Today's Installment of "Tales From the Couch"

Thanks, everyone, for all your encouraging comments. I really felt better about myself after reading them and knowing that others struggle and feel similarly. Many of you mentioned that I am too hard on myself...I think this is the way I "pay" for the things I regret doing. Not real healthy.

I had a "breakthrough" session with my therapist today. The essence of it is that I was raised in a family who yelled at each other regularly as a way of handling conflict. With my therapist's help, I realized that when my mother yelled at me as a child, I felt scared and unheard; I felt unsafe because I didn't know what would happen; and I felt it was out of proportion to the action that sparked it.

Now, I repeat the pattern I learned then. When I yell at J., it's because I don't want to be scared and unheard anymore. I've been operating, subconsciously, under the belief that if I yell and cry and get all dramatic--just like my mom--then J. (and Bubba) will listen to me, but in actuality, it makes them less likely to listen to me. It puts them in that scary, voiceless place that I was in when my Mom got so mad, and, in the case of Bubba for sure, it teaches him the same thing I learned from my mom....and starts him off in the direction of anger, like I've been going down.

My therapist said something that really struck a chord with me: "If you don't break the pattern with Bubba, and he learns to approach things from a perspective of anger, then he might end up breaking away from you like your brother broke away from your family." (My brother is the one in our family who carries the most anger of any of us--and he is basically estranged from everyone except my Mom and Dad, and their relationship is deeply strained.) It all made perfect sense to me then.

Other nuggets from my therapy session today are:
•When our spouses don't give us the responses our parents should have 30 years ago--which is what we really want--that escalates everything. We need to do our own work, so that we can come to our spouse from a place of greater clarity and calm, so that we can stop subconsciously wanting to hear the responses our parents should have given us and instead hear our spouse's real feelings.

•If you take responsibility for your part in an argument or conflict, then you also take some control over the situation. As long as I'm always the victim in the situation--the one who has been wronged--all I can do is have a tantrum. My therapist finally explained to me in a way I can understand the whole "first you have to work on yourself before you can communicate with others" thing.

•J. has needs too. Needs that are going unmet. Yes, this seems elementary, but trust me, it was kind of a revelation.

•One of the things I discussed with my therapist was that I get so sick of J. "prattling on" at inopportune moments--like shortly after one of my panic attacks or three seconds after I get up in the morning--about work stuff, cool stuff he's seen on TV that he wants to tell me about, customer stories, etc. Sometimes I actually tell him I can't listen to him about that stuff right then. Sometimes I do act bored (he goes on anyway). My therapist asked me what I'd rather have him talk to me about. "Deep stuff," I said. "Important stuff, like our relationship, like his feelings, like our kid's future..." Then she said, "If you can't listen to the superficial stuff, why would he trust you with the deeper stuff?" Good point, huh?

•Okay, this one's going to seem obvious, but to me, it seemed like someone finally illuminated something for me. My family is volatile. We argue, cry, yell...and then make up and go on, feeling that we've cleared the air. J.'s family was incredibly skilled at denial, and that's how they handled conflict. They just pretended it wasn't there. In fact, when we were engaged and his parents were dragging their feet on doing any of the few things they were responsible for, I asked his mother point blank if they had a problem with us getting married. She just got up, went to the stove, and started talking about the weather or something. So I asked again and same thing--she just started a completely different topic of conversation like I'd never asked the question. It was freaky.

Anyway, the point is...I'm a yeller and J.'s a denialist (is that a word?). Even when he engages in arguments with me, he often says "I don't know" or he denies simple facts like how much housework he does or whether or not he told me what time we were leaving...he tries to deflect the argument. He also often does housework and tries to move away from me physically.

While I was discussing this with my therapist, she said, "Well you two both found the perfect person to work out all your stuff now, didn't you?"

That got me thinking...you know how sometimes you ask yourself "Why do I have the shitrock? Why am I so unlucky? Why do bad things always happen to me?" I thought of all the bad things that have happened to me and about the anger that's gone along with it and thought, "hmmm, maybe my 'lesson' here on Earth is to figure out how to deal with my anger." I'm not sure--I mean, are we ever sure? But it makes sense to me right now. The universe has thrown many, many situations at me that made me angry, made me feel the world was unfair, made me want revenge and made me almost unbearably angry. Maybe these situations are opportunities to figure out my stuff.

Basically my therapist is yanking me out of victimhood one session at a time and helping me see J. as a human being again. I'm excited and optimistic, right now at least, about trying to approach things with these new thoughts in mind.