Mommy and Dada

We were both traumatized as children, he from having a mother with bipolar disorder, I from being abused. Where our traumas intersect, where we trigger each other, is the stickiest of situations and there doesn’t seem to be any getting out of it. Our one-year-old son has taken to saying “sorry” when he notices one of us is upset, which just breaks my heart.
I tried so hard to fix myself before our son was born. I tried to work through a book called “The Depression Cure,” which posits a 12-week healing plan. I got the book about 12 and a half weeks before my due date and figured I’d be all healed in time if I just did the work. Meanwhile, I was still seeing a counselor.
But of course it didn’t work. Now that I know it’s not depression but C-PTSD or complex trauma that I’m dealing with, it’s no wonder. In addition, the book is meant for people with a support system of friends and family. People who have that cannot imagine how hard it is to heal from any mental illness without it. They can’t even imagine what it’s like not to have friends and family, and often don’t even believe that that can be the case for others.
My husband (we’ll call him “Rick”) is also dealing with complex trauma. But not everyone’s needs can all be met at the same time.
Recently I had an emotional breakdown in the car on the way to our friends’ wedding. Fortunately, our son wasn’t there. Rick kept driving, not knowing what to do. I had told him I didn’t want to go to this event, that there were too many triggers for me, that I don’t know where my boundaries are and therefore can’t stop people from overstepping them, which is what tends to happen repeatedly, to a greater or lesser extent, with this particular group of friends, if that’s the right word. “People we know” or “Rick’s friends plus their wives” would probably be more accurate.
He had convinced me to go anyway, despite my reservations, which sometimes works. In this case, though, with this particular group of people, it doesn’t. As we were on our way, all dressed up after half an hour of getting ready, him having even ironed a shirt, he told me there would be a musical performance, and I suddenly realized I would not be able to do the level of emotional work required to behave in a socially-acceptable way at this event without feeling abused and violated later. Whenever I have to act for people, to pretend I’m doing okay, to do the emotional work that’s expected of women in every situation, it drains me. It exhausts me to cater to people’s whims about how I should be feeling and what I should be thinking. The problem is, if I allow myself to feel the way I feel and think the way I think, which tends to show up in my presentation of myself, people don’t like it. I get rejected, sometimes even attacked outright, often by people acting in groups. I am the one left out, again in the position of being the psychic trash bin, the scapegoat, the one everyone loves to hate because it makes them feel better about themselves.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but that’s what it feels like to me because being ganged up on by a group triggers the abuse I received from my family, no matter how benign the intent. Germans like to give what they think is helpful advice. To me, as to others who have been abused, it sounds like commands. And they are in fact commands, because if the unsolicited advice is not followed, there will be further questions and requests for justification of my choices. This is too much boundary-testing for a person like me.
Since my neurobiology developed while I was being traumatized, I don’t know where my boundaries are. (This article provides an excellent explanation of how that works.) They were constantly being violated as my nervous system was developing. And now I have an incomplete sense of self, because I never learned where I ended and the other person began. There was always too much intermingling, either physically or emotionally. So today, when someone pushes my boundaries, I usually don’t even notice that that’s what happened until much later, if at all. My automatic response, the pattern by which my nervous system operates, is to play dead, to completely dissociate from my body and wait for the boundary violation to end. I won’t come back into my body until I feel safe again.
This is how children survive boundary violations. Other methods include fight, flight, and freeze. I was neither allowed nor able to physically or verbally defend myself as a child because I would be punished. My strategy became to collapse.
I remember one time I managed to defend myself. My brother and I were teenagers, riding in the car with Mom driving. As per usual, he began teasing me about something. It got worse and worse. Finally, I shouted, “Shut the fuck up!” to stop it. Mom immediately flipped out. My brother was allowed to treat me however he liked, anyone in the family was. But I was not allowed to defend myself. That got in the way of everyone else’s game.
She pulled the car over to the side of the road and started screaming at me.
And this is how my nervous system learned to play dead and simply wait for it all to be over. This is how I learned to dissociate.
I don’t know what Rick’s process is. I don’t know how it works for him, what’s going on inside. He’s pretty opaque, at least to me. I think he may also be opaque to himself, although he has had therapy for his depression and has learned a lot over the decades I’ve known him. We are both much more developed and aware of ourselves than when we met twenty years ago. Praise Jesus.
In the car yesterday, when I realized I really didn’t want to go to the wedding, Rick became confused and didn’t know what to do. He kept driving and said there was no time to deal with this because the wedding was starting in a few minutes. Not having time for my emotions means I have to repress them, to dissociate. This is my trauma, my wounding. My feelings were never allowed to have space. I was to be an emotionless vessel to be filled with the things that would meet the needs of those around me. I was the first girl born in the family. I was the smallest. This quickly became my job.
In the end, Rick pulled the car over. Now that I had time, my feelings came spilling out. I erupted in tears. Uncharacteristically, he reacted coldly. I had triggered his childhood trauma, flashing him back to scenes of his bipolar mother suddenly being incapable of achieving the simplest things, thereby causing the family to be unable to attend an event, get to the airport for vacation, meet friends, or whatever the situation happened to be.
I told Rick he could still go to the wedding himself. He said this is exactly what happened in his family, that he and his father would attend whatever the event was without his mother (except in the case of the family vacation, I think, which would then be spontaneously cancelled). There would be explaining to do, because there would be questions. There are always questions, posed by people who don’t necessarily care.
I tried to take care of this for him. I sent a text message to the hosts congratulating them on their special day, apologizing for preventing both of us from being there, and explaining. I just said I had an emotional breakdown, I didn’t say anything else. They know I was dealing with postpartum depression last year. I don’t think it came as a big surprise to them. And it was the simple truth.
He still didn’t want to go to the reception, which was within walking distance of our home. Instead , he stayed home all day, sadly caring for our son (we’ll call him “Josh”). I tried to help, but I was also sad. Josh notices, of course, that we’re sad. I wish he didn’t. I wish Rick and I had managed to heal ourselves before Josh came along. It wasn’t for lack of trying.
But we didn’t, and the following day Rick was still sad. It took him several days to recover. And I spent several days making myself feel guilty by telling myself if I’d simply gone to the wedding as planned, he would have been happy those days, and I wouldn’t have ruined them. He, meanwhile, felt guilty for having convinced me to go when I’d clearly stated I didn’t want to.
The bright side is that it’s not an exact repeat of the situation in his family of origin. Unlike his mother, I’m not entirely unpredictable as to whether I’ll feel well enough to leave the house or not. It’s clear in advance, at least to me, which events will trigger me and which I will be able to handle with confidence. Now I’d just like him to believe me. I think he’s learned now that I am very easy to convince sometimes, with the right argument, but that that doesn’t mean my intuition was wrong.
How did we get through those days? As he left for the store the day after the wedding, he told me that if I had a problem with his mood I should “find something else to do” that day, meaning, “somewhere else to be.” Well, I have my office, where I’m sitting now. This is my favorite place to be at times like this. Maybe later I’ll take a walk.
I wish I knew where my boundaries were. I wish his emotional state didn’t affect me so much.
