Past insecurities impacting marriage

[Guest_14978740]

Hey everyone,

I’m hoping to gain some sort of insight as to how I can get through this. 
I was in a very bad relationship for years. Cheating, mental and physical abuse ect. I’ve never fully dealt with the emotional trauma it left me with. I’ve always had terrible self esteem and views on how I see myself. I’ve been in my current relationship for 7 years now and he is amazing. We got married last year. He has never done anything to hurt me or make me feel negatively at all BUT I still seem to feel threatened by others, scared he will cheat, worried he is more attracted to other women ect. It’s really bloody draining! I struggle to be naked around him as I’m worried I’m disappointing him with how I look. He clearly loves me more than anything and has never done anything to make these feelings valid but I don’t know how to get out of my own head. It’s literally stopping me from being able to enjoy our marriage to the fullest. It’s spiralled my binge eating and depression. I go through times when I’m not too bad and then there are times where it sends me absolutely crazy 😞 

Please help!! 
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!! 

TIA 

[indigo22]

Hi TIA,

Welcome and thank you for reaching out to us.

Firstly, I am sorry you went through such a difficult time that has left you feeling the way you do.

Self-esteem and self-love can be hard to build back up after a bad experience like you had. The fact that you have now found someone who loves and appreciates you for who you are, is a blessing.

There are really no short cuts to getting through this.

The 2 things that will help, require a commitment on your part to work on dissolving the trauma of the past, which takes time. From what you have said, I believe you may be ready to make that commitment to yourself.

If you are not already seeing a counsellor, I highly suggest visiting your GP to arrange that as this is not an easy thing to overcome alone. Trauma (emotional and otherwise) can remain trapped in your body and can eventually cause physical problems in the long term. For this reason, I would suggest looking into somatic therapy along with talk therapy. Your binge eating is a coping mechanism, which once served a purpose, but is no longer appropriate for your current situation. It has become an automatic response. Your depression is likely a reaction to your lack of self-esteem and self-love at present.

The best thing you can do for yourself (aside from finding a therapist) is to question your thoughts when they come up. For instance:

My husband will cheat because he does not find me attractive enough. - Your questions should be:

What proof do I have that my thought has any validity?

Am I simply projecting what has happened in the past situation onto my current situation?

Can I think of a time when I was self-assured and did not feel this way?

Our mind goes into protective mode when we have a negative experience, it happens automatically to prevent us from being hurt again. The problem is, that same protective mechanism will prevent us from being able to fully experience life in the present. So as you can see, you need to retrain your mind so that it is learning that your current experience is different from your past experience. And that is not an easy thing to do alone as most of the time we can find it difficult to be objective enough.

You are worth the time and effort to turn things around and you deserve to be happy. It is now a matter of taking the rights steps to make that happen and allowing yourself the time to work through the past to create a positive future.

I hope this helps and I am happy to continue this conversation if you are comfortable.

Take good care of yourself,

indigo

[therising]

The warmest of welcomes to you 😊

I think it pays to think of our self as a bit of a mystery at times. 'I'm a mystery, even to myself' sounds and feels so much better than 'I'm broken' or 'I'm messed up'. As indigo offers you much in the way of consolation, inspiration and hopefully some revelation, I hope coming here to the forums proves to offer you much regarding the way forward.

I've lost track of the amount of times in my life where I've thought 'Why do I think and feel the way I do?'. To add to that, 'Where do my beliefs come from and why do I suffer through them at times?'. Took me decades to finally realise that the quest to better know myself is always going to involve a number of questions. This is the nature of any great quest. Another revelation became 'Who are going to be my best guides for this quest?'. I suppose you could say, when it comes to gaining a greater sense of self understanding, the best guides are those who are good at shedding light on the mystery of who are. Whether that's a psychologist, a guidance counselor, someone who more so offers spiritual counsel (not necessarily religious) or it's someone else, we can even develop a circle of 'go to' people as guides which can also be seen as 'a guide for every occasion'.

When it comes to how key people in our life influence our way of thinking and our belief systems, especially about our self, I believe some of them can be great teachers and some can be incredibly depressing and stressful teachers. Regarding some, we could say 'You have taught me how to find the best in myself, how to bring parts of me to life that I never knew existed. Through your influence, I have come to love so many aspects of who I am'. To others, we could say 'You've taught me how to find and feel everything supposedly 'wrong' with me. You have taught me how to fear, taught me how to see myself as worthless and you have taught me so much more in the way of what's depressing. You have been one of the most destructive teachers I have ever met and the fact that I can feel your nature as depressing defines me as a deeply feeling person'. The ability to feel or sense deeply is not an ability everyone has but it is an ability that many sensitive people can suffer through, for a whole variety of reasons.

I've found part of the mystery of self can involve how to master feeling/s or how to master being able to sense, as sensitive people. There is just so much to sense in life, including sensing the need to find a guide and the need to develop self esteem. There are so many incredible and amazing parts to who we are. The fact we haven't necessarily found them yet doesn't mean they don't exist. The most incredible and amazing people bring these parts of us to life. ❤️