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I am off to my son's home the next city over to help out at his request. I never bonded well with my own mother, much less my mother in law. By my own adolescent plan, I was going to be solidly established on another continent by now, sending my grandchildren exotic gifts in place of the inter-generational tensions that have always been the norm in my personal expectations. Obviously that one didn't work out, despite all my linguistic preparation.
It has been less than two years since my son married. His wife has still not opened up very much and that is okay. It takes what it takes, we are what we are. My son seems to be doing well with playing the go-between and both seem united in sincerely wanting inter-generational bonds. Very weird to my senses, but I am going with the flow.
As I make my preparations to head out, I find my mind running thought loops around every nasty mother in law joke and stereo-type I have ever told or heard. I am nearly paralyzed with anxiety over BEING the MIL of the jokes and rants.
I am hoping that posting my angst will help me break the paralysis. Dare I hope it will also keep me from the verbal diarrhea that often plagues me when I am nervous?
It has been less than two years since my son married. His wife has still not opened up very much and that is okay. It takes what it takes, we are what we are. My son seems to be doing well with playing the go-between and both seem united in sincerely wanting inter-generational bonds. Very weird to my senses, but I am going with the flow.
As I make my preparations to head out, I find my mind running thought loops around every nasty mother in law joke and stereo-type I have ever told or heard. I am nearly paralyzed with anxiety over BEING the MIL of the jokes and rants.
I am hoping that posting my angst will help me break the paralysis. Dare I hope it will also keep me from the verbal diarrhea that often plagues me when I am nervous?
Had a nasty trigger to move through yesterday, and that one was a doozy.
Rounding the corners where mostly I really do not think that much about the original crime that presented me with PTSD.
But then I go into total shock when I am in a trigger that places me right back in the middle of the crime and then there is just no escape. Your mind reacts to the crime(s) and even though you know that you are not in that time frame you go through the exact motions of the crime.
When I was ranting and raving during my trigger however I began to realize that by speaking out loud I was voicing out my own ways of coping.
I actually realized at that point that there are things I can do to better my own learning processes because of those triggers.
Going through the extremely nasty triggers yesterday I actually realized that within each of these trigger situations there are small lessons that I am taking away.
Perhaps if I concentrate more on the lessons that I can learn about when moving through these awful PTSD episodes then I can positively deal with the triggers and the following panic much better too.
I was actually going through the triggers early AM and thought I would never get to sleep because of that. But right after I realized that I was only panicking due to the original crimes and PTSD I then was able to completely move past that trigger and fell asleep right away because when I was speaking my concerns out loud I learned that I was not in imminent danger from the perpetrators that still to this day proclaim themselves to be innocent.
Strangely, once I realized that and with the knowledge that I learned something from that I just climbed over the trigger and left it lying on the floor sort of.
That was weird, after waking the next day my mind was still partially paralyzed though. Still placing my mind within the day and not within the time the trigger happened took me about half an hour to one hour after waking up.
Very strange how much fear you can experience when you move through the triggers and how much fear you can experience from the triggers themselves, waking up the next day and then the remnants are still there.
I think our nervousness is the least of our worries. I think we deserve to be nervous because in my opinion we are fighting a very nasty disease.
My MIL started out calling me "Her" and "She". Ten years in, I got my name. After my MIL's daughter had 2 disastrous marriages and divorces within 4 years, I was suddenly her "sweet daughter-in-law". (As we joke, maybe I shoudl send thank-you cards to those two exes of my SIL?!) .... She was NOT happy about me to start, now she's become a close ally in my PTSD and physical therapy fights, and we've come to a place of genuine respect.
So give it time and space and let it unfold. At least you don't dislike her on principle and I hope you call her by name (just kidding, I'm sure you do).
You will be fine, she will be fine, and if you nervous-babble, just tell her, "Sorry, I talk too much when I'm nervous," and to heck with it. When you gotta gas, you gotta gas.
I'm lucky. I have The Worst Mother-In-Law In The Entire World.
Lucky ?
Yeah ... because my wife has no use for the woman, either :-)
We share my mother. It works out well.
Hope it goes smoothly. Hope she doesn't earn the ol' nickname .... "The Out-law" :-)
Woof.
But I know this is serious for you. Considering your linguistic skills, go to a different language when the babbling starts. may not help but the picture is funny. I have only been MIL. DIL for a few years, but that's a different trip.
Best to you on the trip.
Jewells