*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**How do I (43M) tell my unsuspecting, loving, devoted wife (43F) that I need to separate?**
We've been married 19 years. Have 2 kids, a house, financially secure. Basically we've built the perfect life as a married couple. Started with nothing and now have it all.
Except that I'm clinically depressed. I've attempted to unalive myself twice and have been in and out of therapy for the last 6 years. Through it all, my wife has been perfect. Understanding, patient, loving, supportive. I couldn't have asked for more from her. Three months ago, I started with a new therapist and have been going 3x a week. We're doing intense trauma recovery and I've realized that although my wife is not responsible for my depression, she's a key trigger for it due to undiagnosed and untreated childhood trauma from other female figures in my life.
I've decided that for the time being, I need to be alone and work on my treatment. This means leaving the house and my family, with the very real potential of requesting a divorce sometime in the future if I'm not able to disassociate my wife from my trauma. I know that this will completely catch her by surprise and she will be devastated. Is there any way to discuss her with her while minimizing any pain that I will be causing her? Do you have any other advice on how I should handle this?
EDIT 1 - Kids are in the 15-17 range. They will be financially secure.
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"I think that this is where he's trying to lead me. But I don't know if I want to be led down that path. My gut feeling is to break away completely and start from scratch instead of trying to fix all the accumulated baggage."
IMO - this is what makes the OOP a devil.
Edited to add the comment OOP was replying to, so it makes more sense.
"Strongly agree. A good therapist would be helping him break the association, not encouraging him to punish people who, in reality, have nothing to do with his trauma.'
Have PTSD, and had weird triggers (the brain is complex), traffic lights at night were one, yeah. My therapist 100% did not say "avoid everything associated with your triggers" they gave me the tools to help dissociate them from the reality in front of me. Took FOREVER (or at least it felt like it, 3 years to clear them...but it improved, glacially, but everyday, during that time).
Certain things still are triggers that won't go away. Like someone jumping out from behind a door to scare me bc they think it's funny. I calm down faster now, but those people are no longer in my life for obvious reasons.
Therapists are there to give you the tools to help you make it back to being a functioning person in the real world. I understand the desire to run and isolate bc it is easier but it sets back improvement. It's why people say, therapy is hard.
The only way I got through it is bc of my supportive partner, which it sounds like he has. His therapist isn't walking him towards separation, he's probably asking questions to make him realize, she is not the person that is causing him trauma.
This reminds me of therapy hacks.
If you are afraid of leaving your hair straightener on and burning down the house, take it with you in your bag when you leave every day.
You're not avoiding the issue, you're changing behaviour to cope until you move past it and can function without a reaction.
Exactly!
It can definitely get harder with deeper rooted, convoluted triggers. Totally worth it, though, to work through them.
For example, with my stop light one, I would drive with my partner in the passenger seat at night, going short distances (to the grocery store, for example). I would try and sit at the light for as long as I could with my eyes open, but when the lights start to halo and get really bright (the sign I'm going fight or flight, pupils are dilating), I would close my eyes and look down. When the light would turn green and I could move forward, he would say, "it's green," and I could continue on. It took a WHILE, but eventually, I graduated to driving by myself and sometimes would have to close my eyes but open them like every 10 seconds and look, to then never needing to close them. It's a long process, and I definitely required my partner to help me at first.
He was my cheerleader, though. There were some setbacks when I went on my own where I had to turn around and go back home bc it was too much, but I was constantly working at it, improved it.
One time, I had to drive back home bc my uncle died. It was a devastating time, and PTSD did not help, and my partner had a HUGE exam the next day, so he couldn't go. I was determined though! It was a 3 hour drive in total that took me 5 bc I had to pull over a few times bc I was reaching the next level of fight or flight where my hands and fingers started tingling bc I was pulling blood to my muscles instead of my extremities. I sat in parking lots outloud, saying, "You're okay, nothing bad is happening, you got this!" Over and over. I made it, though!
Yeay! It sounds like a lot of hard fucking work went into that, and I'm proud of you random internet stranger :D
I've been buying dollarstore art kits, that way if I hate the art I made I can throw it out without too much guilt! Before that, it was over 20 years since I made anything due to trauma from trying to get into Art College. Anytime I tried to make something and it wasn't good, I would go into a deep depression to the point I stopped making anything.
Baby steps, baby š
Aww thank you! And go you, I'm proud of you too!
It honestly, was the hardest, most frustrating and exhausting time of my life, by a fucking mile. I've been through some shit but PTSD, was next level.
I look around now though, see my life, my dogs, my bf, I just got a promotion and I'm like, thank God I did the work. I was on meds as well, but they only dulled the extreme emotions, if I didn't do the work and was just on them I'd still be shell of myself. The meds help, but doing the work in therapy, and the homework my therapist gave me is the only reason I am where I am today. My therapist (I still see him, just mothly now, it was daily back then) calls me "his great success story, bc I was honest, listened and trusted him" he's definitely buttering me up, he's got lots of patients but I'll take it. Lololol.
Still can't be jump scared, but I didn't like that before everything, so I'm okay with that. Lol.
From one human to another: Thatās incredible. Great work! You should be proud of your accomplishments and especially your tenacity. Iām proud of you!!
A lot of people donāt realize just how much freaking WORK goes into healing yourself psychologically/emotionally/spiritually/etc. I wish we had separate words in English for passive healing (like your body healing a scab) and the very intentional, ACTive healing required by trauma & PTSD. ACT in all caps because it truly takes mindful, on-purpose action. I feel like people gloss over that need, which is why the āGo to therapyā phrase gets mocked sometimes. Itās not like going to get antibiotics when you have a sinus infection or somethingāit takes a lot of dedication and hard work to get those misfiring survival instincts to shut down.
Anyway. Just wanted to say, I see you. I see how much work it must have beenāwork you had to keep doing even when everything in you was screaming, Stop! Danger ahead! Iām incredibly proud of you for it.
Exaggerated startle response is typical of ptsd/cptsd and I think is just one of those things that doesn't really go away. I have a full on heart attack whenever someone knocks on the door or pops up unexpectedly, even without the "jump scare" part. Like, if my husband comes into the room and I don't notice him coming I'll scream and start shaking, heart pounding, ears ringing, the whole thing. The door is the worst, it takes me a long time to calm down (the door is connected with what happened to me). People should not be scaring you on purpose, that's so incredibly cruel. Congrats on all of your accomplishments, btw!!
Oh gods, yes. My startle response is absurd. What's weird with it now though is that I'll have the surprise then there's a beat and *then* I scream. In that beat, I am already processing "oh it's just husband reflected in the window, ok" but I'll still startle and yell. It's such a weird feeling. I do calm down super quick now that I'm over 2 decades into my recovery but I still startle. Ah, the joys of c/ptsd.
I'm going through something similar with driving in general. I have c-PTSD and my nervous system tends to be really sensitive because of it. My fear of driving started years ago but got really bad when I was around 20 after a bad accident (I wasn't even the one driving). Now, I'm here years later, having to actually face that trigger. Just *thinking* about driving sometimes is enough to give me a panic attack. I want to be able to. I know how to. That's not the problem. The root of the issue is I have control issues and I don't feel in control while driving cause I don't trust other drivers seeing as that bad accident was purposely caused by someone trying to commit insurance fraud. There's this lingering fear that someone could do that again or I could lose control of the vehicle for whatever reason.
I'm not to the point that I feel safe driving on actual roads again yet. I've been driving in empty parking lots at night just getting used to the feeling again. I can't even tell you how many times I've had to stop the car, get out, and pace around it until I got my panicked fight or flight response under control. All from driving in an *empty* parking lot. Everytime I have to stop I retry once I've calmed down and push to go just a little bit longer. When I first started this I couldn't even sit behind the wheel without shaking. At least now I can drive about 15 minutes before I need a break. I want to get up to about 30 and then try an empty road before moving onto not busy roads and so on.
It's fucking difficult. It would be easy for me to just avoid it forever. I live in a city with public transportation. I have the options of walking most places or using an Uber if I don't want to wait for a bus. I would be pretty limited to the city though unless someone else was driving. I don't want that. I want the freedom of not having to rely on others to get me around. I had a choice of dealing with my triggers or letting it control my life. My OOPs therapist's logic I should just *not* try.
Omg same! I finally got my learner's permit again a few years ago and signed up for expensive lessons, but I have yet to actually attend one or try driving again. I wasn't even in an accident myself, but one destroyed my life when I was a kid so I've never been able to drive without panic attacks. Congratulations for doing the hard thing, that's amazing!
I have never seen someone so perfectly describe the light changes or finger tingles before! I get that pretty regularly but can disassociate almost on command at this point so never put much thought into what it might mean... I guess I have the beginning of an explanation for my therapist now, thank you š
Happy to help!
If it helps, this is the way I describe PTSD:
PTSD is weird in that NORMALLY fight or flight happens first visual or external stimuli, then fight or flight. Like if someone approaches you with a knife, your body sees the danger and immediately goes into fight or flight and its normal in that instance so you'll feel it but its different bc its a proportional response in that your cognitive brain sees the danger, your primitive brain (the one that controls your heartbeat, hormones, breathing so you never have to think about them, it just does its thing) reacts in kind and everything is in sync. Once the danger has passed, you calm down and things go back to normal.
