Men & drugs. I could go on for days on the subject. Ugh !
Hugs
I'm glad S12 is happy.
M 19 years, MC for 8 months, DB'd for 8 months 4 kids; 18, 15, 14, & 10 I was never meant to be a doormat. It took me years of therapy to become assertive enough to stop his abuse.
Break, same sitch with my H. He talked the Dr. (family phys.) into giving him a lower dose. gonna strangle the doc next time i see him. I have talked to Dr. about H's condition myself. Dr. told me in so many words that H needs higher help. H refused to see a psych. hmmmm.... so NOW what?
Feel your pain, because I KNOW the lower the dose - the higher my stress level and the MORE I have to put up with.
Well, this is often the problem. Docs willing to just hand out a prescription...for mood altering drugs...with no followup or counseling. Like "anxiety" is having a cold. I mean it's better than nothing, don't get me wrong!!! But it's not really "treatment."
This guy understood very quickly what S12 is going through...and the pressure to perform and be "good enough." S12 is a really smart kid, always has had kind of a wisdom beyond his years..more of a deep thinker than your average kid (which is actually very hard for the poor kid). The C says he is obviously an emotionally intelligent person, and will be able to get something out of C for sure.
He says we are dealing with a "very powerful family system" with H's family. There is their way or the highway...about everything.
He made this cool analogy about city houses and backyards that are really narrow...(this is what it's like where we live)...and that some people always choose to stay in that back yard...and they don't even know there are places like a ranch in Montana, places with big sky...that the world is bigger than that backyard and that some people will continue to choose the backyard every time. Some people won't even believe that such a place as Montana exists. But it's S12's choice too...to "live" in that backyard or to find that bigger sky. He has a choice. To be who he is, is what he was trying to tell him...to break free internally from the pressure. And he talked to him about being grown one day...and he'd have to make those choices. He told me privately that he's trying to show him another way...that there is more than "the system". This is all tied into this larger substance abuse/control cloud over the entire extended family.
I had tears in my eyes. And really my heart felt kind of broken. I'm not going to turn 18 in six years. I'm going to turn 48. I don't have a get out of jail free card. I don't have any big sky. I don't have any choices.
I don't know if anyone reading this understands this "big sky" stuff...it might sound like gobbledygook to you...but I got it. (He said it better than I did, too, BTW.) It's so hard living with these oppressive people. So nice but so oppressive.
Just a vent....
I need to think about other things for a while I guess.
I had tears in my eyes. And really my heart felt kind of broken. I'm not going to turn 18 in six years. I'm going to turn 48. I don't have a get out of jail free card. I don't have any big sky. I don't have any choices.
That statement right there could very well be the thinking that causes us all to have so much trouble dealing with the sitch.
Why should age determine whether or not we have any choices, or "Big Sky"?
You are an almost WAW...by staying aren't you trying to find that big sky?...if you walk, aren't you going to HAVE to explore that big sky?
Am I not understanding what the C meant by big sky?
Since my wife dropped the bomb, even with all my pondering and drama that I put myself through...I always thought that..if it works out, we are going to find that big sky together, like we wanted to when we first met and fell in love.
If it doesn't work out...I am going to find that big sky on my own, like I promised myself before I met my wife.
Jeez..BA..I am a hell of lot closer to 48 than you...lol...I don't feel like I am too old to walk out of this little back yard I stuck myself in all these years.
It was just how I felt at the time. Age doesn't have so much to do with it really...but my point was S12 gets to start his own life...I had a moment in there of feeling like..."save yourself, S12!!! I'm going down with the ship."
The not having choices feeling comes from living in the alcoholic family system. I CAN have choices...that's what Al Anon is all about, in fact their new book is called Discovering Choices.
But it's hard to look down a long road and know that you are always going to be fighting for it, for your right to just be yourself. Why does it have to be like that?
But that's why their number one adage is ONE day at a time. Things are better than they were. So they can be better than they are...and I guess right in this particular moment they are fine. So...be in the moment, as they say.
I get the big sky thing. Even though we all know the grass isn't greener on the other side...some of us are 'stuck' in the small back yard because of our M. I'm one of them. I'm a big sky gal, myself married to a little back yard.
I getcha break...but I also get your analogy about be in the moment.
And the fact that your S has the option to see any big sky he wishes in his future is a feeling I wish sometimes I could have back.
I'm a big sky gal, myself married to a little back yard.
Anxiety disorder can shrink the whole world. So I have to remember that is at play.
Quote:
And the fact that your S has the option to see any big sky he wishes in his future is a feeling I wish sometimes I could have back.
And I think that's what opened up that sadness for me...I remember how desperate I was to finally be GROWN UP...and out from under my dad's and brother's thumbs...one day, by God, I was gonna live in big sky country and nobody was gonna stop me.
And somehow...
But it's up to me how big my sky is...I am only in the beginning of learning how to live that way. So I have low times still. Over all I feel a lot of relief to feel like we had a good fit with the therapist. And I think H will like him too. The last one just riled him up. Not what we need.
I just had a thought...that I need to teach S12 by example and not lay down and be a sorrowful victim that he has to somehow avenge with his life!!!
