Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - bran_alastar

#1
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Another new guy
November 17, 2017, 08:19:29 PM
Hey all. So glad to have found this board. I posted a bit of a relevant bio in another thread but, to recap. . .

I'm 37, trans guy, married w/ kids (3m, 6f), Wiccan, depression/ADHD, with messed up divorced parents.  My mom and my wife both have borderline personality disorder.  My mom got very emotionally abusive when she was dysregulated (think "witch-type"), and we're now estranged.  My wife gets very dysregulated but only accidentally abusive ("waif-type"), and she has been making great progress learning to handle her intense emotions and unstable self-image.  I've spent a lot of time in my adult life working on difficulties left over from my family of origin, and replicated in the family my wife and I have made together.  There may be some guilt there. . .

What really brought me here is that I had (I think?) an emotional flashback recently, and I can't deny the complex PTSD anymore.  See, my mom would come home from work and sulk, getting steadily more drunk, and then lay into me after dinner. I don't remember a lot of the specifics, thankfully.  But I remember that, by the time I was 13, I'd sit there for hours, as still as a statue, trying my best not to respond, while she ranted about how bad I was, how bad she was, how much she loved me-- even though I was a terrible person and I was trying to destroy her life.  By the time I moved back in with my dad, she never spoke to me except during her rages.

Like I said, my mom has BPD. 

And so does my wife.  She was diagnosed in her 20s before we met, but was very stable during our first few years, and I didn't honestly much credit the diagnosis. Then we had kids. Then she found out she was adopted— illegally, in the 70s. Then, I came out as trans (my timing was less than good).  Those were a rough few years.

I'm in therapy, she's in therapy, our daughter's in therapy, we're in therapy together. My wife just finished a two year cycle of DBT skills group and it was very helpful to us both. She's working amazingly hard on her stuff, stuff that she never chose, doesn't want, and certainly never deserved. I don't know what our future will bring, but I love her tremendously and am in awe of her courage and strength.

But I'm struggling.  My wife is doing much better, less anxious about abandonment, letting me have my own life, raging at me less.  I've got better coping strategies and I'm better at asserting and maintaining my limits.  If she goes into attack mode, I can disengage gently and walk away.  She can cope with it on her own, and we can come back to issues of substance later.  We're having fun together again.  Our kids are in school and my wife just went back to work, which has made a huge difference.  But I'm still hypervigilant for any signs that her extreme behavior (so much like my mother's abuse, though not nearly so severe) is coming back.

I spent a couple days recently freaking out, on edge about the explosion I "knew" was coming, desperately making plans and grasping at straws to get out of a situation where I felt trapped-- because my wife was a bit withdrawn at dinner for a couple of days.  She'd started work, the family dynamic hand changed, and she was stressed, and she was coping with it *well* on her own.  But my past experience left me feeling like I was in acute danger. 

I ranted at friends, meditated, distracted myself, and waited it out-- and eventually figured out what was going on.  I told my wife, who was very understanding.  And I was like "well #@^%, I guess I do have c-PTSD." 

And so I'm here. I'm reading the forum.  But, how do you cope with it? How do you recover? How do you balance your own needs and the needs of your family, when you're in a situation that is not-entirely-safe/certainly-triggering/not-awful, and improving?   

Any thoughts or advice would be very welcome.
#2
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: Hey friends
November 17, 2017, 06:43:48 PM
Hey there!  I'm a newbie here (been lurking), but had to jump in and root for you.  First off, huge kudos for working on this stuff now.  No time too soon or too late, but the sooner you start in on the big stuff, the sooner you can start building a happy, healthy life.   

I recognize a lot of what you're struggling with.  I'm 37, trans guy, married w/ kids, Wiccan, depression/ADHD, with messed up divorced parents.  My mom and my wife both have borderline personality disorder (and isn't that fun?).  My mom was pretty abusive and we're now estranged; my dad did his best but it wasn't that great.  My family was definitely of the "I'm not giving my kids meds!!!" school, and just pushed me to "do better."  My depression wasn't diagnosed and treated till my 20s, the ADHD till my 30s-- and I didn't deal with the gender stuff until a few years ago (also not fun).  So believe me when I say, good job getting to work on all this in your teens!

ADHD is miserable, and differently miserable for otherwise gifted people (which it sounds like you are, and I like to think I am).  ADHD looks, and feels, pretty much just like being "lazy", except you can't just decide to be less lazy.  I remember trying to describe the feeling that if I just tried harder, I could do the work on my plate-- but I was trying the hardest I knew, and it just didn't happen.  When I was first prescribed stimulants, I had the remarkable experience of deciding to do something and then doing it.  That had never happened before, in my life.  It was almost as remarkable as when I started antidepressants, and went a whole month without wanting to die. 

High school, college, and graduate school (yeah, I did that), I alternately got As and Bs without effort, and failed when I needed to expend effort and couldn't.  I failed out of college as a sophomore and had to take a year off. Career?  My performance is all over the place-- great success at the hard stuff that's interesting, abysmal failure at the easy stuff that's boring.  Family life? My greatest hope is that I will make better mistakes than my own parents; my greatest fear is that I've already made worse ones.

But, now, I go months without being clinically depressed. My lowest low in my 30s is better than my best day in my teens.  I can't focus well on everything, every day, but I can focus well enough on most things, most days.  Psychopharmacology isn't the be-all end-all of happiness but, for many of us, it's necessary.  (And, as an aside, top surgery was life-changing.)

Biggest life lesson from all of that? This, too, shall pass.  In high school they told me if I didn't buckle down and learn to work harder, I'd never get anywhere-- it wasn't true.  In college, they said if I messed up, or dropped out, I'd never get anywhere-- it wasn't true.  The first time I didn't get into grad school, they told me I should find a different career-- definitely not 100% true (though, in hindsight, not wholly incorrect).  I could go on, but those are the milestones most relevant to your life.

Get meds, get therapy, it helps.  You can, and should, make huge mistakes, take your time, screw it all up, and ignore everyone's advice.  I regret my mistakes less than many of my successes-- I learned more from them, and they worked out better in the end.  You should learn to be kind before you learn to be serious, learn to do good before you learn to do well.  Don't let people prod you to make progress before you know where you want to go.  Progress in the wrong direction takes you further from your goals.  If you've got food and a roof over your head, it's not an emergency.  As long as you're alive, the rest can be sorted out.  This, too, shall pass. 

You'll be OK.  You're already on the right path :-).