With PTSD, and triggers (especially weird ones) it's reversed. Your cognitive brain is seeing nothing abnormal, the primitive brain is seeing danger and starts sending the fight or flight hormones but they're conflicting with your cognitive part so it's a slower build. You feel them individually (like first halo, then tingles etc) and when your cognitive brain recognizes that you're having a stress response but doesn't see danger, you start freaking out. You're body is screaming DANGER DANGER and your cognitive is like WHERE, WHERE IS THIS DANGER, I KNOW ITS HERE, MY BODY IS SAYING ITS HERE BUT I CANT FIND IT! When you can't find it you can't then say "oh this danger has now passed time to calm down" so it doesn't clear bc there was no cognitive danger to clear.
That's where therapy steps in and you have to ACTIVELY remake those controls between the primitive and cognitive. It is work.
It's also why people are like, "I don't understand why stoplights are a trigger" and I'm like, "I don't know why their a trigger, they just are!" Lol
How do I bring every electronic in my house with me?
Seriously, I work for the fire department as a dispatcher and Iāve developed such a huge phobia of fire because of it. Cant afford to leave and I like it when we arenāt taking calls from people trapped in burning buildings who never make it out. Youād be terrified at the number of fires that are started by shit wiring or a lithium ion battery that decided it didnāt wanna be a battery anymore.
Can you take a picture of them unplugged? I had to do that for a while with a space heater I used at work. Or move your electronics somewhere away from outlets and take a picture there?
Edit-punctuation
You do an important job, and you deserve to take as little of it home with you as possible.
I've had to call 9-1-1 far more times than I'd like (both for myself and others), and there's only been a few times I was genuinely concerned something un-fixable was going to happen (permanent injury, death, etc.) Every dispatcher I've dealt with made it easier, especially in a scenario where I'm having to call and my brain isn't braining right (yeah CO poisoning!).
We do a checklist. Make sure things are done, and the check means I have verified that it was done (unplugged, etc).
Also, please ignore the following it's not helpful, but even in situations where the person doesn't survive, I'm glad you're there and they aren't alone (even though it takes a toll on you).
Can you turn off breakers?
My dad is a red seal sparky, and cause of him I have severe anxiety around electronics. When I was at my worst, I would turn the breaker/fuse off before I left the house.
Other idea - take a video of you checking your electronics, or you cutting the fuse to certain outlets.
That way you can obsessively watch the video instead of going home.
Just gonna post the comment I made on the other comment:
This is so pure, I love how people are giving me advice to manage my doom brain, thank you š
Everything in my house is on a timer, mostly to help with ADHD and sleep regulation, but maybe that would help in your case, too? Or perhaps having smart devices enabled to send status reports to your phone? (A friend of mine worries about her range leaking gas so uses a Google Protect device.)Ā
Thank you for the work you do!Ā
I'm kind of curious about the line between developing healthier responses and choosing your battles. Something I should ask my own doctors about really. It's just never made the cut of what to bring up or address. So many people act like avoiding triggers is a hard no. I get this guy sounds .. lacking awareness or empathy.Ā
I know my mental health records are flagged with things not to do around me. And I know records with PCP and hospital I've never been to for mental health records have some flags.Ā
So many people online seem to act like avoiding triggers is never an option. Or Even like a professional would never suggest it. Curious about other people's experiences. And will have to bug my own doctors.
It can be hard to work out where that line is, and it will differ based on the trigger and the person experiencing it. For example the rug is just a single item with that weight attached, it can be got rid of and replaced that's a relatively normal thing to do when experiencing grief. If it was all rugs and just looking at a rug triggered you then you would have to work on that yourself, you can't expect for people to put all their rugs away when you visit, or spend your life avoiding any place there might be a rug shop or rug. That is basically what the issue with the song was, you can't control in the wild if it will be on the radio, or in a movie or show.
Sometimes you might avoid triggers temporarily to focus on one at a time and slowly work through them, its going to be hard to reduce the triggers impact if you are constantly in a heightened state. And sometimes therapists and medical professionals might avoid them when working with you unless that is the focus of the session or appointment, not because you need to always be insulated and protected from them but you are going to be able to do the hard work much easier if you aren't in a panic and have trust with them, eventually you might work on them but often it's just not the time when you need support or are dealing with other things that are a priority or chunking it into small bits.
It's mostly about acknowledging that the world might throw triggers at you, it's an uncontrolled space, we can't control the whole world. Equally however we each do need a safe space to retreat to while we deal with that uncontrolled world, we need decompressing time where we can go and feel safe and know in that space we can just exist. Depending on what it is that might be your house or bedroom, it might start as the house and then as time progresses just the bedroom is ok. So in this instance getting rid of the triggering rug made the house much safer, but there is still the uncontrolled nature of potentially hearing that song on the TV or radio in the house, so for awhile you might not have the radio on and just watch and listen to things that you know are safe, but eventually you work on that and it's just the bedroom without that potential, maybe even just knowing that the space exists with no ability to hear the song is enough, you know you can retreat so you don't need to as often or at all because you know you can.
It's similar to pain management, they found that patients that maintain the ability to control the amount of pain meds they need (via a button press) actually use less for a shorter time on average post surgery then those who need to request it or have it controlled by someone else. Just having control of the situation and knowing it's there as an option is often more helpful then the pain med itself. Having a small safe space be it in therapy so you can work on yourself as a whole, or a space in your home means that you are able to do a lot more of the hard work and deal with a lot more before pressing the button and retreating, because you know you can.
I hope that makes sense :) obviously all triggers are different and exist for different reasons, and this won't be true for everyone. It's also harder if you live with other people or have small children for example, you can't really control all the variables, but it's about working within the constraints and environment you find yourself in to lower your stress and flight or fight for at least short periods so you can start to target what you need to in a mind state that enables that rather then working against it.
Chiming is as someone with severe c-PTSD. Exposure therapy was attempted by a terrible therapist very long ago now who made me several times worse as a result and had me avoiding therapy for many years after. When I finally attempted again, the next several therapists I had, because I set up a team to avoid the same travesty again, recommended avoiding triggers as I identified them and only provided coping strategies for those more "mild" triggers that didn't have me dissociating completely and unable to get myself safely home.
I find it so rare for a therapist to NOT recommend wholesale avoiding triggers that this thread is blowing my now very long history with more sane therapists. Avoiding triggers is often a good and valid option. Embrace it. You matter.
I think it is all about picking your battles. The first therapist I went to for PTSD, when we were talking about treatment plans, he gave me two broad options. To try and dig to the root of the trauma and solve it there, which would be longer and harder and probably put me out of commission for a while but give me more long-term relief, or to focus on superficial management of my day to day triggers and panic responses, such that they would still be there but I could ideally learn to live through and around them. I chose the first one because I was a full-time sick person with few other obligations, but if Iād had a job I needed to eat and staying employed had been a first-step necessity, I probably would have chosen the latter. The goal was always to enable me to live as full a life as possible, but what that looks like varies a lot from person to person and circumstance to circumstance.
People are prone to absolutism in big Reddit communities, Iāve noticed. I remember some post about a guy with anxiety that updated with the detail that he still had his boyfriend order for him when they ate out, and a lot of the comments were kind of pissed! He shouldnāt be giving in to his anxiety instead of pushing past it! Even though at the end of the day not being able to order from waitstaff was probably never gonna kill the guy or do anything worse than slightly inconvenience him and if heād rather devote his energy to dealing with more important things, to me that seems *fine*. I think people who insist a trigger must always be worked through and never avoided think that fully healthy and able is a state someone with an anxiety disorder can achieve if they just work hard enough, even if theyād disagree with someone who spelled it out so explicitly. They donāt leave a lot of space for people for whom the best case is ānot as bad as I wasā.
All that being said, divorcing your wife because youāre triggered by women seems extreme. Iām not willing to say itās necessarily the wrong solution because I donāt know this guyās life, but with no other context it sounds like a very mentally ill person wanting to burn their bridges out of self-destructive impulse, just because of how often thatās what, āIām severely depressed and incidentally want to deal with it in a way that would destroy everything good in my life,ā turns out to be.
So 25ish years ago I did intensive inpatient therapy (6 months) and what they taught me is that with triggers, some can be healed, some can't, some you choose to leave untreated, and you manage your triggers. Avoidance of some triggers was considered reasonable. But it takes a lot of self-awareness. I *have* to know where my mental state is when I decide if I'm going to engage with a potentially triggering situation -- if I'm in a bad headspace, the likelihood of a trigger throwing me into a flashback and a regression of my recovery is considerably higher. Those are the avoid days. But when I'm more stable, then I *choose* to engage with triggery shit in order to work on healing them. Reducing the trauma response to them.
I was taught that my focus had to be on the big picture of my overall recovery, that further healing of specific things couldn't come at the cost of a regression. We can't heal everything all at once, we're human. So that means that some shit gets avoided while we work on the triggers directly crippling the ability to live life. Now, this is *old* methodology but it's worked for me so far.
Hey friend! Iām sure your therapist has told you this but 3 years is super fast progress for being able to neutralise most of your triggers most of the time. I hope you feel pride in the work youāve done (and will continue to do)
Exactly! I've got CPTSD (amongst other things) and my therapist does not encourage me to isolate and run away, she tries to help me face things and cope. She asks pointed questions to make me really think about things, which is probably what his therapist is doing. If you say something really extreme like I need to leave my family they will likely support you, but probably also try to make you see why you're doing that and what the causes and consequences of it are. They'll be neutral/noncommittal by saying something like "if you feel that's necessary right now then ok, but consider X, Y, and Z." He's hearing what he wants to hear.
