My crazy life - need advice!
Well, this is a post with several overlapping issues, so I’m not sure if I posted it in the right section. Moreover, I hope it makes sense!
And if you want to be abusive or “harsh”, don’t bother posting a reply, as this issue is extremely difficult for me to deal with, and I can honestly say I am giving it my best shot – constantly.
Anyway, outline to the problem is as follows:
1) Raised in religious cult where members are shunned by family and everyone they ever knew if they leave (as children are forbidden to socialize outside the cult, they never develop outside contacts).
2) Because of following the cults directives to the letter, was seriously messed up and very unhappy growing up. Became unable to support myself at times.
3) Decided to leave at the age of 21. Immediately was able to make enormous personal, and public improvements in my life despite huge obstacles.
4) Was very happy with my life in general for about 6 years. At that point I was half way through university, involved with a new girlfriend I met overseas, and back in Canada. I noticed how much better adjusted many of my peers, new friends, and girlfriend were by having their family there for them, at the very least wishing them well and encouraging them on in university. Most of my friends had additional support to this from their family, and had a strong identity, or “anchor”, that seemed to foster a lot of stability, power, and happiness. For example, my GF rushed back to her home town when her family was having some trouble, and they all pulled together. I felt so alone. The huge progress I had made so far seemed so “normal” for these people. I was exhausted.
5) Up until then I had kept very limited contact with my family, and instead concentrated on living a healthy life. When I did talk to them, it was brief, and I was always positive and polite and ignored any condemnation. But this time I had had it and got into a fight with my brother. I suddenly had all this old anxiety come back, and it was terrible.
6) That was 7 years ago. Since then, I have felt like things have been a lot harder to handle, getting out of my control. It was slow at first, but became more intense. It feels like some fundamental issues where not fixed, and because of that some new problems couldn’t be dealt with properly. And then the unresolved issues started to stack on each other, causing me to feel overwhelmed. I’ve had anxiety attacks at different stressful times. And I feel like I’m developing phobias of certain situations.
7) My take on these “stacking issues” are that they are critical to deal with if I am to be successful again. I feel they are as follows:
-The whole family/cult issue never got resolved.
-My current relationship. That overseas GF, well there were some issues early on that I felt needed to be resolved, but she was happy with things and didn’t feel that way. She basically refused going to joint relationship counseling. And there is a culture/language challenge. She’s Japanese, and tends to avoid direct discussions/conflicts on sensitive relationship topics, using a more indirect style I’m not comfortable with. Anyway, since then we have moved back to her country, and have been here for 5 years now, got married and have 2 new kids. I know it may not make sense, but even though I didn’t feel we had solved our earlier issues, I felt like I had to progress in the relationship as she has given me ultimatums and I couldn’t stand losing first my family and now her.
8) So now, I live here, feeling crushed by the challenges I don’t know how to get past. The original relationship issues were never solved, and they never really will be I’m afraid. Even if I can live with this, I’m afraid I will hate her for it. Add to this the language/culture barriers, and the fact that our business here is run by both of us. And the kids add more craziness to all this. Also, my father passed away last month, so I started freaking out that time is running out for my chance to try and get my mom, brother, and sister out of the cult. Originally I felt like I could join a new family to replace my old one. But I found my friend’s families, while nice, never opened to door totally to me. Marriage was my other way to join a family, but my wife’s family can’t speak English, and to be honest there’s a lot of stuff about living her for the rest of my life that scares me. Add to this my anxiety attacks, and I’m worried about being able to keep everything together. I wanted to see a counselor, but that kind of thing doesn’t exist where I live, and I think it’s a tossup whether I could get any new insights anyway. I've also started to drink a lot over the last couple of years to cope, which concerns me. It's an alcohol culture.
I’m wondering if the wrong turn I made was getting involved with this woman, and if I should make a fresh start, try to copy the things I was doing when I was making all that progress in my life before.
Ideas?
