Carefully moving forward from H's mlc - ctflor

[AntoniaB]

Oh wow, I'm sorry that you had to go through abuse as a child, but yet glad you got the psychotherapy you needed for dealing with that.

I get what you're saying about not wanting to add more therapy of that sort to the mix right now.

I actually think that your recognition of the pattern you're in now with your push and pull with him is really good, though, I mean, it's really good you SEE the pattern. My doctor often says that the ability to recognize the patterns is really half the battle.

The only thing I can say about patterns (and my example isn't with my XH but with my interactions with my dad who can be difficult) is that when I see myself fall into an old pattern I try to remove myself from my knee-jerk reactions right in the moment and think about my meditation group and meditation practice. We talk so much in our group about learning NOT to react to things that are our "triggers." It's not the same as being a doormat, or not "standing up for yourself", it's more like knowing that certain things in other people's behaviors that are NOT ill-intentioned by them but part of who they are at that time in their life can trigger us to react in a bad way, and we try to practice NOT reacting to those things but more just trying to watch our own reaction.

I don't know if you ever tried meditation or reading about meditation, but I've found Pema Chodron's essays invaluable for talking about just staying "still" and not reacting, or reacting in less extremes. She's written lots of books. You could probably find stuff online too if you google her. Hope that helps in some way. I struggle with this stuff too and it's a constant battle, especially for those of us who do have panic or anxiety in our backgrounds/genes/etc.