Unpacking childhood trauma - my (27f) fiance(29m) asked me “What the hell is wrong with you?” and I full on broke down.

We’ve been together for 2 and a half years and live together.

We got in a silly little misunderstanding, and I began getting anxious and a bit defensive - talking really fast, etc. He said “What the hell is wrong with you?” and I full on broke down in tears, telling him that was degrading and horrible and that he can’t speak to me like that. I said that’s a sexist trope men say to women to put them down. He got upset and confused at my extreme reaction, a side of me from my past that I thought wasn’t around anymore, and for accusing him of being sexist, and said he was genuinely asking what was wrong with me because I was overreacting.

It kind of hit me like a brick why I had this extreme reaction - its not a sexist trope at all, it was my dad’s favorite question. I struggled heavily with depression, anxiety, and self harm as a teen, and my father was horrible about it. He would laugh at me and tell me I had “fucking mental issues.” He would make off-handed comments about how “people with mental issues should just kill themselves and get it over with because they make the people around them miserable.” He reacted to my self harm as me being an ungrateful brat. And his favorite “What the hell is wrong with you?” if I would cry or get upset. He also was physically violent towards me, and refused to let me see a therapist because he said “I would run my mouth and CPS would take me away”

I want to talk to him about this, but God it’s so fucking hard to even put into words. Then I started thinking wow, maybe I AM crazy and my dad was genuinely asking why I was quick to become emotional and I was just a burden on my family and it was their way of coping. Maybe I have a victim complex and attributed normal questions to verbal abuse as a teenager. Then I go through that back and forth in my head and my fiancé asks “can we talk about it?” And I just say no, I can’t right now.

I really want to hash this out with my therapist, but my next appointment isn’t until sunday, so I was hoping y’all could help me think through this for now and how to talk to him about it. We are usually very healthy communicators but this one is really dragging my brain and heart through the mud.

tl;dr: got in a silly misunderstanding with fiance, got emotional, he asked “what the hell is wrong with you” and I had full on flashbacks to teenage trauma and am having trouble separating truth from delusion in my head. Next therapy appointment is Sunday and need to talk about it with a third party perspective

Submitted May 25, 2021 at 12:03PM by TA-r-05-25-21 https://ift.tt/3bX0mU1