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Stupid, embarrassing situation lead to self-harm
My wife (married less than a year) has bipolar disorder and has recently had a period of mania lasting for something like two or three months (will be relevant). I occasionally engage in self-harm when I get sufficiently angry or upset.
My wife has wanted me to see a therapist about self-harm for a long time now, so I started seeing one a couple months ago. Two weeks ago, I brought my wife to one of my sessions. In retrospect, this may have been a bad choice, but she attempted suicide earlier this year and her mood has been extremely volatile and scary and getting worse, so on this particular day, I didn't feel like I could leave her alone. During the session, my therapist made the observation that we have co-dependency issues (I don't disagree about that). She also said something about how my wife needs to take caring for her mood into her own hands and not rely on me to make it better - what exactly my therapist said, I can't recall, but whatever it was, my wife liked it at the time. When we walked out of the session, she said: I really like your therapist!.
Fast-forward to today. My wife is visiting her home town with her folks and her mood is allegedly recovering. I had another session with my therapist. My wife texts: Did you talk about co-dep. I, thinking not much of it, say yep. Well, apparently my wife has changed her mind about how great my therapist is. She's concluded my therapist was basically saying I need to stop supporting my wife - which in recent months would be admittedly difficult considering she tried to kill herself. Now, I'm desperate to not be in a fight with my wife right now. The last three months have been absolute hell and this week is insane (in other news, I'm unemployed and have three work interviews before the end of Friday). This felt like a fight I wouldn't win, so I agreed to cancel future sessions and not see my therapist again. Bad choice? Probably.
An hour later, I get more texts. Apparently my wife's been talking to her parents about my therapist and they're pissed at her. My father-in-law wants to write a formal letter of complaint to my health care provider. He also feels (as does my wife) I should have stood up for my wife and known all along what my therapist was saying was wrong.
This situation is very embarrassing for me. It's uncomfortable enough that my therapy sessions are now my in-laws' business, but a FORMAL LETTER OF COMPLAINT?! WTF. Since my wife is back home with her folks and talking to them about what's happening, I'm not just up against her, I'm up against her parents too. I tell my wife that I'm not comfortable with a formal letter of complaint from her dad about my therapy sessions and she half-heartedly agrees to talk to him. I tell her I'm upset and also worried I won't be able to sleep (which I was right to worry about, because it's 5:40AM as I'm writing this now). She gathers that I'm at risk of self-harm but she's deathly tired and she asks me to promise I won't hurt myself. I say, I promise. Total lie. Less than a minute after hanging up, I do it. In retrospect, it could've been worse. I felt like I could've killed myself. I was furious, sad, embarrassed and I felt overpowered and not understood or cared about.
I sought out therapy in part to deal with self-harm. Now, after this cluster of a situation which lead to self-harm, I'm starting to regret even getting started. I was thinking my wife was doing better, but at this point, if I know my wife's moods, it looks like she's falling into depression. I am really burned out from these last few months. They've been some of the worst of my life. I remember a time when my wife was stable and not bringing her parents into the loop on so much personal stuff, but we seem to be getting further and further away from that now. And while my wife has her parents to back her up when she fights with me, I have no one. Yes, if I told my own family about this situation, they would take my side. That would be awful, because I would have my wife and her family pressuring me to stand up for her, AND I would have my family pressuring me to stand up for myself. No thanks. I also talk to almost none of my friends about these problems, and no, I'm not comfortable doing so. And, even if I were, there's something about this particular situation that's so embarrassing and pathetic, it doesn't feel worth talking about to anyone who knows me. Also, I no longer have a therapist.
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