Starting to address the DH in the room

I'm a few therapy sessions in now and after some recommendations for inner reflection on my motivations and feelings, we are moving on to how to deal with the reason I sought out therapy in the first place.

When I saw her the first time I told her I wondered if DH had some issue like ADHD, autism, audial or language processing disorder as some reason to explain his behaviors. What I did say to her was that I was trying to figure out if he has a problem or is just being a jerk. Well, I paid attention to situations we were in to see if he interacted with others the way he does with me. Nope. He can hear people just fine in crowded rooms (ignores me and then when I'm frustrated he tells me it's because he has a hard time processing speech when it's noisy). And...he can interact decently with people in other situations where he ignores me or it goes sideways. She said from what I've said that she doesn't think he has a problem/issue...so in my mind we've now landed on a diagnosis of "jerk." And while I didn't say that out loud, she did make a comment after I mentioned the treatment of me vs. anyone else that people tend to let their guard down, relax, and not try to be their best around familiar people.

Then we talked about a few situations and she said he sounds insecure and defensive. I know DH is insecure and defensive. I told her that. And that I'm seeing her because I'm just tired. I'm tired of dealing with it. She gave me some ways to respond where I don't play into his insecurities but I don't address them and don't give up my own position. It's basically mini-disengaging from him when he goes down the rabbit hole.

I looked up insecure people stuff tonight and this is from a respectable web site: "People who are defensive have difficulty taking responsibility for their actions and often feel uncomfortable being ‘wrong.’ [That’s] because accepting responsibility would make them feel as if they have failed." This is my "DH in the room" in two sentences.

We shall see if I can do it and if it helps at all.

ITB2012's blog
Log in or register to post comments

Comments

Hmm I can relate to alot of

Hmm I can relate to alot of this...what advice did she give you on dealing with it?

It was about how to respond

when he gets "ridiculous" (to use her word). That he seems to get defensive right away even for little things and lashes out in a big, mean way when it's a bigger issue. Basically it's that I should try to stop the conversation. So, for example, let's say there was a little misunderstanding about who was going to get home from work right at the end of the day to take care of the dog so we could both go out. That we both thought the other was going to do it. We both show up later, dog is okay but starving and has to pee. Or maybe he peed in the house. We both say something about how we thought it was the other person and why. This is where my DH gets overly defensive and starts even making up stuff, like things he says he told me that he never told me. Rather than agree that we misunderstood each other but also refute those made-up claims, just say we both misunderstood, that I see that he is upset by it, that I don't believe it is as much my fault as he believes and I would defend myself but I don't see the point and will stop talking about it.

She said this way it shows you will stand up for yourself if he's gonna press the issue, but that your choice is to move on. I'm supposed to give that a try to see if it can shorter the amount of time he gets defensive. She didn't say I could stop him from being defensive or fix how I say things, just ways to get out of the spiral without giving up/in.