I've shared recently some of my thoughts on marriage, and some of my thoughts on raising children (and in a sense each other), I feel like it's maybe time to tackle myself..... I want to be honest here. I feel like it's important to share our stories with one another - especially the difficult parts, the ones that aren't shared enough, and that really help us all feel more compassion for ourselves and for one another. But it's hard.
It has caused me to react in ways that I am very very not proud of, to things that in hindsight probably didn't mean what I thought they meant... Especially in my marriage. Over and over and over throughout our first year of marriage (and still in much milder forms to this day), Grayden would do or say something (or more likely in his case - not say or do something), and in my head this would imply criticism towards me.
One that came up a lot (and still does sometimes) is that I would say something to him and he wouldn't say anything in return. Initially - depending on the nature of the conversation we were having of course - I could take it once or twice a week (now I can take it maybe once or twice a day) before it made me feel unsafe but once that voice started whispering in my ear it would tell me that he wished I would just shut up and not speak and he didn't value my voice and why would anyone value my voice anyways and I should just stop talking and live the rest of my life alone and unhappy, etc.
Clearly that's not ever what's going on - mostly he originally just didn't have anything to say so he just wouldn't say anything back, now he tries more often to think of things.... But also, he thinks more slowly than I do (or maybe just thinks more about what he's going to say than I do), so sometimes he's struggling to figure out how to respond and his silence drags on and makes the situation feel more and more and more unsafe with every passing millisecond. That one happens frequently - especially when we're already in a difficult conversation and then he doesn't respond or takes a long time to respond to something vulnerable or upsetting I shared.
Other times, I read criticism and failure into him sharing with me things I perceive as telling me who I am or the way I do something is wrong, or him telling me or asking me something that "shows" a lack of trust or faith in me, or a belief that I would do something that hurt him on purpose, sometimes it's even just a facial expression or an intonation that I read into as implying criticism..... In our first year of marriage, especially after I got pregnant, these things came up over and over and over again and each time they did, I lost my entire foundation. Somehow my brain would go from "normal day to day struggle" to "he doesn't love me anymore and I'm alone in this world" in such a way we would both end up with whiplash.... When that happened, it was like the entire world came crashing down around me.
It became clear over the last two years (as these things do in marriage) that I never really learned to moderate my own emotions when it came to handling pain and hurt feelings that are caused by someone close to me. My instinct was to turn on myself, blame myself for the situation, silently feel anger and resentment towards whoever it was who had hurt me, stay away from them for as long as I could, and if I couldn't, then just to push it down, ignore the pain, apologize and pretend like everything was fine (while inside I was screaming and losing my trust in everything and everyone). I obviously couldn't do that in marriage and didn't want to, but because I barely realized I did it, and because I hadn't really been in a situation in my life where I felt it was okay to act differently, every time we had a disagreement or I got hurt by something or other that Grayden said, I fell apart. I hated everything I could possibly think of to hate about myself while at the same time being angry at Grayden for whatever it was that caused the situation. And when my hurt was met with silence, as it naturally was at times, I broke.
I find it hard to share this, but sometimes in my despair and hopelessness and self hatred, and his inability to even see them, let alone touch them or help me deal with them, I would turn on Grayden. He would say the "wrong" thing or do the "wrong" thing and I would run away from him and hide in another room, I'd slam doors, I'd scream at him, I'd punch myself or bite myself. A couple times I punched him..... He's a strong guy so I don't think I ever left bruises, but oh how I hated myself for it....... I would tell myself over and over again that violence is never okay, to ourselves or to others (especially to others), I would recite in my head all the reasons why he probably acted as he did and all the reasons I was wrong to feel the way I did, I would then recite in my head all the horrible things I'd done or said in the conversation that were unfair and hurtful and tell myself that I was just making him hate me more and pushing him away more, and lock myself into an endless funnel of self hate. As you can imagine, this never helped the situation and often meant days before there was a resolution, and weeks if not months before there was a feeling of 'safety' again.
Anyways, I'm not writing this blog post to shame myself. This was the reality of who I was when we got married. It's a bit of an understatement to say that marriage brings out big emotions, and in truth, I acted like a child who hadn't ever learned to handle and deal with their own big emotions.
It's not my reality anymore, though obviously there are still echoes of it..... At some point, with the help of a counsellor, a therapist and some books I'd been reading (Raising a Secure Child and No Drama Discipline in case you're interested) it clicked in my head that shaming myself when I reacted in a way that wasn't the way I would like to react wasn't helping the problem. So I started trying to have compassion for myself and to accept myself where I was at (because I finally understood that with acceptance would come growth and I wouldn't be stuck there forever).
And then with help we both learned better language to use to acknowledge our own and each other's pain (for example saying something like "it hurts when " rather than saying "I'm so sorry I didn't mean to, ").
So fast forward to now. Something I've found really helpful in the second book I mentioned above (NDD) is that it talks about how we all have a reactive brain and a receptive brain. How when we're feeling big emotions we feel them in our lower "reactive" brain and through training we build connections which help us to take those big emotions up to our upper "receptive" brain to be analyzed and thought through. If they just stay in the reactive brain, or if they are met there with another person's reactive brain, they can just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But if we are able to pull ourselves out of the reaction and think through things, that's when we learn to moderate our big emotions.
It's interesting how just having an understanding of this and being able to step out of an interaction and observe our own and the other person's mental state, can make such a huge difference. To be able to say "I'm feeling really reactive right now, and I think you probably are too, can we stop for a minute and calm down?" or to be able to tell him at the end of an exhausting day when he gets home that I'm off balance and feeling reactive so please tread lightly with me. It's amazing how just simply being honest with one another about how we're feeling, can actually save us from difficult and hurtful interactions. Not something I would ever have thought about when people say how important communication is in marriage.
I guess this is part of why I've been thinking about fear recently. It has been such a huge obstacle to open and honest (and loving) communication in our marriage. Obviously fear is a reactive state, so in a sense all we need to do, to combat fear (and everything that goes with it - in my case self-degradation) is to find tools to help us move into the upper receptive brain. I was thinking yesterday about what qualities might combat fear. The first one that came to mind was trust. I've often felt that fear is simply a lack of trust (in God, in oneself, in others...). So it follows that trust would be something that combats fear. I think, even beyond that though, love not only combats but it actually conquers fear. To love, is to look with eyes of understanding and forgiveness, compassion and empathy and trust. When we're in a situation where someone has hurt us, reminding ourselves that the other person is noble and underneath whatever they did or said, is a soul who probably wouldn't want to inflict harm or hurt on another soul, reminding ourselves that they want to see the best in us, that they love us, and even more importantly that we want to see what is best in them and that we love them, can make such a difference in our own reactive v. receptive state.
That's just one of the tools I've come up with for myself to help me to not be reactive in a situation I find unsafe. I'd love to hear the tools other people use to combat their own fear!
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