So, along the lines of my earlier post about black and white thinking, I am wondering if you have any tips for how I can reframe my thoughts when I get annoyed with my partner's black and white thinking. It often feels like there is just one right way to do things. I am trying *so hard* to be understanding. I do catch myself apologizing after I get annoyed, which is a good start. But overall I keep thinking, why does it have to be one way? I am constantly trying to balance the needs of four people in our family, and this requires great mental flexibility. I am trying to keep in mind two things: 1) he would do better if he had greater emotional capacity and 2) I need to hold boundaries and sometimes really push for doing things the way my intuition/parent training guides me, because he may not see the needs and perspectives of others. And I try to do this without thinking of him as less capable, but rather as having a very different way of processing input and information. I don't want to condescend or infantilize him. I do find myself getting quite frustrated with the additional mental load, which is already exceptionally high with our lifestyle and my career demands. Last night, I spent a while feeling into the grief of the personal sacrifice of what's been going on for the last 7+ years. The crisis moments are deeply draining and I am sure I have PTSD. Today my goal is to tap into gratitude for having the abilities that I have. I do recognize it's a blessing to even be having this dilemma. We are not living crisis to crisis, I have the privilege to be able to plan and make changes and learn along the way.

Posted by sophieno at 2024-05-25 12:06:30 UTC