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My husband and I were talking this afternoon, and he told me about his scratching himself again. He said he does it to be able to feel something and in places where people can't see. The context was him telling me how distressing our relationship is right now for him.

In the past couple of years, the self-injury seems to have morphed from chewing his tongue to scratching - he has very strong nails, too.

I'm not sure whether his P knows about it or not.

My question is what do I do with this information?

empath, do I understand correctly that your husband has to continue on professionally as a counselor to other families even as his behavior toward his own family has come under formal monitoring by the organization that employs him?

This sounds like something that would be torture for your whole family.

He recently left the counseling position, partially due to his job performance issues related to physical pain he has. (The doctors have been unable to find a cause for the pain) That employer is unaware of his behavior toward his family. 

So tough.

Is there some way to break free of this dynamic? Could he find other employment--maybe something with a significant physical component, assuming he's cleared by his doctor?

His physical symptoms sound indicative of feeling he's in a Catch-22 situation. Biting his tongue, literally, in order not to be verbally abusive to you. Injuring himself in order not to injure you.

 

The biting his tongue was earlier in his history - mainly when he was stressed out about work situations, before he was even aware of his own verbal abusiveness. When he went on the AD medication a couple of years ago, the biting stopped; he told me because it was so different for him. I think it is probably the employment situation that has triggered a different method of injury, scratching, now. In his now former chaplain position, he would have patients who were in abusive situations, and his coworkers would talk about the abuse and what they could do about it. The other issue that would come up from time to time was because of his depression, he would be jealous of his patients because they got to die sooner than later.

Thankfully, I was able to convince him that this job is not a 'good fit' for him just from the things that he was aware of. So, he is no longer in that job as of the end of last week. He is looking for something in a former technology field. However, he feels like he failed (mainly because he isn't 'stable' and can't seem to stick with things long term).

I don't anticipate the injuring to let up for a while with all the job situation things going on.

Hi Empath,

I'm not sure that you need to do anything with this information.  You are not responsible for his feelings.  It really is up to him to seek help dealing with his feelings.  My suggestion would be using SET to ask him to discuss this issue with his P.

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