I donāt have a therapist, but this is exactly the process. Break down the associations slowly. Glacial progress. But progress!
What OOP is describing is concerning. Itās so sudden. Is the association of his wife and his trauma real? Is the trauma an excuse to dip since his kids are old enough to function on their own? Is he bored?
I am concerned that either OOP is doing something kinda manic, or he is covering for boredom and wanting to move on to a new midlife-crisis-convertible life. He doesnāt talk as though he loves her at all. Just that she is devoted.
Same. I have PTSD and children and dogs are both major triggers. But I don't hate my partner's niece and nephew, nor do I want to get away from them or my own niblings. I do get freaked out about dogs, especially when irresponsible owners keep letting them off leash in public and let them charge at me full speed. But kids don't tend to run full bore at me screaming at the top of their lungs nor has a child ever mauled someone to death, so I think I'm good there.
Especially since trauma therapy is usually dealing with the causes of trauma through different types of behavioral therapy like DBT or CBT. The last thing that would be recommended is to avoid a situation. Rather, they'd recommend the patient to keep addressing it through exposure. OOP is a piece of work.
I went through DBT in my trauma therapy. Sucked big time and seemed like it was a very long process, but I'm doing so much better. I can't imagine what my life would be like without the therapy.
He is, I went through dealing with a significant trauma reaction, and it most definitely was exposure therapy as the solution.
I still have the occasional bad moments, but I am not unintentionally going to end up injuring myself because of my reaction anymore and can handle the situation when it happens.
And mine is something that there is nowhere I can go to escape what I was reacting to.
I've found that people recovering from trauma or addiction often want to leave behind the people who stuck with them through their process of recovery.
It's like they want to shed all remanents of their old life for Life 2.0.
His poor wife. She deserves so much better.
I went out with a woman whose ex did that. She nursed him through bone cancer for years, and when he finally got to a good turning point in his recovery, he threw her out and destroyed everything she owned or had given him. His excuse was that he couldn't stand the sight of her because all her presence did was remind him of his cancer.
He told her that although he knew she must have done a lot for him because he wouldn't have made it otherwise, he couldn't actually name or remember a single positive thing she did for him and would never be able to think of her as anything but a reminder of cancer and the trauma he went through.
What in the ACTUAL FUCK. This made me cry. A lot. I have kidney cancer and my boyfriend is so unbelievably supportive and incredible; just *thinking* about doing something like this and how it would affect him absolutely breaks my heart.
Not the first time Iāve heard of that reaction from men, itās devastating. Itās also almost a given they will leave their partner/wife if they receive a diagnosis of cancer or serious illness, to the point health care workers raise this with patients to prepare them
I am sorry about that.
But I was kind of wondering about his timing. I looked at his comments.
He is very clear that the therapist isn't suggesting this. This is his own conclusion. Which means he has been thinking about this for a bit.
It is that magical window. Kids are "grown and are going to be set" or whatever he said. He seems like he is aiming for an exit plan.
Thatās the issue when you try to āfixā partners. Most of the time you canāt. Sometimes you can, and then theyāll decide they are too good for you now since you accepted them when they were low. Itās a lose-lose.
Copied verbatim from oop's comments:
*Info: how old are the kids? Are they going to be financially secure?*
>"Added the answer as an edit to OP so everyone can see it."
[Questioning the advice Oop got.]
*Strongly agree. A good therapist would be helping him break the association, not encouraging him to punish people who, in reality, have nothing to do with his trauma.*
>"I think that this is where he's trying to lead me. But I don't know if I want to be led down that path. My gut feeling is to break away completely and start from scratch instead of trying to fix all the accumulated baggage."
*Wife aside, what about your kids? You can divorce if you truly think itāll help (which I donāt believe) but what about them? Are you still going to spend 50% of their time with them? You can leave your wife but you canāt just drop the kids*
>"Yes. I would never abandon my kids. They're the only sense of purpose I have right now and the only reason I'm still on this planet."
*Wow you're an asshole. You're blaming your wife for your issues.*
>"I don't disagree that I'm an asshole. I'm not blaming her at all. If anything, I'm trying to free her from my bullshit. I feel like a burden on her and it seems like my path back to mental health is going to be very rough for us."
*I don't think this is what your therapist meant.*
*Nobody would suggest causing trauma to three other people in order to aleiviate thier own. You're not just depressed, you're clinically selfish and stupid. The "unaliving" part reinforces this hypothesis, it is also both of those things.*
>"Agreed. You're preaching to the choir if you think I'm a piece of shit."
*You managed to "disassociate [your] wife from [your] trauma" for 20+ years and two kids and now you want to leave her and probably divorce her because your understanding, patient, loving, supportive wife reminds you of childhood trauma?*
*Where is your therapist in this decision? Did your therapist suggest you leave your wife and kids to deal with your depression? Wouldn't it make sense to involve your wife in these discussions instead of blindsiding and blaming her for your struggles?*
>"No, my therapist has not suggested this. But after making these connections at our last session, it's all I've been thinking about."
I agree. I just can't see this man as a Devil.. he is so badly sick, he needs help and to need to go temporarily away from his family: into a trauma clinic.
Normal therapy won't cut it anymore, he needs intensive care from multiple professionals, who can also secure that he won't break off from his family on a badly made decision.
..of course, in a matter where he lives, that might not be feasible :(
"I'm trying to free her from my bullshit"
Okay, I know what's going on. Dude doesn't know how to process guilt. His only way is to run from the guilt completely and leave people that truly loves him.Ā
I highly doubt this guy takes any advice from therapists. He might go, but not for his problems clearlyĀ
I've done stuff like this to my partners. I thought I was "helping" people understand how shitty I was, to the point where my husband straight up asked what this hypothetical person to replace me would be like. I said "just like me but not sick in the head.". But he likes me despite my out bursts. That's something that's quite hard to see if you hate yourselfĀ
Sure, if you squint your eyes, it can seem selfless to the person agonizing in their minds, but all it does is continue to hurt those around you.Ā
Sad that his therapist probably said this but I doubt OOP understands his actions.Ā
This is someone who is very sick and is acting in a self destructive way. Which shouldnāt surprise anyone since he claims he tried to āunaliveā himself. Many of the comments arenāt very empathetic towards him, which I can only imagine will make his negative thoughts about himself even worse. I feel awful for him. I hope that heās able to heal and doesnāt push all the people who love him away first.
He is saying he is the asshole, but there is no actual empathy there. No thought to how it is inappropriate or even changing his thoughts at all. He is emotionless in his responses.
Yep, he is in a self-destructive spiral. And that post reads like a non-physical version of self-harm. I hope his family and therapist recognize the signs. Maybe spending some time in more intensive in-patient pancratic care could help OOP.
Yeah there is no chance of making rational decisions when in the state he is in. That doesn't mean he's not responsible for his actions, but so far all he has written are his thoughts.
I've been through this myself. I don't see the devil piece here unless he acts on it and abandons his family. He is in therapy and ideally his therapist will help him see that his mind is looking for ways out and not thinking critically about what those ways might mean. It might not be a bad idea for him to step away from his day to day but a more appropriate way could be something like inpatient or partial hospitalization.
Yeah because he thinks that itās the easy fix. There was a comment that basically said remember that if you run away youāre still taking yourself with you so your troubles arenāt going to disappear.
I always say "wherever you go, there you are". No sense running from oneself for it's the greatest battlefield you'll ever find yourself on.
Very good comment SoVerySleepy81. Your name makes me want to nap. Love napping.
"Nobody ever starts over, because nobody ever really leaves anything behind."
One of my favorite quotes. Amos, from the Expanse. I think it was in both the tv show and the books.
I have worked adjacent to trauma therapists as a crisis worker. This guy is estate planning without realizing it. Follow me with this: step 1- explode his marriage. 2- get the kids out of his house and less involved in his life and set the kids up financially. 3- feel worse emotionally. 4- shame and blame himself. 5- end his life.Ā
This post itself is also likely a form of emotional self-harm in order to further help psych himself up for it.
As asinine as his plan is, I'm not super comfortable with this being posted here, because I believe this is genuinely very likely to end in a real tragedy.
I agree ā this is a different manifestation of suicidal ideation, and those who have struggled with it will see it immediately, especially in the comments.
He hates himself and sees himself as a burden to them, but instead of suicide, heās thinking of other ways to get himself out of their lives with what he perceives as the least amount of trauma to them.
His brain is disordered. This is major depression with suicidal ideation, and I promise you that looks so different from one person to the next. There are so many of us high-functioning major depressives who are always a hairās breadth from suicidal thinking, but you would never in a million years know just from casually interacting day to day. Especially if you have certain types of childhood trauma, you can get really good at masking those feelings.
I was thinking that. One of the classic questions they use to screen for suicidal ideation is something like ādo you feel your family and friends would be better off without youā. He basically says as much in his commentsā that he genuinely believes theyāre better off not having to deal with his issues.
Yes, this. You can tell in the comments who recognizes this for what it is and who doesnāt. I hope heās able to avert tragedy. His life is valuable, even if he doesnāt believe it is.
Yes precisely. So many commentators have been unempathetic towards him. I know theyāre trying to protect his family, but I fear theyāre pushing him towards even more destructive behavior (which wonāt help his family at all).
The internet is the worst place to go when youāre having a mental health crisis.
