Dilemma...please help!!

I have a huge dilemma in my life and I believe it's keeping me from healing.

As I posted on here just a few days ago, I have an emotional issue of abandonment from early childhood, when my parents sent us kids to foster care due to my mother's mental health. I was only a year and a half and was gone for 6 months. Years later, my grandmother committed suicide and my mother attemped a few times. I was also bullied in elementary and junior high and had many breakups before marrying my husband of 25 years - all forms of abadonment.

In the last three years, all my kids left the nest and 18 months ago, I left the LDS church, while my husband and two of my kids are still in. When I left, my husband threatened to divorce me, because in that religion, if you get married in the temple, you vow to make covenants; and if you leave, you won't be able to be with your family for the eternities. (LDS belive in being sealed to your family here and in Heaven) When I left, I started in with bad muscle spasms in my ribs for 8 months, which then gravitated to having severe right shoulder pain, which went on for 6 months after. (This, after having had 18 years of chronic pain in several areas of my body, as TMS is bound to occur) After I had a good emotional breakthrough and started attacking TMS wholeheartedly, my pain went away. However, as TMS is famous for, it moved to my left shoulder, but with popping, creating excruciating pain at times, and limited motion, so much worse. That has been going on since Feb.

I know this is TMS, so didn't get an mri, but this pain is relentless and very painful. Still, I manage to do dishes, laundry, shopping, treadmill, etc...just with my right arm, mainly. I have been going to therapy for two years now and just recently uncovered my biggest fear: abandonment. My dilemma now is that if I were to speak up and tell my husband and girls I want to resign from the church, I'm afraid of being abandoned. Not only that, but if I do, our sealing is cancelled, which would devastate my family. My subconcious knows this and therefore has kept me distracted from this huge elephant in the room. I believe this is why I'm not healing.

I'm so torn and frightened on what to do. Even though I promised my husband I wouldn't resign, after telling me it would hurt him deeply, I feel like I can't fully move on if I don't. If I do, I'm afraid he would leave me. Since my kids "abandoned" me, I'm so afraid of being abandoned by him and will end up alone. This is why my brain won't let go of this pain. These feelings and emotions could destroy my family.

Please, help me. I want to heal and have been ready, but my brain won't fully allow it.

 

Wow, Jules, this is a tough one! My answer may be way too simplistic, but it's one I've used my whole life. And perhaps it's easier for me because I was never brought up to believe in any sort of dogma, but at the same time I have sympathy for those who are stuck in the rigors of various forms of dogma.
This is what you said:

So, is this just a belief? Is this a belief that you can let go of? Can you change your mind about it? That's what I do when faced with what I often think is an intractable problem - because the intractability is usually held by a belief in my own head - not by the facts.

There's a question that everyone facing an important decision should ask: What's the worst that can happen? You've already imagined the worst that can happen if you officially leave the church. So what's the worst that can happen if you stay in the church in order to save your marriage - even if you don't believe in everything the church stands for? (I don't imagine you're alone in that, after all).

What you're not saying, and I get why not, is what you're getting out of this marriage? So I'm going to ask an outrageous question: are you afraid of losing a relationship with someone you love, or are you afraid of losing the security and approval benefits of the marriage? And do you really think you would permanently lose your children?

 

I'm afraid of losing a relationship with my husband - which extends to my children. I have been taught all my life that if I get sealed to my husband and bring children in, they are sealed to us in the hearafter, and that if any one of us was to apostatize, we would lose each other, particularly in a marriage. It's a powerful belief. My husband said he wouldn't leave me if I resigned, but it would hurt him deeply. I feel that if I stay in but just don't go to church, I'm limited to what I can do and say. If I were to start drinking coffee or wine, I would be doing so in secret and feeling as if I was sinning and cheating. (Sounds stupid, I know)

 

Jules, it's all about belief - you used that word yourself, and you're implying it every time you use the words "feel" and "feeling" which is frequently.

Belief is flexible. All you have to do is decide to believe something else.

It's interesting that you bring up drinking wine and coffee in secret. That doesn't even sound enjoyable. And having to lie about it to the person you want to maintain a relationship with? Even worse. But it's clearly on your mind as something that you would do if you felt free enough to do so.

You know, Freedom is one of the four core human issues that is explored in Existential Psychotherapy. Along with Meaning (religion?), Mortality (together forever?), and your new favorite, Isolation (aka Abandonment).

Maybe you'd like to look at all four of these issues. It's not only about Abandonment - there has to be balance.

I'm also going to take a wild guess here: which is that you are not acknowledging what you really want. In other words, the reason you're having symptoms is because whatever it is that you really want, is being repressed by your tricky brain.

Good luck,

~Jan

 

Thanks, I'm sure it's all 4. It's so hard to accept this horrific pain is TMS, though. I cry every time I move my arm the wrong way and it pops. It feels like someone is twisting my muscles or, like a rubber band, stretching it until it snaps painfully back.

I can't raise my arm over my head, out to the side, or behind my back to fasten my bra. I've never had pain like this - except with an abscessed tooth creating trigeminal neuralgia symptoms. Cream and meds barely touch this and it scares me everytime I move it.

 

dear Jules

I am so sorry about what you have to go through.

hope you don't mind me saying this but to me it looks like your faith is your prison and your prison is an abyss of pain. in order to walk free you need to open your heart and open the door with the key you have in your own hand. let me speculate that even if you would find the prison worth of going back to, you still could?!? perhaps that would give you courage??? remember, NOTHING in the Universe is unchangeable, absolutely nothing. life IS change. and sorry again for asking this but if your husband loves you how can he watch you in agony and still insist that your doing what has a great potential of healing you will hurt him deeply??? doesn't it mean that what matters to him is more important than YOU? and you need to take care of YOU at this point!

right now I logged in here to ask for help because I am an only child of a mother who is abusing me and going insane and no help can be given - so I can very well imagine your story... both my grandmother and mother were present and I grew up with violence and insanity at home.
how many millions of problems are we human beings capable of creating...
BUT WE ARE ALSO CAPABLE OF HEALING!!!!