So I went to the therapist today feeling more angry, hurt, and helpless than I have felt in a long time. Every time I thought about Sunday, the feelings would arise all over again. When I left, I was exhausted, but with good reason. We really hashed out some things that seemed simple and obvious to me all my life, but that I never really thought through until today. I know and have known that many of my trigger moments occur around meal times. I cooked for my family from a pretty early age and would get very upset when my father was late for meals. Of course there were no cell phones in the 70's to call from the interstate and tell me that traffic was backed up for miles. So I would sit and stew and feel insulted and upset until he got home. THAT is what I thought my trigger situation was about. I would get very upset if my husband was late for dinner or my daughter didn't come downstairs to eat at the right time. I attributed that feeling to similar feelings 40 years ago. What didn't make sense was that it would trigger the PTSD full blown freak outs. So, to make a very long story short, my therapist noticed that the year I started cooking every night for my family was the same year my father began physically abusing my mother and I. He asked if I thought the planning, the cooking, the ceremony of the evening meal was some sort of attempt to pull the family together, that it might result in some magic outcome and my father would appreciate it so much that he would stop beating us. Of course it didnt work. 't struck such a chord because I am an obsessive cook. I love to cook complex things that take all day and serve them in a lovely formal way. Sunday's explosion centered around such a meal and my feeling that the effort was not appreciated. It made me feel helpless and hurt and vulnerable and insulted and all I could do was fight, fight, fight.
What I am grappling with now is restructuring my attitude about cooking, pleasing, and disappointment. To view providing a meal for my family or my husband and myself as just that and not attaching any magic outcome to the process. This may sound like a trivial epiphany, but so many of my unsettled feelings and all out blow ups have been related to meals that it is a major revelation for me. It's a beginning at the least.