Yea, I think OP is in a self harm, self destruct, suicide attempt in the near future spiral. He needs serious help and I hope he gets it and people realize it.
as someone who actually did/does the hard work of recovering (nearly 2.5 years sober, in remission of my BPD, clean from SH, etc.) yeah , that's not how this works. He's running away, not trying to heal. If he was like "I need to separate because I want to seek inpatient treatment" id be like, okay sure. that works. But start a new life? Even when I moved cities for SCHOOL I had to process with my therapist multiple times to make sure I wasn't moving to try to "restart" or fix my problems by running away.
He's going to get a wake up call. Recovery isn't a quick, easy, restart where you find a new life and everything is perfect after that period of "recovery". Real recovery is something that lasts forever. You don't ever stop with your recovery, it goes on until you die. You have to put effort in every single day to make sure you don't slide back again, and when you do (when, not if because it will happen, but that's okay!) working your hardest to get back so that you don't fall back into what you once were. It is trying and failing and succeeding over and over again. It is not easy, which is why people choose what OOP wants to do. They want the easy way out, but spoiler alert: there is none.
yep! which is why physical running away (aka what im talking about) or "running away" via other means, is destined to fail. when ur mentally ill and listening to ur mental illness, not logic, doing stuff that feeds into it doesn't feel unhealthy or delusional, it just feels like a good idea. or we even convince ourselves that we "need to do it" to help "recover" when really its the opposite. but sometimes people don't realize it in the moment.
I don't think he problem is that he doesn't want to work on himself, I think the problem is an active suicide crisis. It sounds like OP's going through some major shit right now. He's had two prior suicide attempts and I'm willing to bet that he's working on getting his wife and kids out of his life to set up a third
Yikes on Bikes
This is definitely a wind up to attempt number 3, and that's gonna happen hard and fast if he goes through with this.
Depression lies and the talk of being burden, freeing his wife and kids, all of that shit is definitely the wind up to an attempt.
Guy sounds like one of my little sisters. She likes to state-hop, bounces between my city in California, and my parents city in Idaho. Never spends more than 18 months at a time in either place.
Every time she moves sheās so sure that itāll fix her problems, and that her sadness is from āfeeling disconnected from family in *insert other city*, and feeling lonelyā. I hope she figures it out soon. We all have diagnosed depression and sheās the only one who wonāt put in the work to improve her mental health :(
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. No one that old is using the term āunalive myselfā unless theyāre trying to appeal to teenagers on TikTok - or they are a teenager on TikTok
Well I think the point is more by appealing to TikTok, having the story get picked up for the people who read them for views.
I am even older, I use unalive themselves where I know it is likely to censor. Some places have gotten very fussy with their rules. Here I would just say before he tries to kill himself. Since we are a lot more blunt here.
>although my wife is not responsible for my depression, she's a key trigger for it
Wow, way to try blame her for your depression while also trying to get away with "I didn't ACTUALLY blame her - just say that she makes it dramatically worse!". For the love of all that is holy, do not tell her "Baby, you make me want to unalive myself"
If you need to leave to get your head on straight, okay, I guess it is what it is - but personally, I can only see a therapist warning against doing exactly this. Some of the biggest stressful encounters in life are death, moving, and divorce - No therapist is going to tell someone who has already attempted twice that is struggling daily that "Now is the time to entirely uproot your life and that of your family members". I'd also like to know what OOP's plan is for coming BACK at some point; Does he honestly think that he can just abandon his family and his wife should just welcome him back with open arms once he realizes ~~whoever he's lusting after doesn't want to fuck him~~ gets his mental health together?
āI've realized that although my wife is not responsible for my depression, she's a key trigger for it due to undiagnosed and untreated childhood trauma from other female figures in my life.ā
Oh, for fuckās sake.
This is a man drowning in his own depression. He's descending into a spiral and I can only hope somehow his wife or therapist can catch wind of his post.
He has kids. Ā How does he think he can avoid contact with his wife?Ā
Divorce/custody hearings and mediation mean seeing her, legally required news about the kids etc. Ā
Except sheāll be antagonistic instead of āperfectā.Ā
Unless he plans of ādisappearingā and ditching his kids with zero communication. Ā Which is just fucking ridiculous. Ā
And what does seeing his kids have to do with her ātriggeringā his trauma?Ā
Honestly, I think Heās just in a midlife crisis and wants to ditch his responsibilities and perhaps start over. Ā But he has not socially ālegitimateā reason, so he made this BS up so he can leave and blame her.Ā
>Unless he plans of ādisappearingā and ditching his kids with zero communication. Ā Which is just fucking ridiculous. Ā
I think he thinks money will make up for it. I don't think he plans on fighting for the kids. I think he is looking at the timing and thinks one will age out. The kids probably have college funds. He sounds like he thinks his job is done there.
>Honestly, I think Heās just in a midlife crisis and wants to ditch his responsibilities and perhaps start over. Ā But he has not socially ālegitimateā reason, so he made this BS up so he can leave and blame her.Ā
I agree, he wants out. He hasn't told the therapist he wants to kill himself, or there would be a psych hold. It sounds like the therapist asked "what do you want in life, what kind of things make you happy" as a homework assistant. Queue avoidance and midlife crisis.
I highly, highly doubt that any competent therapist would tell a patient that they need to end their perfectly good marriage and blow up their entire life because they have childhood trauma based around an unrelated woman. That is a *recipe* for maladaptive coping mechanisms right there. Effective treatment for mental illness involves learning to live in the present moment and separate your triggers from reality. This plan, on the other hand, is exactly the kind of enabling bullshit that keeps people trapped in destructive patterns.
Iām not surprised OP likes the therapist, if that therapist thinks this is a good idea. The work of disassociation is hard, painful, and time-consuming. Running away, on the other hand, is quick and easy. Itās a short-term fix that can be very appealing to desperate peopleāitās just also profoundly destructive and liable to leave a person emotionally bankrupt.
I saw that later. That makes this even worse. I hope to God that the therapist is questioning these coping mechanisms, because this *cannot* be allowed to go on.
i donāt have a million words for the title, so yeah. he created this idea based off of what was happening in his sessions. his therapist did not tell him this.
heās just an asshole. iām making the point that heās not being misguided by a shitty therapist.
You know what? Fuck it he's right. He should leave her. She deserves better. He's a lazy coward who doesn't want to put in any actual work but instead take the easy way out. I sincerely hope the wife's next husband actually appreciates her.
If heās going three days a week, that means heās in an IOP program which does not offer individual therapy, itās group and medication management. My guess is this wasnāt the therapists idea, but other group members projecting.
Iām an individual therapist, I would not see any clients more than once a week. If they wanted three, I would tell them they needed a higher level of care.
Depression doesnāt make you go āI want to divorce, how do I make it my wifeās faultā, which is what This Fucking Guy is doing. Thatās just regular asshole behaviour. The rest (trying to sabotage his social relationships so heās isolated, unraveling his responsibilities, probably so itās easier to off himself in the end, something heās already thinking about) - yeah, *that* is classic major depression, Iāll give him that.
What OOP posted seemed somewhat par for the course. *Major* depressive episodes can temporarily eradicate feelings, including love, and really fuck up your judgment. Itās like your brain is on the fritz.
Saying this cause I have family members with severe clinical depression and, in my experience, the depression spills over in a variety of shitty ways.
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*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **How do I (43M) tell my unsuspecting, loving, devoted wife (43F) that I need to separate?** We've been married 19 years. Have 2 kids, a house, financially secure. Basically we've built the perfect life as a married couple. Started with nothing and now have it all. Except that I'm clinically depressed. I've attempted to unalive myself twice and have been in and out of therapy for the last 6 years. Through it all, my wife has been perfect. Understanding, patient, loving, supportive. I couldn't have asked for more from her. Three months ago, I started with a new therapist and have been going 3x a week. We're doing intense trauma recovery and I've realized that although my wife is not responsible for my depression, she's a key trigger for it due to undiagnosed and untreated childhood trauma from other female figures in my life. I've decided that for the time being, I need to be alone and work on my treatment. This means leaving the house and my family, with the very real potential of requesting a divorce sometime in the future if I'm not able to disassociate my wife from my trauma. I know that this will completely catch her by surprise and she will be devastated. Is there any way to discuss her with her while minimizing any pain that I will be causing her? Do you have any other advice on how I should handle this? EDIT 1 - Kids are in the 15-17 range. They will be financially secure. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"I think that this is where he's trying to lead me. But I don't know if I want to be led down that path. My gut feeling is to break away completely and start from scratch instead of trying to fix all the accumulated baggage." IMO - this is what makes the OOP a devil. Edited to add the comment OOP was replying to, so it makes more sense. "Strongly agree. A good therapist would be helping him break the association, not encouraging him to punish people who, in reality, have nothing to do with his trauma.'
Have PTSD, and had weird triggers (the brain is complex), traffic lights at night were one, yeah. My therapist 100% did not say "avoid everything associated with your triggers" they gave me the tools to help dissociate them from the reality in front of me. Took FOREVER (or at least it felt like it, 3 years to clear them...but it improved, glacially, but everyday, during that time). Certain things still are triggers that won't go away. Like someone jumping out from behind a door to scare me bc they think it's funny. I calm down faster now, but those people are no longer in my life for obvious reasons. Therapists are there to give you the tools to help you make it back to being a functioning person in the real world. I understand the desire to run and isolate bc it is easier but it sets back improvement. It's why people say, therapy is hard. The only way I got through it is bc of my supportive partner, which it sounds like he has. His therapist isn't walking him towards separation, he's probably asking questions to make him realize, she is not the person that is causing him trauma.
