[PsychGirl123]

Hi all—
I came from a bad broken home, alcoholic father, and emotionally absent mother who was very verbally and emotionally abusive. Naturally, I grew up with very low self-esteem and battle it daily. I graduated from college years ago and had a job for only a 1/3 of that time. I'm dealing more with my mother's abusiveness more than anything else. I've cut off contact with her in the last year and have been better, but I still have problems controlling my emotions and feeling better about myself. I'm nearly 30.

My bf is younger than me by several years, and this is his first relationship. Naturally, I've had many. Somedays we are fantastic, but most days we're snapping at eachother and I go off on him in a emotional rage, crying my eyes out and feeling so alone. Often feeling mistunderstood. and duh! How could he understand me? He came from a good home, was raised by relatively good people (his mom's dad was an alcoholic, so she understands me a bit), so obviously this is all new to him. He probably doesn't understand me either because emotionally, he has a lot of growing up to do and isn't in touch with how he feels on a deeper level.

He tries to understand all the problems I have, but can only relate so much, can only say he's sorry so much. He is very nurturing, but is still finding himself, is and is emotionally immature in the sense that you're still pretty selfish and just do everything with only yourself in sight. Some days I feel like taking care of me, as nurturing as it is, is more or less just ego boost for him, that I depend on and need him to stay together and am not in pieces. We're about 2 years into our relationship.

We really want to work on this and want to stay together, but it has been very hard. i feel like my emotions are really at the root of why we fight most of the time. I get angry or irritated and just go off when he does immature things (and honestly, they are immature), then i find myself calling him names, telling him that he's stupid or an idiot, all the things that have been done to me.

i completely realize this is a continuation of a viscous cycle. its hard to control it sometimes, and I don't want him thinking that this is how relationships are supposed to be! that eats me up inside.

it's definitely not how he should be seeing things, but i don't know how to control my mouth when things get heated. I will admit, I have hit him as well. i'm not proud of it. he blatantly lied to me about something concerning our finances, and some other things concerning our future, and made a lot of excuses about why instead of being honest. still, i should not have hit him.

On the plus side of all this (yes, there is a plus side), I don't bottle things up — I'm a very expressive, open person. He knows all my secrets, the way that I tick, you name it. When I'm angry, I try very hard to talk about it. Same with sad, irritated, everything in between. I give him fair warning to walk away (though sadly there is likely a threat tied into it "you NEED to walk away —I don't know what I'll do..."). He's not innocent in many ways, but I know he doesn't deserve the treatment I've given him.

I can't see a therapist now—I really, REALLY don't want to be part be involved in group therapy (i live in a tight knit, small community) and I can't afford other treatment options right now.

Does anyone have any advice on how to control themselves when angry? How to take control of your emotions when they seem to be out of control? How to stop the cycle of abuse in the ripple that affects you? Maybe something your own therapists have said?

Anything right now would help

[Open Eyes]

Hi Psychgirl, I see you are a newer member here at PC so welcome.

Oh, lets see, well the good news is that you can identify the fact that you are over reacting and struggling in the relationship area. Recognition of faults is the first step to correcting and improving. And I think that it is great that you WANT to improve yourself and that you are even aware of where this comes from, also big steps.

And you are right, it isn't fair that you take so much out on your boyfriend and it does interupt with having a better healthier relationship. And that can be hard to change over night too, because some of that is learned behavior from the way you were brought up.

So print out your post here because you Have identified your problem areas. And what you have to do is learn to attack each problem area at a time. And what that means is that when you are in a situation that causes you to react poorly your going to have to learn how to stop yourself before you react. This takes practice and often in the beginning you may react before you can stop it. So what you have to do is right after you act poorly, even in front of your boyfriend, you have to say out loud, wait, I am sorry that was wrong, and quiet yourself down and say, this is what I mean to say, when you do this it upsets me because .... and as your doing that slow down and think it out. You can also have a talk with him and tell him that you are aware that you often respond poorly and you need to slow down and stop and work on it and ask him to be patient.

I have things I have to work on too, because I can over react as well. Ofcourse I suffer from PTSD so when I get triggered I CAN over react. I don't mean to over react but for some reason there ARE things that my husband does that DO trigger me. And yes, some of the things he does are unfair to me. But in order to fix it I have to address it differntly. And I have it so that he works with me on that. And what I like about that is that it also teaches him to learn about what he does that is unfair to me.

What we are working on is slowing things down into more of a conscious, quiet discussion rather then me getting all upset. It DOES take practice and it doesn't always go right at first, I honestly have to work at it. But he is learning as well.

Now, I have years of combatting abusive behaviors towards me. So it isn't easy but I am working at it and it is improving.

So think about that because you CAN work on it as a team, but you have to be patient and know it is going to take you time to build up better habits verses just getting upset etc.

Open Eyes