This is it. The eve of the family session. I feel like I'm going to hurl and I've felt like this for the last two days. I haven't had much of an appetite during the day and end up famished at dinner, which makes me a bit concerned about my milk supply again. As the days have gotten closer, the hours creep up, my anxiety increases so much that I get stomach pain and arm numbness to where my hands tingle.
And this? Is better than how I've handled it all before, oddly enough. I've been working very hard on controlling my anxiety over this session and Bill has been helping me tremendously by sitting down with me at night and listening to how I feel and just talking with me. His support has been significant.
We met with our marriage counselor on Friday morning to discuss this upcoming family session with a brand new counselor that Aunt Ju-Ju had scheduled with from her employee benefit program and to plan as much as we could. We are moving forward with a cut-off from me and the kids and Bill's goal is to figure out what kind of relationship he's going to have with them. We planned to have a release of records signed so that the two counselors could talk and cut down on the re-hashing of history.
On Tuesday I called the new counselor and had a mini-session on the phone to give her the heads up of what our situation is and what our goal is, so that there are no misguided attempts at trying to make us be a happy family. She seemed nice and assured me through my tears that she would not let the session get out of control since my big fear is getting ganged up on. I feel like I'm walking into a firing squad.
Last night Bill and I spent a long time going over the 'in-law' labels here on the blog making a time line with cliff notes. It was astounding to see it all organized and realize how horrible our life has been with them, how unhappy many of our holidays were and how hard we've tried to work with them only to be met with childish temper tantrums. We have everything we need to stay on track, limit the amount of emotion and stop the lies as they are being said.
This is it. The beginning of the end.
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8 comments:
Best wishes to you for tomorrow!
I just wanted to say that I was shocked when I read you describe one of your physical symptoms of anxiety as the numbness in your arms. It happens to me, too! I thought it was in my head ;)
In laws...I am just glad that I don't have any...mine would have been crazy drug addicts, luckily that never happened. Now they are just the bad set of grandparents....
Anyway, good luck tomorrow. Keep your head high!
Good luck. I hope all goes as well as it can. At least you have Bill's understanding.
Good Luck! I hope that don't gang up on you too much. I am so glad that this is coming to an end with them. I have read how hard it's been...I couldn't imagine living that way.
Wishing you lots of luck in your session today.
It sounds like you are completely prepared for this meeting and can present factual information. When your in-laws go in and just start spewing off lies (which from the sounds of your posts, they will), you'll be prepared with facts to back you up.
Keeping you in my thoughts! :)
THinking about you!
You worry too much.
Just walk in, flip them off with a hearty "F YOU" and walk out again.
;)
Seriously, you're going to do awesome in there and if the therapist is worth even an ounce of her bodyweight in gold, she'll see through them with no worries.
Thinking of you!
Still alive? Some of us are dying to know how it went! Update when you can! :)
How did it go?????
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