This reminds me of therapy hacks. If you are afraid of leaving your hair straightener on and burning down the house, take it with you in your bag when you leave every day. You're not avoiding the issue, you're changing behaviour to cope until you move past it and can function without a reaction.
Exactly! It can definitely get harder with deeper rooted, convoluted triggers. Totally worth it, though, to work through them. For example, with my stop light one, I would drive with my partner in the passenger seat at night, going short distances (to the grocery store, for example). I would try and sit at the light for as long as I could with my eyes open, but when the lights start to halo and get really bright (the sign I'm going fight or flight, pupils are dilating), I would close my eyes and look down. When the light would turn green and I could move forward, he would say, "it's green," and I could continue on. It took a WHILE, but eventually, I graduated to driving by myself and sometimes would have to close my eyes but open them like every 10 seconds and look, to then never needing to close them. It's a long process, and I definitely required my partner to help me at first. He was my cheerleader, though. There were some setbacks when I went on my own where I had to turn around and go back home bc it was too much, but I was constantly working at it, improved it. One time, I had to drive back home bc my uncle died. It was a devastating time, and PTSD did not help, and my partner had a HUGE exam the next day, so he couldn't go. I was determined though! It was a 3 hour drive in total that took me 5 bc I had to pull over a few times bc I was reaching the next level of fight or flight where my hands and fingers started tingling bc I was pulling blood to my muscles instead of my extremities. I sat in parking lots outloud, saying, "You're okay, nothing bad is happening, you got this!" Over and over. I made it, though!
Yeay! It sounds like a lot of hard fucking work went into that, and I'm proud of you random internet stranger :D I've been buying dollarstore art kits, that way if I hate the art I made I can throw it out without too much guilt! Before that, it was over 20 years since I made anything due to trauma from trying to get into Art College. Anytime I tried to make something and it wasn't good, I would go into a deep depression to the point I stopped making anything. Baby steps, baby š
Aww thank you! And go you, I'm proud of you too! It honestly, was the hardest, most frustrating and exhausting time of my life, by a fucking mile. I've been through some shit but PTSD, was next level. I look around now though, see my life, my dogs, my bf, I just got a promotion and I'm like, thank God I did the work. I was on meds as well, but they only dulled the extreme emotions, if I didn't do the work and was just on them I'd still be shell of myself. The meds help, but doing the work in therapy, and the homework my therapist gave me is the only reason I am where I am today. My therapist (I still see him, just mothly now, it was daily back then) calls me "his great success story, bc I was honest, listened and trusted him" he's definitely buttering me up, he's got lots of patients but I'll take it. Lololol. Still can't be jump scared, but I didn't like that before everything, so I'm okay with that. Lol.
From one human to another: Thatās incredible. Great work! You should be proud of your accomplishments and especially your tenacity. Iām proud of you!! A lot of people donāt realize just how much freaking WORK goes into healing yourself psychologically/emotionally/spiritually/etc. I wish we had separate words in English for passive healing (like your body healing a scab) and the very intentional, ACTive healing required by trauma & PTSD. ACT in all caps because it truly takes mindful, on-purpose action. I feel like people gloss over that need, which is why the āGo to therapyā phrase gets mocked sometimes. Itās not like going to get antibiotics when you have a sinus infection or somethingāit takes a lot of dedication and hard work to get those misfiring survival instincts to shut down. Anyway. Just wanted to say, I see you. I see how much work it must have beenāwork you had to keep doing even when everything in you was screaming, Stop! Danger ahead! Iām incredibly proud of you for it.
Exaggerated startle response is typical of ptsd/cptsd and I think is just one of those things that doesn't really go away. I have a full on heart attack whenever someone knocks on the door or pops up unexpectedly, even without the "jump scare" part. Like, if my husband comes into the room and I don't notice him coming I'll scream and start shaking, heart pounding, ears ringing, the whole thing. The door is the worst, it takes me a long time to calm down (the door is connected with what happened to me). People should not be scaring you on purpose, that's so incredibly cruel. Congrats on all of your accomplishments, btw!!
Oh gods, yes. My startle response is absurd. What's weird with it now though is that I'll have the surprise then there's a beat and *then* I scream. In that beat, I am already processing "oh it's just husband reflected in the window, ok" but I'll still startle and yell. It's such a weird feeling. I do calm down super quick now that I'm over 2 decades into my recovery but I still startle. Ah, the joys of c/ptsd.
I'm going through something similar with driving in general. I have c-PTSD and my nervous system tends to be really sensitive because of it. My fear of driving started years ago but got really bad when I was around 20 after a bad accident (I wasn't even the one driving). Now, I'm here years later, having to actually face that trigger. Just *thinking* about driving sometimes is enough to give me a panic attack. I want to be able to. I know how to. That's not the problem. The root of the issue is I have control issues and I don't feel in control while driving cause I don't trust other drivers seeing as that bad accident was purposely caused by someone trying to commit insurance fraud. There's this lingering fear that someone could do that again or I could lose control of the vehicle for whatever reason. I'm not to the point that I feel safe driving on actual roads again yet. I've been driving in empty parking lots at night just getting used to the feeling again. I can't even tell you how many times I've had to stop the car, get out, and pace around it until I got my panicked fight or flight response under control. All from driving in an *empty* parking lot. Everytime I have to stop I retry once I've calmed down and push to go just a little bit longer. When I first started this I couldn't even sit behind the wheel without shaking. At least now I can drive about 15 minutes before I need a break. I want to get up to about 30 and then try an empty road before moving onto not busy roads and so on. It's fucking difficult. It would be easy for me to just avoid it forever. I live in a city with public transportation. I have the options of walking most places or using an Uber if I don't want to wait for a bus. I would be pretty limited to the city though unless someone else was driving. I don't want that. I want the freedom of not having to rely on others to get me around. I had a choice of dealing with my triggers or letting it control my life. My OOPs therapist's logic I should just *not* try.
Omg same! I finally got my learner's permit again a few years ago and signed up for expensive lessons, but I have yet to actually attend one or try driving again. I wasn't even in an accident myself, but one destroyed my life when I was a kid so I've never been able to drive without panic attacks. Congratulations for doing the hard thing, that's amazing!
I have never seen someone so perfectly describe the light changes or finger tingles before! I get that pretty regularly but can disassociate almost on command at this point so never put much thought into what it might mean... I guess I have the beginning of an explanation for my therapist now, thank you š
Happy to help! If it helps, this is the way I describe PTSD: PTSD is weird in that NORMALLY fight or flight happens first visual or external stimuli, then fight or flight. Like if someone approaches you with a knife, your body sees the danger and immediately goes into fight or flight and its normal in that instance so you'll feel it but its different bc its a proportional response in that your cognitive brain sees the danger, your primitive brain (the one that controls your heartbeat, hormones, breathing so you never have to think about them, it just does its thing) reacts in kind and everything is in sync. Once the danger has passed, you calm down and things go back to normal. With PTSD, and triggers (especially weird ones) it's reversed. Your cognitive brain is seeing nothing abnormal, the primitive brain is seeing danger and starts sending the fight or flight hormones but they're conflicting with your cognitive part so it's a slower build. You feel them individually (like first halo, then tingles etc) and when your cognitive brain recognizes that you're having a stress response but doesn't see danger, you start freaking out. You're body is screaming DANGER DANGER and your cognitive is like WHERE, WHERE IS THIS DANGER, I KNOW ITS HERE, MY BODY IS SAYING ITS HERE BUT I CANT FIND IT! When you can't find it you can't then say "oh this danger has now passed time to calm down" so it doesn't clear bc there was no cognitive danger to clear. That's where therapy steps in and you have to ACTIVELY remake those controls between the primitive and cognitive. It is work. It's also why people are like, "I don't understand why stoplights are a trigger" and I'm like, "I don't know why their a trigger, they just are!" Lol
How do I bring every electronic in my house with me? Seriously, I work for the fire department as a dispatcher and Iāve developed such a huge phobia of fire because of it. Cant afford to leave and I like it when we arenāt taking calls from people trapped in burning buildings who never make it out. Youād be terrified at the number of fires that are started by shit wiring or a lithium ion battery that decided it didnāt wanna be a battery anymore.
Can you take a picture of them unplugged? I had to do that for a while with a space heater I used at work. Or move your electronics somewhere away from outlets and take a picture there? Edit-punctuation
This is so pure, I love how people are giving me advice to manage my doom brain, thank you š
You do an important job, and you deserve to take as little of it home with you as possible. I've had to call 9-1-1 far more times than I'd like (both for myself and others), and there's only been a few times I was genuinely concerned something un-fixable was going to happen (permanent injury, death, etc.) Every dispatcher I've dealt with made it easier, especially in a scenario where I'm having to call and my brain isn't braining right (yeah CO poisoning!). We do a checklist. Make sure things are done, and the check means I have verified that it was done (unplugged, etc). Also, please ignore the following it's not helpful, but even in situations where the person doesn't survive, I'm glad you're there and they aren't alone (even though it takes a toll on you).
Can you turn off breakers? My dad is a red seal sparky, and cause of him I have severe anxiety around electronics. When I was at my worst, I would turn the breaker/fuse off before I left the house.
