I’m learning a lot about myself, my condition and how I could have let things get so out of hand.
The psychological community are at odds over whether childhood attachment should be added to the adult diagnosis in the DSM.
It is currently my opinion that it should as it explains my behavior over the last decade or so precisely. So here goes….
I couldn’t understand why I kept protecting my Ex after she would do things like try to convince the family court that I had secret foreign bank accounts or that I was purposely not taking more lucrative jobs to punish her by giving her less money. The answer is I couldn’t have done it any other way as I was unconsciously compelled to do it. Because no one would pay their Ex and not pay their taxes if they were healthy. And before you clutch your pearls the CRA was complicit, in about 2014 I told the CRA that I couldn’t pay taxes each month and their response was to have me fill in some reports for them to “get the picture” and we would discuss the case at a later date. They responded by saying Mr. Munday you can’t pay your taxes. I replied with “that’s what I told you”, there reply was ‘you have to pay your taxes, what are you going to do?” I explained that I could give them my bonus cheques. They agreed that would be a good compromise. That was until my Ex decided she wanted part of them as well and convinced the court to judge in her favour for 130,000 above what I had already paid her from 2011 – 2016 (as an aside she asked the court for $500,000) and now she wanted her share of my bonus cheques going forward. I sucked it up, put in my helmet and tried to weather the storm.
Emboldened by the success in court, my Ex in about 2017 decided that she would weaponize the concept of “imputing” an income on me as allowed by the court system. It’s at this point that my grip on reality starts to crumble.
Yesterday my therapist asked me what I felt when I was inhabiting one of my episodes and I responded with trapped but now I think that needs to be flushed out more, it’s actually that I feel powerless. At this point I can almost hear her say “and when have you felt like that before” my responce would have been “when I was a child and I had to manipulate my mother to get my most basic needs met” I wasn’t even an afterthought to her as I felt she begrudging kept me alive out of some commitment she made and now regrets it.
I have been both simultaneously protecting my Ex and our child and slowly dying inside with the burden of it.
So, maybe my story could help the psychological community form their opinions on the subject as it seems to fit.