How can I make things better in the relationship?

Post Reply New Topic

Hi everyone! Unfortunately, I had a meltdown today. I think it was mostly due to lack of sleep, going to the gym on an empty stomach, and then driving through a bunch of traffic just to rush to get ready for work, while being disoriented. My husband just asked a question about how to clean the linoleum tiles in the kitchen, and I went into a screaming rage fit of, well, screaming, as well as breaking several plastic tupperwares that were nearby. I feel so ashamed, my head hurts. Due to my raging meltdowns, all of our neighbors give us dirty looks, and don't greet us when we pass by anymore.

I want to make things up to him, and not have any more meltdowns as they are scary for him, and for me as well. I've seen therapists in the past, and they were somewhat helpful, but I can't afford the weekly rate of psychotherapists who are actually trained in autism and c-ptsd (no one will accept anything less than $200 per session). Right now, I'm meditating for 15-20 minutes any day I can, and doing 30 minutes of yoga, which do help most days.

Thank you very much for reading this, and any advice you can offer.

My first instinct when looking into how someone can better control their emotions is to look into their diet. Different foods can trigger behavioural problems such as sugar, gluten, tinned/prepackaged ready meals and an overload of carbohydrates. Does any of that ring a bell for you?

Hi fifasy, thanks so much for your reply! I am a vegan, and I stay away from processed foods, white breads, and take out generally, but my problem is sugary foods. I love love love sugary treats, chocolate, and coffee drinks. I know I need to cut those things down, but it is quite hard...

I am trying to stick with black coffee, or black iced coffee (it takes me at least half a day to feel awake, and feel like my brain is working fast enough to talk to people, so caffeine speeds up that process), and im trying to eat a small cup of fruit instead of whatever junk food is in the work kitchen, so maybe in a few weeks ill stop being so mad?

No problem, it's nice to (try to!) help people. Well I imagine you're in fine health overall since you're a vegan. I know for me if I have sugar I can have a short fuse for up to 24 hours after.

It's hard to give them up, for me I usually manage to limit them to Saturdays which I use as treat days. It sounds like you might need the coffee and fruit seems a reasonable compromise to sugar cravings.

I'm confident it will help your situation. It may not be the whole solution, of course! My area of expertise is food, other people here might have useful advice from other angles.

If you step back and analyze the situations surrounding your melt downs, and ask what about them you can control to prevent the melt downs, in many situations, the only thing you can control is your response to the situation. You can choose to have a melt down, make a fool of yourself in the process, and come out of it feeling worse than you did, or you can choose to address your actual needs, or sometimes even re-evaluate them. For example, in the melt down you detailed above, it sounds like you really needed a break and some time to rest and unwind. But did you acknowledge that to yourself and make that a priority when you got home? Was it in your head that you were about to rest?

For some people, melt downs occur when things don't go how they expected. Back in my younger days, my family and I were traveling somewhere and the craft we were being transported in turned out to be a model different than the one I had anticipated, and I became very upset. This was not without it's merit as the model of the craft I had anticipated was faster, reducing the time spent on the unpleasant part of the trip. I made myself look silly over it, but looking back, my behavior didn't change the fact that that was the craft we had to take, and I would have been better off letting it go and thinking ahead to our final destination.

Today, my mother visited. She was 4 hours late due to some problems that arose. Younger me would have become very irate at this but older me accepted it even though I was stressed and annoyed by it. I reasoned with myself, it was not my mother's fault that she was unable to arrive sooner as planned, and she is in her 60's now and I would like the remaining time with her to be good times, so I resolved that I would let the situation go and make the time we would spend together enjoyable. Had I not done this...had I become irate instead, I would have regretted it.