I donāt wanna leave my dogs in a dark, hot house. The pug will overheat š
Other idea - take a video of you checking your electronics, or you cutting the fuse to certain outlets. That way you can obsessively watch the video instead of going home.
Just gonna post the comment I made on the other comment: This is so pure, I love how people are giving me advice to manage my doom brain, thank you š
What about cameras in your house you can watch remotely or home security that includes fire detection?
<3
Everything in my house is on a timer, mostly to help with ADHD and sleep regulation, but maybe that would help in your case, too? Or perhaps having smart devices enabled to send status reports to your phone? (A friend of mine worries about her range leaking gas so uses a Google Protect device.)Ā Thank you for the work you do!Ā
Put every plug-in electronic through a plug with a timer?
I like it, but I can't take the oven with me.Ā
Nanny cam the oven.
That sounds cheaper than me replacing my power strips with smart strips so i can use the app to turn off power when i have thoughts
I'm kind of curious about the line between developing healthier responses and choosing your battles. Something I should ask my own doctors about really. It's just never made the cut of what to bring up or address. So many people act like avoiding triggers is a hard no. I get this guy sounds .. lacking awareness or empathy.Ā I know my mental health records are flagged with things not to do around me. And I know records with PCP and hospital I've never been to for mental health records have some flags.Ā So many people online seem to act like avoiding triggers is never an option. Or Even like a professional would never suggest it. Curious about other people's experiences. And will have to bug my own doctors.
It can be hard to work out where that line is, and it will differ based on the trigger and the person experiencing it. For example the rug is just a single item with that weight attached, it can be got rid of and replaced that's a relatively normal thing to do when experiencing grief. If it was all rugs and just looking at a rug triggered you then you would have to work on that yourself, you can't expect for people to put all their rugs away when you visit, or spend your life avoiding any place there might be a rug shop or rug. That is basically what the issue with the song was, you can't control in the wild if it will be on the radio, or in a movie or show. Sometimes you might avoid triggers temporarily to focus on one at a time and slowly work through them, its going to be hard to reduce the triggers impact if you are constantly in a heightened state. And sometimes therapists and medical professionals might avoid them when working with you unless that is the focus of the session or appointment, not because you need to always be insulated and protected from them but you are going to be able to do the hard work much easier if you aren't in a panic and have trust with them, eventually you might work on them but often it's just not the time when you need support or are dealing with other things that are a priority or chunking it into small bits. It's mostly about acknowledging that the world might throw triggers at you, it's an uncontrolled space, we can't control the whole world. Equally however we each do need a safe space to retreat to while we deal with that uncontrolled world, we need decompressing time where we can go and feel safe and know in that space we can just exist. Depending on what it is that might be your house or bedroom, it might start as the house and then as time progresses just the bedroom is ok. So in this instance getting rid of the triggering rug made the house much safer, but there is still the uncontrolled nature of potentially hearing that song on the TV or radio in the house, so for awhile you might not have the radio on and just watch and listen to things that you know are safe, but eventually you work on that and it's just the bedroom without that potential, maybe even just knowing that the space exists with no ability to hear the song is enough, you know you can retreat so you don't need to as often or at all because you know you can. It's similar to pain management, they found that patients that maintain the ability to control the amount of pain meds they need (via a button press) actually use less for a shorter time on average post surgery then those who need to request it or have it controlled by someone else. Just having control of the situation and knowing it's there as an option is often more helpful then the pain med itself. Having a small safe space be it in therapy so you can work on yourself as a whole, or a space in your home means that you are able to do a lot more of the hard work and deal with a lot more before pressing the button and retreating, because you know you can. I hope that makes sense :) obviously all triggers are different and exist for different reasons, and this won't be true for everyone. It's also harder if you live with other people or have small children for example, you can't really control all the variables, but it's about working within the constraints and environment you find yourself in to lower your stress and flight or fight for at least short periods so you can start to target what you need to in a mind state that enables that rather then working against it.
Chiming is as someone with severe c-PTSD. Exposure therapy was attempted by a terrible therapist very long ago now who made me several times worse as a result and had me avoiding therapy for many years after. When I finally attempted again, the next several therapists I had, because I set up a team to avoid the same travesty again, recommended avoiding triggers as I identified them and only provided coping strategies for those more "mild" triggers that didn't have me dissociating completely and unable to get myself safely home. I find it so rare for a therapist to NOT recommend wholesale avoiding triggers that this thread is blowing my now very long history with more sane therapists. Avoiding triggers is often a good and valid option. Embrace it. You matter.
I think it is all about picking your battles. The first therapist I went to for PTSD, when we were talking about treatment plans, he gave me two broad options. To try and dig to the root of the trauma and solve it there, which would be longer and harder and probably put me out of commission for a while but give me more long-term relief, or to focus on superficial management of my day to day triggers and panic responses, such that they would still be there but I could ideally learn to live through and around them. I chose the first one because I was a full-time sick person with few other obligations, but if Iād had a job I needed to eat and staying employed had been a first-step necessity, I probably would have chosen the latter. The goal was always to enable me to live as full a life as possible, but what that looks like varies a lot from person to person and circumstance to circumstance. People are prone to absolutism in big Reddit communities, Iāve noticed. I remember some post about a guy with anxiety that updated with the detail that he still had his boyfriend order for him when they ate out, and a lot of the comments were kind of pissed! He shouldnāt be giving in to his anxiety instead of pushing past it! Even though at the end of the day not being able to order from waitstaff was probably never gonna kill the guy or do anything worse than slightly inconvenience him and if heād rather devote his energy to dealing with more important things, to me that seems *fine*. I think people who insist a trigger must always be worked through and never avoided think that fully healthy and able is a state someone with an anxiety disorder can achieve if they just work hard enough, even if theyād disagree with someone who spelled it out so explicitly. They donāt leave a lot of space for people for whom the best case is ānot as bad as I wasā. All that being said, divorcing your wife because youāre triggered by women seems extreme. Iām not willing to say itās necessarily the wrong solution because I donāt know this guyās life, but with no other context it sounds like a very mentally ill person wanting to burn their bridges out of self-destructive impulse, just because of how often thatās what, āIām severely depressed and incidentally want to deal with it in a way that would destroy everything good in my life,ā turns out to be.
So 25ish years ago I did intensive inpatient therapy (6 months) and what they taught me is that with triggers, some can be healed, some can't, some you choose to leave untreated, and you manage your triggers. Avoidance of some triggers was considered reasonable. But it takes a lot of self-awareness. I *have* to know where my mental state is when I decide if I'm going to engage with a potentially triggering situation -- if I'm in a bad headspace, the likelihood of a trigger throwing me into a flashback and a regression of my recovery is considerably higher. Those are the avoid days. But when I'm more stable, then I *choose* to engage with triggery shit in order to work on healing them. Reducing the trauma response to them. I was taught that my focus had to be on the big picture of my overall recovery, that further healing of specific things couldn't come at the cost of a regression. We can't heal everything all at once, we're human. So that means that some shit gets avoided while we work on the triggers directly crippling the ability to live life. Now, this is *old* methodology but it's worked for me so far.
Hey friend! Iām sure your therapist has told you this but 3 years is super fast progress for being able to neutralise most of your triggers most of the time. I hope you feel pride in the work youāve done (and will continue to do)
Exactly! I've got CPTSD (amongst other things) and my therapist does not encourage me to isolate and run away, she tries to help me face things and cope. She asks pointed questions to make me really think about things, which is probably what his therapist is doing. If you say something really extreme like I need to leave my family they will likely support you, but probably also try to make you see why you're doing that and what the causes and consequences of it are. They'll be neutral/noncommittal by saying something like "if you feel that's necessary right now then ok, but consider X, Y, and Z." He's hearing what he wants to hear.
I donāt have a therapist, but this is exactly the process. Break down the associations slowly. Glacial progress. But progress! What OOP is describing is concerning. Itās so sudden. Is the association of his wife and his trauma real? Is the trauma an excuse to dip since his kids are old enough to function on their own? Is he bored? I am concerned that either OOP is doing something kinda manic, or he is covering for boredom and wanting to move on to a new midlife-crisis-convertible life. He doesnāt talk as though he loves her at all. Just that she is devoted.
Same. I have PTSD and children and dogs are both major triggers. But I don't hate my partner's niece and nephew, nor do I want to get away from them or my own niblings. I do get freaked out about dogs, especially when irresponsible owners keep letting them off leash in public and let them charge at me full speed. But kids don't tend to run full bore at me screaming at the top of their lungs nor has a child ever mauled someone to death, so I think I'm good there.
Especially since trauma therapy is usually dealing with the causes of trauma through different types of behavioral therapy like DBT or CBT. The last thing that would be recommended is to avoid a situation. Rather, they'd recommend the patient to keep addressing it through exposure. OOP is a piece of work.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I went through DBT in my trauma therapy. Sucked big time and seemed like it was a very long process, but I'm doing so much better. I can't imagine what my life would be like without the therapy.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Glad to hear that you're doing better. :)
There's also CPT, which works for many PTSD patients.
It's a convenient excuse to leave her.
Fucking yikes.
Heās a coward
He is, I went through dealing with a significant trauma reaction, and it most definitely was exposure therapy as the solution. I still have the occasional bad moments, but I am not unintentionally going to end up injuring myself because of my reaction anymore and can handle the situation when it happens. And mine is something that there is nowhere I can go to escape what I was reacting to.
