In a previous post a couple months back, I stated that all the hate belongs to me. Just a week ago I was feeling that intensity again, to the point of extreme distress.
I’m withdrawing from things I shouldn’t, because they make me feel so awful. And then I feel guilty. And I can’t discuss any of this with my husband because he won’t understand, he lacks empathy for emotional issues.
I felt completely and utterly overwhelmed by the group of women a couple weeks ago for a church class. It wasn’t really that many, and I’m not sure if it was the environment or situation. I left and cried on my way home and still felt anxious and kept crying about it over a week later.
I went into OCD mode, where I just shut down, research, and absorb [exorbitant amounts of] info on whatever is it I’m focused on. That was mental health and religion, and I found this rather interesting list of traits of unhealed trauma.
So I get it, I was again facing some denial that I have indeed been through traumas. I don’t know if that’s normal for trauma victims or if it’s just because of my OCD, that I doubt what I experienced was traumatizing.
Every point listed is true for me. I think, maybe a few would be normal for people who haven’t necessarily been through a “trauma”, but every single one? How am I supposed to fix so many broken areas?
The low sense of worth and craving external validation, those are pretty tied together. I have actually been working on those pretty heavily, for awhile. It used to bother me that my husband never told me I was pretty or beautiful, unless I asked him how I looked. It’s not that I’m vain, it just that I admittedly do need to hear that my spouse finds me attractive. I’m not trying to sound conceited in the slightest, but I’m nice to look at, I get flirted with, gawked at creepily, whistles, and in certain areas of the world, comments I won’t repeat because I’m a good Christian girl. But, they’re not my husband and I just want my husband to tell me I’m pretty, because essentially, who cares what strangers think?
But, I’m improving in that area and markedly, I think. Firstly, the fact that I can say I’m nice to look at, is a improvement to a year ago, where I likely would have said, “I’m okay”. A year before that? I would have told you I was ugly. I’ve had a poor opinion of myself and it took a lot of effort to accept and then like myself. The outside, at least.
The shame, abandonment issues, codependency, tolerating abusive behavior and not standing up for myself, those seem like a challenge. And things to tackle in therapy, not alone. But man… that’s a lot of work! T
I’m not opposed to work, on the contrary . It is just that the entirety seems daunting and it does bring up feelings of just wanting to throw in the towel before I begin. But, I’m not happy with my broken self and don’t like those traits about me. Especially the tolerates abusive behavior – I need to stop.
I think if I can work on this cluster of behaviors and feelings, perhaps I can handle situations and interactions better. It’s just a theory. Improving myself can’t hurt I suppose. Unless of course my husband doesn’t like the new, less doormat-like wife who doesn’t tolerate abusive behavior. If that happens, then I do suppose that’s God’s plan, because I know he wants the best for me.
As I’ve been keen to say lately. We shall see.
The Obsessively Anxious 