May I totally spaced on your personal growth question. So this whole this kind of converged with my recovery from depression. My depression has a lot to do with the abuse I had to endure with my step father. My mom being sick and dying forced me into his proximity regularly and it was kind of a downward spiral. I also have no biological father in my life. Although he is currently stalking me on social media. He walked away before I was born and didn't bother to look for me until I was 15 and then again at 25, and again at 35 because he's apparently the stalker I never wanted. My mother loved me very very much, but my mother was young and while I was a year younger when I became a mom I was light years ahead in maturity and preparedness. I live for D17. I read all the what to expect books. I read tons of baby and toddler books. I had nannied before I was pregnant and while I was pregnant. There was never a barely 19 year old more prepared for a kid this side of a 50 year life expectancy. My mom was not. I was raised mostly by my grandparents. She was around to tuck me in at night most nights. She came to my concerts. She did some very mom things around my school. But in the end it was my grandparents who picked me up, helped me with home work fed me dinner, took care of me when I was sick, took me to church, took me on vacation, watched me while she went to school, and worked, and dated, and had a pretty normal life for a person in their 20s. So needless to say I have abandonment issues.
This really, really messed me up with the issues I've been working with for years. When he was angry and spiteful his tantrums would flare up my PTSD. Him disappearing and forgetting the girls at school or what have you kind of made me back track with dealing with the whole abandonment thing. Oh top of all that my personality type. I do like to micromanage the universe if I can, but that's a trauma response. I am A type and that grinds people. I've had to work really, really hard on different communication techniques, because frankly once I'm p!ssed off I'm done listening. Once you're patently wrong I'm done caring what you have to say. But that's a trauma response as well. There was a little inner child work to deal with some of the PTSD stuff and trauma responses, but that stuff is so not for me. This therapist gets that I have zero desire to embrace my inner child in my imagination. I'm working on a lot of things to make me a healthier happier person. A lot of it was brought to the surface because of this. And she feels as long as I'm still growing while waiting him out it's a fairly healthy situation. Neither of us are in crisis. Neither of us are spinning wildly. We both have our emotions in check. Sometimes probably a little too much, but so be it, so it's a healthy environment for the kids still. I'm doing my work. And he's clearly doing some of his own. So that's where that is at.
