Pegs

Just curious......you have a wonderful husband & family......yet you are allowing the death of your T several years ago control you so completely rather than living for the life you have. You even said that you were happy when you were home & your work was what you realized made you unhappy. If you were truly happy with your home life.....you would care about yourself & them as your priority.........

When I lost my career as an firmware design engineer......it was like your loss of your T. It was the only thing that gave me value to my life....it was also my ESCAPE from a bad marriage & I had no desire to be the mother that I was (my daughter was in high school at that time). At 5ft 2 inches, I never weighed that much in the first place & I had always been active playing racquettball with the guys at lunch rather than eating. When I lost my career, I lost my desire to live & I tried su many times.....then my pdoc prescribed prozac & I started loosing even more weight than I had already lost. Anytime stress comes into my life, I get this sick feeling in my stomach & there is no way I can even push myself to eat. I was actually thinking what a wonderful situation.....rather than an OD.....dying of anorexia was a much more socially acceptable thing & would not leave the stigma on my family that an actual su would......so I kept loosing & obviously, I didn't care about myself......but underlying that......I didn't care about my family either & I definitely didn't have any kind of relationship with God even though I believed in him.

Somehow I managed to live through that time of my life.....I know not how but remember being in the medical hospital often, with central lines & IV nutrition every time I passed out. Also got stuck in an eating disorders treatment center for 6 weeks over Thanksgiving & Christmas that year.....it had no effect on me because I had no desire to live & while there & was on 24/7 watch because of my su desire when I commented that I didn't want to live.

Like I said, I managed to survive that period of my life & even gained back to a healthy weight & then some......but just 7 years ago when I went through that trauma with the home care person when my mother was dying of cancer, the stress of that caused me to have massive weight loss again & I lost so much that my GP put me back in the medical hospital for almost 2 months on & off around the last care I needed to handle for my mother & then her funeral. I was so sick from the stress & the trauma & the nightmares that I couldn't even eat without getting sick.

Stress is one thing that can cause the body to loose a massive amount of weight......which may also be associated with your unhappiness about your career position & possibly your unhappiness of not being in the place you might have really wanted to be with your degree (just a thought). Topping that off, is the unresolved grief that you are still dealing with over the death of your T......I think Lynn's suggestion that grief counselling would be a good idea. There may be some parts of you that are just unwilling to accept that he's gone & hold onto some level of anger on top of that for having deserted you when you felt you needed him the most......especially now that you can't seem to find a direction for your life......& it seems that having your own family isn't a grounding point for you in life's direction (like it wasn't for me either).

You need to figure out why your T still has so much control over your functioning while those who are alive in your life seem to offer you no reason to control your desire to live. There does come a point after the death of someone very important in our life....that we have to let go & realize that we do have our life to live that we were put her for a purpose. Keeping them in our memory is different than continuing to grieve to this extent.....which is obviously unhealthy. Given your psychology education.....I am sure that you would tell anyone who would be in a similar situation as yourself that they need professional help to get through what they are dealing with at this point.

It's obvious at this point that you are NOT able to get yourself through the grief process on your own.....but even with counseling....one has to get through the problem using their own thinking because no one else can do it for us.....they can only help us try to get control of our own thoughts which is what therapy is all about anyway.

Seems there must be something more to it than just the grief because the caring for your own family is seeming to have no effect on your emotions & desire to live. I know being DID adds another level of complication to your situation.....but the thoughts are still similar even though they are separated.

I am sure you are strong enough to get through this difficult situation....but it's obvious that continuing on the same path which isn't working will continue to NOT work unless you are able to change your thoughts that you are holding onto so tightly. Maybe that is part of not being able to let go of your T in his death is because you were holding onto him so tightly & had such a close bond......that you are not willing to let go because you are afraid that you will loose him completely if you do...including his memories & by holding onto your grieving....it's your way of holding onto him. (just another thought passing through my mind)......you definitely need the professional help that I am sure you have realized by this point.

One of the things that is so important in DBT is radical acceptance....that is accepting things that can't be changed.....when my friend died of cancer this last January.....I realized that death is the ultimate radical acceptance. Accepting it doesn't keep me from holding onto the memories but it sure helps with the grief.

I still struggle with my mother's death 7 years later....not with missing her but with anger that her stupid thinking caused the trauma that I went through with her.....what ever the reason.....it keeps haunting me every fall through January.....when just the weather change triggers the feelings & there are times when that feeling of depersonalization hits out of nowhere.....anniversary periods are difficult even when one has dealt with the grief.....don't know if you have an anniversary date around this time with something in the relationship you had with your T.....as that could be triggering your feeling bad thus leading right into the weight loss also.

Our emotions are so complex & we don't always understand where they are coming from or what is triggering them......ah, that's what a T is supposed to help us figure out.

Sorry for the long winded reply...just had many thoughts running through my mind on your situation. Praying that you will be able to sort through your emotions & your thinking even if it takes getting some professional help as it is something that needs to take it's proper place in your life so that you can live the life that God gave you to live. I know it's difficult.....but the most difficult things in life are what make us the strongest & develop our character.