Back again...again!

[zig]

"Another major turning point was when W and I were discussing this issue. She was in tears, telling me how much I had hurt her, broken her trust, and how she saw my behavior signifying that she didn't matter to me, and then talking about all the other ways that my behavior suggested that I was disregarding her. She wouldn't let me near her to comfort her, and her statements of how bad I had been to her kept piling up, and there was nothing I could say or do. I wanted so badly to do something to make her feel better, and I felt so guilty, and I was overwhelmed! "

i don't know your whole story,only read the posts here on this thread - am so sorry you are going through this.

i don't have asperger's but what i have had and come out of recently is post concussion syndrome. all neuro conditions share similarities and i think that one of them is getting overwhelmed and is probably one of the most challenging to deal with. even now after all this time, it is the one i battle with the most.

i don't know if this would help you, but what my therapist taught me when things started getting really bad - (my meltdown's involved a lot of shouting and anger and a couple of times breaking things) was that by the time i realized i was overwhelmed and started acting on it (you banging your head, me shouting) , i was already at a 7 or 8 on a scale from 1 to 10. and that by then it was too late.

she taught me to recognize the signs when it was at a 1 or 2 - if you inspect what you're feeling more closely as the discussion proceeds, you WILL learn to recognize it earlier and earlier.

and when you start to recognize the trigger, MAKE yourself stop right there, tell your spouse that you are going to get overwhelmed and you need time and space to let your brain calm down, and WALK AWAY! you are no good to yourself or anyone else after you hit a 5 or 6 , much less an 8.

my therapist told me also that to let my spouse know beforehand that this is what i was going to do.

sadly in my case, with my H - even though i explained and explained, and actually really got very good at recognizing right away that i needed the space, stating it and walking away, H did not even once allow it to me - he would give me a minute and then come after me and start up agin - i would say once again "i'm overwhelmed, give me some time" and he would once again repeat the same thing - this would go on until i "lost it"

when i look back, i see the pattern - it had always been there, even before, but got really exagerrated with my health issues.

what i didn't see at the time and which i see much more clearly now is that H used this to his advantage - he could see i was overwhelmed - badly, but wanted to make his point so much that he was willing to push me over the edge, and then turn around and say - see i was right - you always lose it and you are oh so angry and put all the blame on me, and the actual issue became hidden in the chaos

i wish i had had the presence of mind during those moments to actually walk out of the house, get in the car and drive away. but my brain would be so overwhelmed and on some level, i actually kept trusting that H would help me out rather than attack me

i'm sorry to be blunt and i hope you don't mind me saying this, but to me it sounds as if Wife KNOWS your triggers really well and is using them against you. do a 180 with this, if you can and as soon as she starts berating you in the way you described in the post - find what will suit you - if in the past you stood there and had a meltdown, find the courage and strength to get your car keys or your bicycle or whatever and walk out the door, saying we can talk about this, when you want to talk about the real issue, but not if you keep going on about the same thing

another thing the therapist taught me is that this is associated with flight or fight syndrome. when the brain gets overwhelmed and it does very easily in neuro conditions the amygdala (primitive part of our brains) kicks in, and it has only two options available to it - stay and fight (that's the reaction we are having that seems out of control) or fly (get away from the danger - in this case the pressure form the other person)

i wish you well - it took me a long time to retrain my brain to recognize the beginning stages of getting overwhelmed - i was lucky that my therapist could teach me this