May I jump in and also ask for advice on a somewhat alike situation? (or is the right thing to do to start a new thread? Please tell me if it is)
Has anyone come up with working solutions (psychosocial and/or technology-based) to my-meltdown-escalates-partner-meltdown types of problems? Any feedback, experiences or ideas would be much appreciated.
I'm an addie (diagnosed as adult ADHD) with some aspie traits, and I suspect my hubby is an aspie, possibly with some addie traits. We both have traumatic childhood backgrounds. One communication problem that we have is that if he understands something that I say as manipulative, limiting, controlling or disrespectful, he may raise the volume of his voice rather suddenly and sound angry in my ears (I usually call this "yelling", which he does not like me to do). I get startled by the sudden noise, and often also scared, and thus far only one reaction that I have been able to develop seems to help him lower his voice volume again: if I manage to yell back in a controlled enough manner. The problem - for me - is that if I go into my yelling mode for any length of time (if the communication stays on an intense, loud level for some time or oscillates between calmer and angrily noisy), I get a quite unpleasant physical reaction afterwards - I literally feel sick, panicky, confused and generally like crap for hours, sometimes days, and my sleep is quite disturbed for a couple of nights. So I *really* want this "yelling" stuff to be extremely rare in our relationship, it hurts me so much. Assertiveness is very welcome, but aggression, especially if combined with what I hear as blaming, just drives me up the wall pretty immediately.
We have rather recently started in couple's therapy after I walked out on him last summer, and he has said, among many other often very constructive and committed things, that he dislikes my talking about his feelings or behaviors _as_a_problem_for_me_, and my memories of our more difficult encounters would confirm this. If I don't like something he does or if the feelings I "read" on his face, in his voice and posture etc. worry or concern me, it feels nearly impossible for me to start talking about the issue, as he tends to get so strongly and aggressively defensive so quickly. Yet, when I look at the big picture, both some of his behaviors and communication patterns that irk or concern me and his "yelling meltdowns" seem to coincide with stress, e.g. occur before he has to travel (his work involves regular travel), just after he has returned from a business trip, in the beginning or end of a vacation, or after the house has been getting more cluttered during an everybody-is-too-busy period (those happen sometimes - that's life).
To make things even more complicated, he is nowadays quite sensitive to if I am less spontaneous or less relaxed than when we are happy, and he seems to get stressed about that, too. So if one meltdown drives me a bit further from him, even temporarily, this seems to raise the risk for another meltdown as he then easily feels criticized or disliked due to my taking some distance.
Any ideas how to start solving this? 'Cause some of his behaviors will be problematic from my point of view also in the future, and some of those "problematic" behaviors we will need to address, somehow. I feel like we would need to disarm a bomb, but I don't know where to start.
About our backgrounds:
We both come from (upper) middle class. We live in Scandinavia.
His father has been drinking for the last forty-odd years (still does, though a lot less than when he was at his worst) and when he is in the mood or feels provoked, he yells (these days much more seldom than when he was at his worst). My hubby and I have been together for over fifteen years, and I have never met my father-in-law completely sober, and neither have our kids, except when he was in the hospital for surgery a few years ago. His dad quarreled so much with his oldest brother that the brother moved out at age 17, which was quite traumatic to my hubby who still feels close to this brother. His mother can be described as a fairly classical martyr and passive-aggressive (well, not always so passive anymore, as her husband is now physically rather helpless and often so tired that he doesn't necessarily needle her back nor yell). The whole family has apparently kept my father-in-law's drinking a secret from most of their environment, though the siblings talk about it fairly freely between themselves and with their spouses.
My father was most likely an untreated bipolar, very intelligent and quite abusive. He used to yell at and hit me and my youngest sister at least once a week after we developed wills of our own (age 10-12), and berated us daily for being ugly, smelly, unbalanced, stupid, lazy etc. My mom was quite afraid of him and worked very long days and traveled for her work so we were fairly often left alone with dad. Dad could not cook to save his life, so we did not get a well balanced diet, even if we seldom were outright hungry. When they were both at home, there was a lot of yelling between them, and mom often grew hysterical. After dad committed suicide (we kids were all in our teens then), mom promised she would sell our house when my youngest sister graduates with her Master's, so my sis dared to take a heavy loan and went to a really good school. Only mom did not sell the house when she graduated, instead mom found some legal excuse not to sell, and my sis got extremely close to being on the streets, despite of her degree. I don't think any "outsider" ever knew how horrible our situation was. When dad was alive, he said several times to mum that if she tried to get a divorce he would make sure that she would be labeled as crazy and that he would get us kids. To get our money after dad, we had to sign a paper where we accepted every economical decision that our mom had made since dad died. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
I've done three different therapies earlier in my life, before we married, a total of six years in therapy, most of it analytical. This is the first time my husband is in therapy - he goes also to individual counseling now.
We are well enough off, he has a good job, our girls are really good kids and I am about to graduate with a bachelor's degree (plowing through courses while being the more-at-home parent hasn't always been easy, but it has also helped - I would have gone mad without something of my own when the kids were small).
Please talk to me, even if it is just to say that you have read (some of) this. I feel rather alone and also somewhat helpless - I do not know how to solve this problem and that feels intimidating.
- Athena
13 Nov 2009, 3:24 pm
