Blocking out past seeking therapy. Grief

[Gir5]

Does anyone else get so worked up about their whole situation that they just don’t know where to begin?

A bit of background, sorry if it’s long, I do struggle with knowing what’s relevant.

Every time I try and think rationally about past events it just feels like a massive tangled web. My mother is diagnosed with BPD and was ‘abused’ by my late step father. They’d been married 12 years so I had dealt with this constant bickering for all my adult life (I’m 31 and step dad died the day before my 31st). I know from experience that he could be bad tempered, anti social, unreasonable to the extreme but it wasn’t until after his death that I really started to pity him in that now he’s gone I realise that actually he was a scapegoat for all her problems. With him gone it now leaves me and my partner the main targets. My family all live within about a half hour radius of each other and we live 2.5 hours away (mainly to stay out of all the drama), we try and visit as much as possible but nothing is ever good enough, when I’m in my mother’s company alone I feel anxious as there’s always something she wants to call me out on to start an argument. So visiting is stressful to say the least not only for me but my 2 year old son and fiancé, who willingly takes time off work to accommodate my family even though he knows it’ll end in conflict or a drive home at 1am with the toddler.

I am struggling at the moment to come to terms with my step fathers death as he was painted in such a negative light by my mother and trying to decipher fact from fiction is something is always struggled with listening to my mother’s problems. Because I wasn’t there to witness it a lot of the time I could only take her word that he started it etc and we believed it, it was a brilliant sympathy card I’ll admit! (she didn’t have her diagnosis until about 2/3 years ago so we didn’t have any knowledge of BPD and the ways it can make people act). When I think back to all the years I can only feel sorry for the guy, all he ever wanted was to make her happy, he invested in property so they wouldn’t have to work regular jobs, he helped me and my brothers to get into university, he helped to get her diagnosis in the hope it would change things for the better for the two of them, albeit in his own way, which sometimes wasn’t to everyone’s liking but his heart was in the right place. All the while being physically disabled (and probably having undiagnosed mental health issues of his own) and suffering immense abuse by my mother. What bothers me the most is that he was the only one who could see when she was starting to get irrational and I felt as though it was ok to be in my mother’s company, now going it alone is just too much emotionally as I haven’t got a back up.

So we’re now coming up to the anniversary of his death and there’s a new guy on the scene, has been since about a month before my step dads death. I cannot forgive my mother, it’s deplorable that she’s moved on this quickly. Because I haven’t been exactly over the moon about this new relationship and still not over the death of my step dad I’m the complete blacksheep of the family. The rest of my family are happy he’s dead and thinks the sun shines out of this new guys ass. What they don’t realise is that my mother has fed this new guy so much crap about how she was abused etc etc that he feels like some kind of knight in shining armour.  So much so that last time we visited he went to attack my fiancé in order to protect  my mother (from nothing, we were  having a bit of a heated discussion and he didn’t like what my fiancé said)  and at the same time instead of just pushing her out of the way he grabbed her by the throat. None of my family members have spoken to me since this incident so who knows what crap they’ve been fed about what happened or how much I’ve been ‘painted black’. I refuse to be the petty one to barge in to correct them because no one else is allowed feelings except for my mother. I have reduced contact as I had received quite a lot of abusive texts which I’m not willing to tolerate.

Anyway these are only a few things bothering me at the moment but what I cannot shake is that I’m feeling very down and not able to make sense of the situation due to things being so traumatic (not just these but other events in the past and present) that I’ve blocked them out of my memory. I feel like I may need further therapy but just don’t know where to start. Because I’ve forgotten bits or don't know how to articulate it all, I feel like I come off really misunderstood and that I don’t have an issue at all but I can feel that I’m depressed with it all. Has anyone got any tips for how to get started recording things in order to take them to a therapist please?  I can’t use the texts so much because they seem to have been wiped over time.

[Turkish]

So much so that last time we visited he went to attack my fiancé in order to protect  my mother (from nothing, we were  having a bit of a heated discussion and he didn’t like what my fiancé said)  and at the same time instead of just pushing her out of the way he grabbed her by the throat.

So your mom's new beau committed a crime of violence against your fiancee. What happened after that?

[Gir5]

Yeah, we packed up and left. My mother was asking us to stay to work things out, instead we were then sent a series of nasty texts blaming me and my partner. We haven’t spoken much since. We have a family wedding coming up next week where he’ll be there. We’ve chosen not to stay at her house and just hoping there’s no drama for the sake of the couple!

[Harri]

Hi and welcome!

You are dealing with a lot, things that happened more recently and in the past and it makes sense that you would b sort of all over the place and have a hard time organizing your thoughts.  It is a lot with which to deal.

You ask how to record things so you can start with a therapist (T).  If you can write a few basic highlights, that might be helpful.  You could even print out the first post you wrote here and take it with you as it paints a pretty good picture of your situation and where you are right now which is the best place to start with a T.   A good therapist will be able to , over time, help you untangle things.  They know that things are complex.

So I would suggest just starting with where you are at right now. 

We have a family wedding coming up next week where he’ll be there. We’ve chosen not to stay at her house and just hoping there’s no drama for the sake of the couple!

Good choice on not staying at her house!     At the wedding, you can remember one of the easiest tools we suggest here which is Don't JADE.  JADE stands for justify, argue, defend, explain.  Doing these things can often escalate conflict and gets you right into the drama which is precisely where you do not want to be.    Read the article and see what you think.

We also have another article titled:  Escaping Conflict: The Karpman Drama Triangle which is an excellent read and something I think you and your fiancee would benefit by reading.  Again, see what you think and then we can talk about it some more.