I'm just now starting to uncover the original problem.

I thought it was alcohol and opiates, but now I'm starting to realise that I was coping how I had learned as a young teen.

I've spent years running away from it. I've found success and found a great wife. Our life is idyllic in many ways but I can't shake the self-hatred, the hyper-vigilance, the anger, the intense desire to be on my own in the bush with no one else around. I'd self-diagnosed with everything but I've never just admitted that it was trauma based as opposed to a mental illness lacking precipitating factors.

My father was abusive.

It seems so strange to say as he's such a quiet old man now.

The physical things were just the little things though.

The biggest horror was the emotional abuse. His hair-trigger. My sister and I would walk home from school, peering over our fence to see if his car was there. If it was we'd both have bricks in our stomach...I'd have sweaty palms. I'd ready myself to avoid him lest I drew his anger. He'd oscillate between the funniest man in the world, who'd do anything from his kids but he'd turn on a dime and tell us he never wanted us and we'd ruined his life.

But here I am. Up since 3am thinking about it.

I don't allow myself to see it most of the time, what I'm thinking of that makes me so on edge. I just think I hate myself because I'm fundamentally flawed, and I congratulate myself on a sharp diagnosis.

It's hard to talk about. He's a nice man in his heart, and other children have been abused horrifically in their lives. Both arms have been tied behind their back, while I have only one tied behind mine.

Enough complaining for now.

I'm still figuring it out.

I want to be a better man.

Hi larrygreen

You already are a better man. You're obviously more conscious than you ever have been before. You seek to find difference/change and self understanding. While in the process of your own evolution, you are a better man and will continue to be.

My heart goes out to you as you face the challenges that would have felt soul destroying as a child. The mum in me wishes to give the kid in you the most enormous hug. Being conditioned to hate our self, being conditioned to have our nervous system and other systems ramp up so easily and being conditioned to tolerate the intolerable (which is angering) would definitely take its toll. Seeking out sedatives in life is understandable.

I recall the self hatred in my depression, during the years in which I found myself in the depths of it. It is a truly horrible feeling, to be filled so so much self hatred. 'How to love our self?' becomes the question. I believe defining what love or self love is perhaps becomes the 1st step. The 2nd is to recognise that we may have never been taught how to love our self. How can we practice what we have never been taught, what has not been defined.

It's perhaps a bit romantic to say that love is found in evolution but whether we are loving another through supporting their positive evolution or we are loving our self through supporting our own gradual evolution, it cannot be denied that such active love brings growth of some kind. I look back over the decades and see how I loved myself through every significant challenge I faced. I could not see it, during the years where (through every challenge) I gradually raised myself out of my depression but I acknowledge now that if I had not loved myself in any way, I would never have made the effort to come back to life. I love myself for making such an effort. Perhaps you'll be able to say to yourself one day 'Although I have never been able to feel love for myself, raising myself through the challenges is what has led me to finally feel it'. Although love was never taught to you, you've come to find it for yourself, through the experience of having raised yourself. Do you not love people for the incredible ways they raise themselves out of trauma? I do.

Might not be your cup of tea but there are guided meditations out there to help re calibrate the nervous system. Another natural therapy is talk therapy. Whether this involves a professional or your wife, maybe it's time you finally vented, in a positive self loving way.

:)