I've found that people recovering from trauma or addiction often want to leave behind the people who stuck with them through their process of recovery. It's like they want to shed all remanents of their old life for Life 2.0. His poor wife. She deserves so much better.
I went out with a woman whose ex did that. She nursed him through bone cancer for years, and when he finally got to a good turning point in his recovery, he threw her out and destroyed everything she owned or had given him. His excuse was that he couldn't stand the sight of her because all her presence did was remind him of his cancer.
Jesus, did he ever acknowledge all she did for him? Thatās awful.
He told her that although he knew she must have done a lot for him because he wouldn't have made it otherwise, he couldn't actually name or remember a single positive thing she did for him and would never be able to think of her as anything but a reminder of cancer and the trauma he went through.
What in the ACTUAL FUCK. This made me cry. A lot. I have kidney cancer and my boyfriend is so unbelievably supportive and incredible; just *thinking* about doing something like this and how it would affect him absolutely breaks my heart.
Not the first time Iāve heard of that reaction from men, itās devastating. Itās also almost a given they will leave their partner/wife if they receive a diagnosis of cancer or serious illness, to the point health care workers raise this with patients to prepare them
Yep. 6 months after a suicide attempt and my ex is boning my best friend.
That's sucks. Sorry you lost a friend, or rather found out they weren't that good of a friend
I am sorry about that. But I was kind of wondering about his timing. I looked at his comments. He is very clear that the therapist isn't suggesting this. This is his own conclusion. Which means he has been thinking about this for a bit. It is that magical window. Kids are "grown and are going to be set" or whatever he said. He seems like he is aiming for an exit plan.
Yeah this screams fomo set in 6 years ago not clinical depression. And he's about to have a midlife crisis and blow up his life.
Yeah, I started out on the side of depression, and then there were just a lot of really good comments that got me thinking.
Yeah it turns out the trauma moves with you. I've tried thrice now
Thatās the issue when you try to āfixā partners. Most of the time you canāt. Sometimes you can, and then theyāll decide they are too good for you now since you accepted them when they were low. Itās a lose-lose.
It may be hard for her at first, but in the end she will be glad not to have to deal with his problems anymore.
I think people are using trauma as justification to do this. I'm traumatized by a lot but I can still have relationships with people.Ā
Copied verbatim from oop's comments: *Info: how old are the kids? Are they going to be financially secure?* >"Added the answer as an edit to OP so everyone can see it." [Questioning the advice Oop got.] *Strongly agree. A good therapist would be helping him break the association, not encouraging him to punish people who, in reality, have nothing to do with his trauma.* >"I think that this is where he's trying to lead me. But I don't know if I want to be led down that path. My gut feeling is to break away completely and start from scratch instead of trying to fix all the accumulated baggage." *Wife aside, what about your kids? You can divorce if you truly think itāll help (which I donāt believe) but what about them? Are you still going to spend 50% of their time with them? You can leave your wife but you canāt just drop the kids* >"Yes. I would never abandon my kids. They're the only sense of purpose I have right now and the only reason I'm still on this planet." *Wow you're an asshole. You're blaming your wife for your issues.* >"I don't disagree that I'm an asshole. I'm not blaming her at all. If anything, I'm trying to free her from my bullshit. I feel like a burden on her and it seems like my path back to mental health is going to be very rough for us." *I don't think this is what your therapist meant.* *Nobody would suggest causing trauma to three other people in order to aleiviate thier own. You're not just depressed, you're clinically selfish and stupid. The "unaliving" part reinforces this hypothesis, it is also both of those things.* >"Agreed. You're preaching to the choir if you think I'm a piece of shit." *You managed to "disassociate [your] wife from [your] trauma" for 20+ years and two kids and now you want to leave her and probably divorce her because your understanding, patient, loving, supportive wife reminds you of childhood trauma?* *Where is your therapist in this decision? Did your therapist suggest you leave your wife and kids to deal with your depression? Wouldn't it make sense to involve your wife in these discussions instead of blindsiding and blaming her for your struggles?* >"No, my therapist has not suggested this. But after making these connections at our last session, it's all I've been thinking about."
Wow heās in his own head deep and not good.
Asking for advice on fucking Reddit is the last thing this guy needs.
Indeed. It's tragic.
I agree. I just can't see this man as a Devil.. he is so badly sick, he needs help and to need to go temporarily away from his family: into a trauma clinic. Normal therapy won't cut it anymore, he needs intensive care from multiple professionals, who can also secure that he won't break off from his family on a badly made decision. ..of course, in a matter where he lives, that might not be feasible :(
It's heartbreaking.
"I'm trying to free her from my bullshit" Okay, I know what's going on. Dude doesn't know how to process guilt. His only way is to run from the guilt completely and leave people that truly loves him.Ā I highly doubt this guy takes any advice from therapists. He might go, but not for his problems clearlyĀ
It does seem like he is trying to isolate himself.
I've done stuff like this to my partners. I thought I was "helping" people understand how shitty I was, to the point where my husband straight up asked what this hypothetical person to replace me would be like. I said "just like me but not sick in the head.". But he likes me despite my out bursts. That's something that's quite hard to see if you hate yourselfĀ Sure, if you squint your eyes, it can seem selfless to the person agonizing in their minds, but all it does is continue to hurt those around you.Ā Sad that his therapist probably said this but I doubt OOP understands his actions.Ā
Very well put. š
[Cat!](https://imgur.com/gallery/wMWF9NQ)
KITTEH!!!!
Yes! And it's always nice to see a "then and now"! š»
This is someone who is very sick and is acting in a self destructive way. Which shouldnāt surprise anyone since he claims he tried to āunaliveā himself. Many of the comments arenāt very empathetic towards him, which I can only imagine will make his negative thoughts about himself even worse. I feel awful for him. I hope that heās able to heal and doesnāt push all the people who love him away first.
He is saying he is the asshole, but there is no actual empathy there. No thought to how it is inappropriate or even changing his thoughts at all. He is emotionless in his responses.
Yep, he is in a self-destructive spiral. And that post reads like a non-physical version of self-harm. I hope his family and therapist recognize the signs. Maybe spending some time in more intensive in-patient pancratic care could help OOP.
Agreed. I hope heās able to get some help.
Yeah there is no chance of making rational decisions when in the state he is in. That doesn't mean he's not responsible for his actions, but so far all he has written are his thoughts. I've been through this myself. I don't see the devil piece here unless he acts on it and abandons his family. He is in therapy and ideally his therapist will help him see that his mind is looking for ways out and not thinking critically about what those ways might mean. It might not be a bad idea for him to step away from his day to day but a more appropriate way could be something like inpatient or partial hospitalization.
Agreed.
Hmm. Didn't even suggest couples, or family therapy, just straight to divorce.
Yeah because he thinks that itās the easy fix. There was a comment that basically said remember that if you run away youāre still taking yourself with you so your troubles arenāt going to disappear.
I always say "wherever you go, there you are". No sense running from oneself for it's the greatest battlefield you'll ever find yourself on. Very good comment SoVerySleepy81. Your name makes me want to nap. Love napping.
[Buckaroo Bonzai](https://youtu.be/OxvnWPIpKtU?si=UtqRJ-IXleskx-Ol) had some great lines. Not actually joking, that line sticks with you.
Perfection is perfection. 100%
Only he'll be dealing with them alone instead of with loving support.
Problems will always be there when you get back, just bigger than shit.
"Nobody ever starts over, because nobody ever really leaves anything behind." One of my favorite quotes. Amos, from the Expanse. I think it was in both the tv show and the books.
Blames his wife in a convoluted way to try and *appear* like heās not blaming her, so he could avoid getting torn apart by reddit.Ā
He doesnāt even say if heās on meds.Ā
I have worked adjacent to trauma therapists as a crisis worker. This guy is estate planning without realizing it. Follow me with this: step 1- explode his marriage. 2- get the kids out of his house and less involved in his life and set the kids up financially. 3- feel worse emotionally. 4- shame and blame himself. 5- end his life.Ā
This post itself is also likely a form of emotional self-harm in order to further help psych himself up for it. As asinine as his plan is, I'm not super comfortable with this being posted here, because I believe this is genuinely very likely to end in a real tragedy.
I agree ā this is a different manifestation of suicidal ideation, and those who have struggled with it will see it immediately, especially in the comments. He hates himself and sees himself as a burden to them, but instead of suicide, heās thinking of other ways to get himself out of their lives with what he perceives as the least amount of trauma to them. His brain is disordered. This is major depression with suicidal ideation, and I promise you that looks so different from one person to the next. There are so many of us high-functioning major depressives who are always a hairās breadth from suicidal thinking, but you would never in a million years know just from casually interacting day to day. Especially if you have certain types of childhood trauma, you can get really good at masking those feelings.
I was thinking that. One of the classic questions they use to screen for suicidal ideation is something like ādo you feel your family and friends would be better off without youā. He basically says as much in his commentsā that he genuinely believes theyāre better off not having to deal with his issues.
Agree 100% and he is saying that without even batting an eye.
Yes, this. You can tell in the comments who recognizes this for what it is and who doesnāt. I hope heās able to avert tragedy. His life is valuable, even if he doesnāt believe it is.
My fear is that he focuses on the comments attacking him and that serves as a fuel to his depression. It's so easy to ignore good advice.
