I understand @BlueBay .....
By telling you more of my story I am hoping to distract you a little bit from the pain you are experiencing in your own situation, but also help you to see the “same but different” parallels a lot of us are experiencing.
My hubby is responding to some sort of trauma, anxiety, depression ..... something that I can’t identify or reach. It was already there, I think, bound up in workaholism and food addiction, from the time I met him, ut we married young, and it wasn’t obvious that there was a problem. He was in the middle of a see-saw with both his studies and his body image / size, so the behaviours that set in shortly after we married, in his early 20’s hadn’t really revealed themselves.
Even then, society norms excused them .....
“He is a hard worker, dedicated”
“The hours he is working and job anxiety have led him to over-eat”
”He is tired all the time from long hours and needs energy”
The list goes on .....
The truth is that he already had an eating disorder, and workaholism is an OCD behaviour. It’s just that when he sold the family business and changed his lifestyle, both of these things went flying off into a different direction that none of us could understand, or know how to deal with.
Part of your recovery means teaching your family about how you are suffering and what your needs are .... your path to healing through therapy and support that you vitally need. Your doctor understands all this ..... your family need to too, to be able to empathise with you and support your ongoing treatment.
Has family counselling been advised for you ? It might start with you and your husband, because, like with us, there needs to be some sorting out between what belongs to the marriage at the core of the family, and wha belongs to the family ..... your kids might not need to understand as much as your hubby does as your partner .... the roles are different, but the affects of your trauma roll back into your relationships, so the people you love and care about, and who love and care about you, need support and empowerment about how to help you.
You are actually ahead of us in that journey. My hubby cannot, at this point in time, recognise that there is anything wrong with his behaviours, and is unable to see how they are affecting all his relationships, including our marriage. While he can’t see or understand these things, he logically has to place the blame elsewhere, and it has fallen to me ..... not only from his perspective, but from his family’s perspective too, unless they are aware of the hidden eating disordered behaviours, or can recognise that the ways he is living are really extreme, or unless he suffers a health crisis.
Meantime we have to manage his behaviour, and curtail it when he is being emotionally abusive with no awareness hat he is. We have had some metal health team help with that, because the kids have suffered and come under care, but it’s not a proper resolution .....
I am not being believed. You are not being believed. It hurts and it sucks, and this is where self-care is so vitally important. Whether we are believed or not, we must take care of ourselves. Then when we are believed, the level of care naturally increases.
I hope it helps a little to relate my story with yours. They are not the same. Some aspects are similar. We can have empathy for each other and walk along together through the suckiness of it all .....
