Hi HGC
I feel for you so much as you try your best in navigating what sounds so incredibly challenging in a whole variety of ways.
I've found a couple of 'must have' keys or skills for good mental health to be 1)a healthy understanding of my own emotions and 2)healthy communication. Without these things, I can suffer and/or the people around me can suffer. So, I could either scream 'Why didn't you wash this cup!' or I could communicate 'This cup feels like the last straw for me, in what feels like an overwhelming life at the moment. It feels like no one's pitching in to ease the overwhelm and I can't handle it. I feel like I just want to cry or scream'. A lot of feeling there, hey. Feeling easily and deeply is an ability, not a fault. The fault relates to choosing to not better understand and master such an ability. The reason I offer this perspective is so that it might resonate with your wife if you consider offering it to her. How do you think she'd feel if you were to say something along the lines of 'You have this ability to feel everything, kinda like a super power. The problem is your ability or super power is completely out of control. Do you want to better understand it, fine tune it and master it or do you want it to remain out of control? The choice is yours, what do you want to do with it? At the moment, it's the people around you who are trying to manage it, not you'.
When I think of my 22yo daughter, she's always been intolerant of her father's intolerable behaviour, even as a little kid. My 19yo son and I used to tolerate it. We'd tolerate him building up his frustration and then venting it in some foul mouthed rant. Even as a 5yo my daughter would say to him 'Don't you speak to me like that. Go away'. As she got older, she expanded it to become 'Don't you speak to me like that. Go away and don't come back until you can show me more respect'. It's amazing how what appears as disobedient or disrespectful in a little kid can appear as a healthy level of self respect and self esteem in an adult. They're pretty much the same words (my daughter would say) but at different ages or stages of her life. She's a wise one, my daughter. Her advice to me has been 'Your level of self respect will determine how high or how low you set the bar when it comes to how you let people treat you'. For your daughter, lead her to shift the bar up. She shouldn't be tolerating stressful and potentially depressing behaviour from others. If she's a feeler like her mum, she'll suffer through what she feels.
Btw, my husband's take on our kids emotionally detaching from him is also along the lines of 'You taught them to disrespect me'. My response to that is 'No, I encourage them to detach from feeling what is stressful and depressing behaviour from people, your behaviour included'. A child will most often connect with the parent they can feel inspiration, constructive guidance and support from. They're clever like that 🙂
