2 When I feel I am being attacked or criticized and I will usually try and be defensive. I would like to take it as something constructive which I can look at and see what I can learn from.
When my family says something hurtful.
Where I feel I am being rejected or deliberately hurt.

I’d like to work on not being emotionally reactive to criticism or hurts.

2 If I am talking about something that has happened my husband usually turns it around to the same thing happening to him and he was being empathetic.

3 Being passive aggressive when I don’t want to get involved in an argument because it triggers being bullied in the past and not being able to come through with a good counter argument.

What is realistically the worst thing that would happen to you if you do not avoid, but are completely honest about how you feel and what you think and want?

It doesn’t mean you will get everything you want, because marriage is always a compromise, but what is the worst thing that will happen?

What specifically do you want from your husband? Tell me what it would look like.

That’s also good that you recognize the connection between failure and emotional pain experienced in your past. Now the question to ask yourself is whether or not failure MUST result in emotional pain. We are adults now, and most of us do not have parents or teachers who are actively berating us and pointing out our failures (unless we marry someone who did what our parents or teachers did to continue experiencing what we did as a child). With our life experience, adults know that failure is not the end (or we would have ceased to have lived!), but a way to learn and become smarter, stronger, healthier – IF we will pay attention to what caused what we believe is failure and do things DIFFERENTLY in the future. Is it ok, will life continue and still have the possibilities for peace and joy in the future, if we fail in some way? In my experience, and I have failed fabulously throughout my life in many ways, I have realized it is just a mandatory requirement in life (since we don’t know everything), and it will neither kill me nor destroy my future. It is just uncomfortable.

2 This started from the age of 8
I actually did ok till about 10 passing the English 11+ an entry exam for grammar school but after that I believed I couldn’t learn things.

3 I was trying to avoid further pain of failure or put it off. Of being a disappointment to my family.

2 I have been sure that I have hung keys only to find them where I had put them without intention
3 The Holy Spirit brought up not using all my abilities. I see I have been acting on patterns that I set in motion as an over anxious teenager who told herself she couldn’t learn French or math. Ironic as later found I loved both.
Where else have I used this? Interesting to ponder that one.

Ask yourself what you REALLY expected from them. You can’t have disappointment if you don’t expect or hope for something. The problem occurs when your expectations are unrealistic, based on what you wish was true, not based on your experience of how things really are.

You say you expect a family living under one roof to act that way, which describes your living arrangement. But your family doesn’t act that way. From everything else you have shared, they have never been that way for you. So what is different now that you would even hope for them to be that way today?

My job in this forum is to help you get clarity on what you are thinking and saying, because we don’t always see it. It gets jumbled up in our minds.

I would love for you to take my course on Disappointment, because I deal exactly with those thoughts you are struggling with in detail to help you think these things through.

As an adult, especially in marriage, your focus will need to move from simply eliminating your stress to resolving the actual problem you are facing. But in order to stop the knee jerk reaction, you will need to do the next steps in the RESET process to resolve the emotionally charged memory of your mom yelling at you.

Every time you feel the same stressful emotions in your body as an adult that you felt as a child, you immediately regress to being yelled at by your mom and doing what you always did. If you resolve the emotion in the memory, then current situations will not trigger your old coping mechanism. Then you can use your stress reduction exercises (breathing, happy place) to keep your brain in problem solving mode and resolve the actual issues in front of you.

A good example of this would be putting into the dryer, along with other clothing, a shoe with velcro on it – except the strap is not closed. The hook side of the velcro is open, so when you take the shoe out of the dryer, you find other clothes stuck to it. Passing clothes catch on it.

Our unresolved, emotionally charged memories are the hook side of the open velcro. When other events in our life with similar emotional and physical feelings arise, they catch on the velcro of that unresolved emotion and yank on it, pulling it back to the original emotional event.

When you close the velcro strap by attaching it to the loop side, no clothing in the dryer can get stuck to it. When you resolve an emotionally charged memory, present day feelings don’t get stuck to it and yank on it. They just pass by – you feel the emotion and deal with the emotion without being yanked back to the past and performing your knee jerk reaction.

Does that help?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by pennyshaynes.

Even though I had no real expectations from them I feel like it was a realistic expectation of how a family structure should be, especially a family that’s living under one roof.

I noticed I do this when my husband brought it up. He said that sometimes it would be nice if I actually fought back instead of just walking away. So I guess now in my adulthood it doesn’t accomplish anything real long term. In the moment though, my anxiety is lower when I can avoid that high confrontation situation.

When you use that mechanism now, does it solve any problems? If so, how?

Alyssa, you say that everyone was preoccupied with their own individual lives and that it left you alone in your depression.

Is it wrong or unusual for people to be preoccupied with their own individual lives?

What were you expecting them to do for you?

Why?

Was that a realistic expectation of them?

2. My parents were always fighting and I grew up in a very chaotic environment. I was constantly punished and emotionally abused, especially by my mother. As far back as I can remember I performed this behavior and tried to avoid confrontation or put it out of my mind.

3. It was an avoidance mechanism. It’s as if I couldn’t handle the very strong negative feelings that came as a result of what was going on around me or towards me so I tried so hard to just not feel at all.

2. The most recent example was when I moved out of mine and my husband’s home. I moved in with my step mom and step sisters thinking that is where I would have the most emotional support. I wasn’t looking for financial support but merely a place to live and someone to talk to. I came to realize everyone was preoccupied with their own individual lives and I was alone in my depression.

3. I believe that no one on earth can be fully depended on but I’m trying to realize that God never left me and He cared.

2. I believe I became independent and outgoing because they were survival skills I had to develop. I had to cope with living life on my own with no real support and no family to guide me through my adulthood. College shaped me the most. I joined a pre-health academic sorority and became the academic chair. This pushed me outside my comfort zone and really changed my personality. I finally started to become who I always wanted to be. When I found God I changed even more drastically and I really like the person I’m becoming even more so today.

3. It’s very possible. My childhood was so traumatic and I know for a fact that I have filled in a lot of blanks. Lately God has been revealing some of those to me and showing me how my childhood shaped me and caused me to have a broken personality.

2. I could have sworn I made my appointment at a certain time, only to find out I was early.

3. My relationships with others, my self-perception, my idea or understanding of love