Boundaries: Depression

Hello All, its been a while since I’ve posted my last blog entry on boundaries.  I thought I would share my own real life experience on how I used boundaries to fight my own personal depression.

The reason why I haven’t posted is because I hit a huge depression in January.  Stemmed by many various circumstances, it was full blown depression.  I had, what felt like, a rock behind my heart that was so big it was even hard to breath.  I didn’t want to do anything and had no drive or motivation.  I cried every day and felt like my life had absolutely no meaning to it.

It wasn’t that the depression had no warning and I didn’t know it was coming.  I definitely felt it coming in December.  Here’s what happened.

My husband and I have been trying for a baby.  This year I’ll be 40 years old and have never had any.  I’m mentally ready to do all the things a good mother should do.  Unfortunately my body is not as spry as it used to be.  My husband is 44 years old and has a child of his own by his former wife and adopted her daughter who is estranged.  He has felt that he parented the children by himself and even though he told me he was in on having a child with me, he was doing it more for my sake than his own.  When the time came to “try” his body didn’t work the way it should.  After 2 months of this we had to look at this with the perspective of ‘what is in the way’?  Turns out my husband wasn’t sure himself if he wanted to have children because of what he went through in his past both as a parent and the example he had of his own parents.  We started fighting.  I told him that no matter what, he needs to make a stand for himself, either he does or he doesn’t, because doubt will always get in the way.  No matter if your 20 or 40 trying to have children, or accidentally having children.  There is always doubt.

By then it was too late for me.  Full depression had formed and I felt that the world was against me for having a child.  My doctor dropped the ball in November when we asked her to send us to the Family clinic so we could start invitro processes.  She never did send in our requisition until the beginning of February.  We have  found out that my hubby does have a motility issue and natural pregnancy will be very difficult for us.

2 years of trying and what could have been…… the eternal saboteur, my helplessness, 2 years of putting my own life off for nothing…. oh the saboteurs had a field day with my thoughts.

Having the “fights” with my husband was huge and painful.  Turns out my husband is “codependent” to a huge degree.  I couldn’t do anything without him trying to “fix” me, but his way of fixing me was different than what I was telling him my needs were.  I felt I wasn’t being listened to.  I got worse and worse and realized the helplessness that I felt as the same feeling when I was living with my family of origin.  My parents were highly co-dependent and instead of allowing each individual person to undertake the responsibility for their own life, they would turn to me to blame for everyone else’s bad behaviours, circumstances or feelings.

When he was trying to fix me I felt I had no control over my own life.  What I need, what I want, my values, qualities, time, everything was for naught.  I told him that I need him to stop trying to fix me, and start dealing with himself.  I didn’t have the energy to work on me, and him.  It was as if he was so dependent on me to tell him whats wrong that he didn’t bother to figure himself out and would just wait for me to tell him and that’s not the person that I am or who I want to be.

So the boundaries I used was honesty, reality for what the truth really is; I used the boundary of skin, what I was responsible for and what I was not responsible for; and then I used support.  Turns out there is a group here in Calgary for co-dependents.  So I made time to go and told my husband he can come if he wants.  I needed to go because I needed to learn how to live with someone who is co-dependent without losing my mind.

We both went.  There wasn’t much for me to go on there but turns out there was for him.  He got it.  He understood what it was like for him to be a co-dependent and started learning to be honest with himself for his negative feelings.

Since I no longer had to work with him on him, the energy I actually did have I was able to turn to me.  I booked myself for a meditation class right away, just to get out of the house and deal with my own saboteurs.  I talked to friends about my depression and found alot of support in friends that don’t even know about depression, or even experienced it themselves.  But they were accepting that I was going through it.  I went back on the medication for hormonal balancing and I took time to battle the ever present “but I should be doing this…” saboteur and really took time to allow myself to heal.  I also tried to look at positive sides in my life.  I started walking and gave myself a purpose.

What has helped my relationship is that every time I see my husband “trying” for himself and going outside of his comfort zone to express himself to me, I tell him how proud I am of him for continuing to do his work on himself.  I am realistic that he will have moments where he still is co-dependent and that its okay for him to fail, as long as he recognizes it and still tries afterwards.  Which he has been doing.  Its also okay for me to handle it, and not handle it properly.

My husband is a different man today than he was 3 months ago.  Even though he will always be a co-dependent, he is still working on himself and learning to share his own negative side with me, which to me is gorgeous.  What he views as negative is not the same thing I do so I just love him more and more every time he shares with me.

As for having children, well we’re still going to try but it doesn’t look good for us.  I have to live in reality and I definitely don’t want to hold my life off anymore because of it.  If it happens we will be wonderful and excited parents, and if it doesn’t I still have the most wonderful man who loves me for me, and not for my ability to conceive or not.  I am truly blessed.

Michelle

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