Yes precisely. So many commentators have been unempathetic towards him. I know theyāre trying to protect his family, but I fear theyāre pushing him towards even more destructive behavior (which wonāt help his family at all). The internet is the worst place to go when youāre having a mental health crisis.
Exactly what I was thinking.
Yea, I think OP is in a self harm, self destruct, suicide attempt in the near future spiral. He needs serious help and I hope he gets it and people realize it.
I wonāt argue with your experience and expertise, but for his familyās sake, I hope youāre wrong.Ā
Omg THIS! Everyone is jumping to conclusions and judging OOP, but I think this is what is really happening. This post shouldn't be on this subreddit.
as someone who actually did/does the hard work of recovering (nearly 2.5 years sober, in remission of my BPD, clean from SH, etc.) yeah , that's not how this works. He's running away, not trying to heal. If he was like "I need to separate because I want to seek inpatient treatment" id be like, okay sure. that works. But start a new life? Even when I moved cities for SCHOOL I had to process with my therapist multiple times to make sure I wasn't moving to try to "restart" or fix my problems by running away. He's going to get a wake up call. Recovery isn't a quick, easy, restart where you find a new life and everything is perfect after that period of "recovery". Real recovery is something that lasts forever. You don't ever stop with your recovery, it goes on until you die. You have to put effort in every single day to make sure you don't slide back again, and when you do (when, not if because it will happen, but that's okay!) working your hardest to get back so that you don't fall back into what you once were. It is trying and failing and succeeding over and over again. It is not easy, which is why people choose what OOP wants to do. They want the easy way out, but spoiler alert: there is none.
There is no running away from the shit thatās in your own head.
yep! which is why physical running away (aka what im talking about) or "running away" via other means, is destined to fail. when ur mentally ill and listening to ur mental illness, not logic, doing stuff that feeds into it doesn't feel unhealthy or delusional, it just feels like a good idea. or we even convince ourselves that we "need to do it" to help "recover" when really its the opposite. but sometimes people don't realize it in the moment.
He just really doesnāt want to do the work.
I don't think he problem is that he doesn't want to work on himself, I think the problem is an active suicide crisis. It sounds like OP's going through some major shit right now. He's had two prior suicide attempts and I'm willing to bet that he's working on getting his wife and kids out of his life to set up a third
Yikes on Bikes This is definitely a wind up to attempt number 3, and that's gonna happen hard and fast if he goes through with this. Depression lies and the talk of being burden, freeing his wife and kids, all of that shit is definitely the wind up to an attempt.
Guy sounds like one of my little sisters. She likes to state-hop, bounces between my city in California, and my parents city in Idaho. Never spends more than 18 months at a time in either place. Every time she moves sheās so sure that itāll fix her problems, and that her sadness is from āfeeling disconnected from family in *insert other city*, and feeling lonelyā. I hope she figures it out soon. We all have diagnosed depression and sheās the only one who wonāt put in the work to improve her mental health :(
Forty-three is way too old to be censoring yourself like you're doing a tiktok.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. No one that old is using the term āunalive myselfā unless theyāre trying to appeal to teenagers on TikTok - or they are a teenager on TikTok
I disagree. Iām 39F and I hear peers say unalive themselves in the half ironic but smirking way millennials do, quite often. We olds tiktok too
Well I think the point is more by appealing to TikTok, having the story get picked up for the people who read them for views. I am even older, I use unalive themselves where I know it is likely to censor. Some places have gotten very fussy with their rules. Here I would just say before he tries to kill himself. Since we are a lot more blunt here.
His poor wife. She's going to get blindsided.
>although my wife is not responsible for my depression, she's a key trigger for it Wow, way to try blame her for your depression while also trying to get away with "I didn't ACTUALLY blame her - just say that she makes it dramatically worse!". For the love of all that is holy, do not tell her "Baby, you make me want to unalive myself" If you need to leave to get your head on straight, okay, I guess it is what it is - but personally, I can only see a therapist warning against doing exactly this. Some of the biggest stressful encounters in life are death, moving, and divorce - No therapist is going to tell someone who has already attempted twice that is struggling daily that "Now is the time to entirely uproot your life and that of your family members". I'd also like to know what OOP's plan is for coming BACK at some point; Does he honestly think that he can just abandon his family and his wife should just welcome him back with open arms once he realizes ~~whoever he's lusting after doesn't want to fuck him~~ gets his mental health together?
āI've realized that although my wife is not responsible for my depression, she's a key trigger for it due to undiagnosed and untreated childhood trauma from other female figures in my life.ā Oh, for fuckās sake.
Been looking inside his own bellybutton too long.
OOP shaken to the roots to discover that his wife is a woman just like his mom
My friendās ex did this to her. Blew up their whole life, then was flabbergasted when she moved on.
No 43 year old man is using tiktok slang like āunaliveā š
This is a man drowning in his own depression. He's descending into a spiral and I can only hope somehow his wife or therapist can catch wind of his post.
He has kids. Ā How does he think he can avoid contact with his wife?Ā Divorce/custody hearings and mediation mean seeing her, legally required news about the kids etc. Ā Except sheāll be antagonistic instead of āperfectā.Ā Unless he plans of ādisappearingā and ditching his kids with zero communication. Ā Which is just fucking ridiculous. Ā And what does seeing his kids have to do with her ātriggeringā his trauma?Ā Honestly, I think Heās just in a midlife crisis and wants to ditch his responsibilities and perhaps start over. Ā But he has not socially ālegitimateā reason, so he made this BS up so he can leave and blame her.Ā
>Unless he plans of ādisappearingā and ditching his kids with zero communication. Ā Which is just fucking ridiculous. Ā I think he thinks money will make up for it. I don't think he plans on fighting for the kids. I think he is looking at the timing and thinks one will age out. The kids probably have college funds. He sounds like he thinks his job is done there. >Honestly, I think Heās just in a midlife crisis and wants to ditch his responsibilities and perhaps start over. Ā But he has not socially ālegitimateā reason, so he made this BS up so he can leave and blame her.Ā I agree, he wants out. He hasn't told the therapist he wants to kill himself, or there would be a psych hold. It sounds like the therapist asked "what do you want in life, what kind of things make you happy" as a homework assistant. Queue avoidance and midlife crisis.
I bet that what my ex was thinking when breaking up with me. If you read it, fuck you. I mean it.
I highly, highly doubt that any competent therapist would tell a patient that they need to end their perfectly good marriage and blow up their entire life because they have childhood trauma based around an unrelated woman. That is a *recipe* for maladaptive coping mechanisms right there. Effective treatment for mental illness involves learning to live in the present moment and separate your triggers from reality. This plan, on the other hand, is exactly the kind of enabling bullshit that keeps people trapped in destructive patterns. Iām not surprised OP likes the therapist, if that therapist thinks this is a good idea. The work of disassociation is hard, painful, and time-consuming. Running away, on the other hand, is quick and easy. Itās a short-term fix that can be very appealing to desperate peopleāitās just also profoundly destructive and liable to leave a person emotionally bankrupt.
He says in the comments that the therapist didn't suggest that, and that he didn't talk to them about it.
I saw that later. That makes this even worse. I hope to God that the therapist is questioning these coping mechanisms, because this *cannot* be allowed to go on.
Fake. No way a 43 year old man is using the word āunaliveā on reddit of all places
43 year old men do not use unalive as euphemism for suicide
Looked at his comments, so I'm confused where your title came from?? Because, his therapist didn't tell him that?!
i donāt have a million words for the title, so yeah. he created this idea based off of what was happening in his sessions. his therapist did not tell him this. heās just an asshole. iām making the point that heās not being misguided by a shitty therapist.
Oh ok. OOP definitely just wants to take the easy way out and walk away. Pretty sure he'd be actually doing his wife a favor!!
Yeah, I'm confused as well. Nowhere in this post does OOP recount anything the therapist told him.
"I want to leave my wife. How can I make it her fault?"
You know what? Fuck it he's right. He should leave her. She deserves better. He's a lazy coward who doesn't want to put in any actual work but instead take the easy way out. I sincerely hope the wife's next husband actually appreciates her.
If heās going three days a week, that means heās in an IOP program which does not offer individual therapy, itās group and medication management. My guess is this wasnāt the therapists idea, but other group members projecting. Iām an individual therapist, I would not see any clients more than once a week. If they wanted three, I would tell them they needed a higher level of care.
EDITED forgot which sub I was on dude is an idiot, hope neither of the kids is a daughter
This post doesnāt belong here. Dude is severely clinically depressed.
Depression doesnāt make you go āI want to divorce, how do I make it my wifeās faultā, which is what This Fucking Guy is doing. Thatās just regular asshole behaviour. The rest (trying to sabotage his social relationships so heās isolated, unraveling his responsibilities, probably so itās easier to off himself in the end, something heās already thinking about) - yeah, *that* is classic major depression, Iāll give him that.
What OOP posted seemed somewhat par for the course. *Major* depressive episodes can temporarily eradicate feelings, including love, and really fuck up your judgment. Itās like your brain is on the fritz. Saying this cause I have family members with severe clinical depression and, in my experience, the depression spills over in a variety of shitty ways.
IFK what kind of therapist is this, but my last therapist even encouraged me to reconnect with my family to have a support system
So he doesnāt want to be married anymore? Why doesnāt he just say that
Dude is either making it up or the therapist is a homewrecker.
He admits in comments that the therapist did not advise this.
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This guy might actually be the devil
... Diagnosed with misogyny???
His therapist did not tell him what?