I had a horrible day yesterday, the worse low I have had in a long time. My husband came home in the middle of it and all I could do is cry, my mind could not even put anything to words, it got so bad I had the heaves. He kept asking me what was wrong and kept trying to get me to talk and to depths of me I felt like every effort I "could" make would be thwarted by his need to "stop me and put himself and his feelings all over it".

I just kept crying and at my worst my brain felt that every possible "exit" would be blocked and only made my brain litterally ache. When I did finally make the effort to explain what had triggered me so badly, I paid attention to how he responded and his responses were all about his need to stop me and all about "how he felt". He would say things like "I don't care about that, I dont think that is important, I think, I think" and finally I stopped him and said "THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU".

I can listen and comfort and "hear" another person for a long time, and if I need the conversation to end, all I have to do is "talk about me, or my feelings and challenges and needs". And if I "do" get to talk, then all I will hear is all the things I do wrong. It doesn't matter how hard I tried, how much I did for others either, all I hear is whatever I did not do enough of and if I did not do enough then I should have gotten "therapy" for it.
I did reach out for help time and again and either I was told what I did wrong or that I should consider becoming a therapist myself.

I have been fortunate in that I did find a therapist who actually "knows" how to listen. He told me that his PTSD patients always present with so much "intense desperation". But, because he does "listen" as time passes these patients show a lot of improvement.

What I feel so sad about is how so many present with a need and often how the core of that need is "feeling they are always wrong" somehow.

I ended up in so much pain that I took a Klonopin and crawled into bed and quite honestly I did not want to get up either, I did not want to "do" anything. Then later on I took another one because I really just wanted to "shut the world and all the opinions out about what OE has done wrong".

Doesn't ANYONE know how to possibly point out what OE or others do that is RIGHT? It is a sense of the absence of an entity that can just sit down, gently rub your back and talk about one's good points and how hard that person struggling is actually "trying" despite often what is really "a dysfunctional" environment, even something that person has had to find a way to deal with for many years.

When I really sit and think about it, there are so many "dysfunctional" ways society and general tends to concentrate of "what is wrong" in so many ways, no wonder so many people struggle.