Quote:
Originally Posted by TorqueDog
Getting individual therapy has been a game-changer for me. My personal and work interactions are more intentional, calm, and calculated. I deal with problems more effectively and find them easier to navigate. I had more personal growth in my first six months of counselling than I'd experienced in the previous five years of living.
But it's not a silver bullet, you have to spend time with your problems and your triggers and figure out why they exist. You also need to find the right therapist, I got lucky and instantly had a good mesh with my own counsellor, but depending on your needs and personality, you might need to try a few of them before you get one that works for you.
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My wife probably needs this a bit more. I think she got the enabler ones in the past and thus she thinks most of the therapy is only slightly useful for her situation. She might need to "shop around" and find someone she meshes with better. But I think she might also have to be coaxed into changing her approach and honesty with the therapist.
There's this strange amplified concept of showing "everything is perfect" that kinda manifested during Covid in a lot of people, my wife being one of them. This perfectionism has quietly manifested into deep rooted anxieties and issues. On their own, nothing major. But added to everything else, they're metaphorically turning small blow ups into full on thermite melt downs.
Covid messed up a ton of stuff and for a while we've been at least agreeable and have done a few couples therapy sessions as part of a longer term proactive sort of "regular health check up" + "refining skills and strategies" type of thing. Most things we discuss regularly on our own without a therapist, but it's definitely different to hear someone else say it and we're working with the therapist in figuring out how to make the resolution process more efficient and effective since our physical, emotional and mental endurance seems so much lower since becoming parents.
What kermitology brought up is eye opening to me and it helps to feel that I am on the right track. But it also feels like what we had perceived as good enough (proactive couples counseling) isn't actually enough and I should investigate doing more. My wife and I are absolutely dying and drowning inside and we're dreading the next stage this fall (kindergarten). I've been the type that if I spend enough time myself, I can sort it out. But I'm so tired and burnt out now and distributing the load to find a solution is highly welcomed.
Honestly speaking it seemed like the dying inside facet wasn't as big of a thing while restrictions were up. Inexplicably things feel far worse now that the restrictions are lifted. I'm glad my wife is a good partner and agreeable to proactively and retroactively figure things out, no matter how hard. But damn it feels bad that we feel like we're barely afloat when we also feel like we had previously put in a lot of effort to try and get ahead of the curve and avoid these scenarios entirely. (Control trigger, I know)
Another facet that has been bothering me for a while is that I've felt like I've swapped roles with the parents. Things they used to do on their own, now they're suddenly clueless about. I feel like I have 4 teenagers to deal with now where I have to keep tabs on them so they don't end up getting into trouble or injured. Some of it is directly related to long Covid, some is indirect such as personality change after the pandemic. I used to be able to tap into them to help relieve my stress and now I find myself more frequently stressed with interactions with them instead. It really sucks to lose that resource or lose that ability to rely on them to decompress or keep things from spiraling out of control. It just randomly changed, and while it's obvious to my wife and I, they think nothing has changed. Thus they keep brute forcing a different approach and are frustrated that the result is different.
When their responses are so explosive, contradictory and illogical vs previously being logical and calm it sucks. I really don't know how to deal with these "impossible" structure scenarios that pop up a couple times a year other than reduce my interactions with them (which then creates a further domino effect). Some of it is like, "DoubleF, how dare you yell at me and argue with me!" ... when I didn't even raise my voice or say anything other than the one comment, once. Like scenario wise, if I'm casually saying that summer washer fluid is better at getting bugs off than winter fluid, they disagree and then blow up at me thinking I'm arguing with them because my opinion is different... that's weird as F and I don't understand how to deal with it.
Other stuff like, they ask me to help clean their garage, I do and as part of it, I use a leaf blower to blow out the dust vs manually sweeping it... and then they blow up at me because their vehicles are suddenly a little dusty (and I even used the blower to blow the dust off their vehicles as much as I could)... what the hell?
But I don't think I'd ever be able to get them to go to a therapist and figure out what has made their trigger. I only really have the path of figuring out how to better deal with this and improve myself. That's fine, I'll do it, but god damn I'm just so tired and I wish I didn't have that on my plate as well. But I value the relationships, so I will work hard to figure it out. But I do think this pandemic was extra hard on those who are older, but many of them also will not ever believe they need to get help to dealing with those stresses. Hopefully they do though and normalize having a therapist just as much as we who are in our 20s and 30s are normalizing the concept of regularly going to a therapist.
Obviously it's not possible these issues aren't also new without something I'm doing... but when I evaluated it logically, I just couldn't figure out why they were all of a sudden so objectively contradictory.
Sorry for the rant.