Apologies for the word vomit
My GF (27; AuDHD) and I (29; OCD) have been going through a lot recently that has been built up over about several years of us being together which largely stems from me not supporting her while she really needed me and she then blamed herself/made excuses for me not supporting her. After broaching these feelings with me several months ago, I've been extremely unsure on what to do/how to help because acknowledging/expressing emotions are so foreign to me - that being said, they are equally foreign to her, except she had the strength to bring it up with me, whereas I still really struggle with emotions/feelings and empathising with her.
She is constantly overwhelmed with her job, her family, her health, and me all triggering her. For me being so dismissive of emotions/feelings and finding it so hard to empathise and offer useful support I ask often a lot of questions to get a picture of the situation (primarily offer a solution, rather than comfort); if I don't ask, then I don't understand? But, the relentless question asking is also triggering for her (or the relentless asking of the wrong questions), and after several years of living together, she's sick of giving me instructions on what to do for her/to help her and answers to how she feels for example.
She is so fucking tired of carrying all the incredible amount of trauma and stress and strain of her life that she doesn't have the energy to carry mine as well and tell me what to do to help her, because even if she does and I do it, that's not genuine.
So, I'm at a crossroads. I still don't understand what to do/how to help in so many situations and I feel like if I ask, then that's going to make her feel worse and more triggered and more upset. But if I don't ask and just do something (or nothing..) that I don't know will work, and it doesn't, then isn't that worse? <-- The inner dilemma that goes through my mind every day. I'm going to therapy to try to dissect that and understand why I'm like this, which is very helpful, but I need to DO something. I have zero actions because I don't know what to do or how to do it or when to do it.
TL;DR I'm an extremely emotionally dismissive person with severe issues with empathy and compassion for my GF struggling with her trauma/stress/anxiety/mental health. I can't sit on the sidelines telling her that I'm learning about X, but then doing fucking nothing while she collapses in from the weight of her trauma and stress. I LOVE HER SO MUCH, but I overthink everything and just don't know how to help and I feel so fucking awful.
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* This article was originally published here
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