he may not be emotionally available enough for me.  We have less fun together now than we used to, it definitely feels heavy and we rarely go a whole day without him triggering me in some way and I fear this will drain us both and I will end the relationship to relieve myself and because I love him too much to spread him so thin. I recently find myself breaking up with him in my head and how I would explain myself, but I do not want to lose him. He is my best friend, who comforts me and him being out of my life seems impossible for me to accept. We are on thin ice I feel, and I think it is thinner than he is aware of, since he is not as emotionally in-tuned/aware as I am.

Anita & Helcat

As I briefly brought up my partners mom giving him the silent treatment and withholding affection, I thought it may help to shed some light on what I know about him.

He told me his mom would do this and that she made him feel like a bad kid morally as he grew up. She being very Christian made him feel this way and he shared an instance where some woman from her church was trying to set up a young girl his age around 20, to which his mom quickly said Nathan wouldn’t be good for her, this affects him to this day he wonders why. He said he felt he had to constantly tell his mom he was not a bad kid, but felt “UNSEEN” by her, and still does. From my perspective his mom can come across cold, stubborn, and emotionally detached, good qualities of being consistent and caring. His dad is a huge character, he smokes a lot of weed and can also be very emotionally detached and in his own world, but then can swing to being an emotional dumper. My partner said his dad would emotionally dump on him and he felt like his therapist growing up, his dad even wanted to smoke weed with him at a young age and this made him uncomfortable.  Both his parents can be quite oblivious to what is right in front of them and their miscommunication errors seem very elementary, blaming each other for misplacing a cup, etc. They are also both very independent and don’t do a lot together, unless it involves family or the family business his mom does paperwork for.

I don’t want to overwhelm this discussion with too many things to analyze, but I also thought it could be an essential puzzle piece. No pressure to include this in the discussion.

with Love,

Seaturtle