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Just moved in together in paralyzed by fear

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Cypress

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I met someone while I was serving overseas last year. We were each other's best support during a truly horrible situation: the operational environment under COVID conditions. We came back together, adopted a couple of bomb-sniffer dogs we served with and started to make a real relationship. I have been trying my best to not be crazy, to trust, to allow myself to feel love and for the most part had been succeeding with the help of my therapist.

But everything changed when I had to take time off work to better manage my PTSD. We moved in together on a trial basis and the first couple of weeks were ok but then my therapist went on paternity leave. Since then I have been seized with a terrific anxiety and intense feeling that I need to escape the relationship immediately. This gnawing fear has led me to pick fights which I have done in previous relationships as a way to create distance. I don't want to screw this relationship up, I don't want to escape, but maybe I am just too jacked up mentally to be in a relationship.

Any ideas for quelling this fear? I don't trust my own judgement right now.
 
Any ideas for quelling this fear? I don't trust my own judgement right now.
I learned to

a) take vacations
b) ignore myself & “act as if”

once I realised these states-of-being were temporary (and the TELL for that was actually the opposite; the absolute feeling/assertion of always/never/forever)

Vacations >>> I’m DONE. No more forever. Finis. f*ck off. Run.

Ignore Myself >>> I don’t love you anymore // I couldn’t FEEL anything... even if I knew intellectually that I loved them, I thought for a long time that the honorable thing to do was to leave -immediately- and let them have a shot with someone who did/could love them.

The problem was? With BOTH of these headspaces... that given even a little bit of time, the certainty or lack of emotions would lift. And I would want them back. Because I DID love them, and I DID want the life we were building, all I really needed? Was for my stress levels to tick down a few notches.
 
once I realised these states-of-being were temporary (and the TELL for that was actually the opposite; the absolute feeling/assertion of always/never/forever)
This. I hadn't made that connection before. So true. Thanks @Friday you have helped me move to a place of better mental clarity. Just need to let my stress levels tick down a few notches. Yep.
 
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