Reader’s Question

I’ve been having some problems with my long term girlfriend. I’ve known her for 2 years now and we’ve had an on/off relationship mostly due to my commitment issues, which I’m safely over now. Unfortunately over these past years there has been no let up on problems dogging our relationship. A lot of them seem to have been solved, but a lot stem from her mother and siblings, all of whom have been diagnosed with bipolar, and who treat her as an outsider. Her relationship with them and everyone has really improved as of late, as has mine and hers, and I can safely say we are in love.

The big problem now is, recently (about 2 weeks ago) we managed to dig very deep into her problems and find that she feels she has two seperate people in her, and she felt they were warring. Now, after much discussion she has managed to get both sides functioning at once; the violent no nonsense type and the inner child so to speak. I realise this is most definitely a case of her having created another side to escape the abuse without her being fully conscious of it, but now she is and everything seemed fine.

Last night though she sort of crashed; she was telling me that for a week or so now she’s been seeing things out of the corner of her eye and feeling very tense, haunted even. She even noticed that her negative emotions that should have occured in some situations weren’t happening at all. Last night she became incoherent, started saying some void inside her was smothering her and that she felt all the bad feelings she should have felt. So naturally she pushes it back down again and now she seems fine.

To be honest, I’m at a complete loss. I love her, and she loves me, but I’m not sure how much of it I can believe, how much I can still care about, because it’s all so draining and constant. I can’t tell her that sometimes I think she’s being either attention seeking or manipulative because for one thing I don’t know for sure, and secondly the one or two times I have she’s been very hostile to me. I can’t take it much longer and to be honest, the urge to let go of my sanity seems to be growing with her problems really.

My questions are as follows:

• Can such problems exist?
• Can she be cured?
• What can I do about this?
• How do I stop myself gonig insane over this?
• And if you think she is being manipulative, how do I confront her?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

You’ve described two years of turmoil in your relationship, as well as a history of family problems in her background. Two years of such a high level of stress becomes emotionally exhausting, producing an emotional state that contains both depression and anxiety. As you also describe, people involved in these high stress relationships begin to break down — physically and emotionally. A variety of symptoms surface during these periods of emotional exhaustion including visual/auditory misperceptions (seeing things out of the corner of your eye), episodes of depersonalization, anxiety and physical “spells”, and extreme emotional distress.

These problems can exist and they can be treated. I would encourage your girlfriend to seek mental health consultation. Her symptoms are increasing in severity so it’s important that she be stabilized before additional symptoms surface.

What can you do? Stop digging! The more you dig (into her problems, past, and symptoms) the deeper the hole gets. Digging is easy, but repairing what we find often requires a professional. The relationship is in a pretty deep hole at this point. You need to turn the investigation, exploration, and digging over to a mental health professional.

Is she attention-seeking — probably yes, but because she needs attention and support at this time. Your relationship has become inappropriately intense. I’d recommend turning treatment over to a professional and you return to being loving and supportive. You can also set aside two two-hour blocks of time during the week for a “status report” — how both of you are feeling, discussing relatives, business issues, etc. This is an attempt to provide some peace and calm during other times. A relationship that’s on fire emotionally quickly burns out — leaving both parties in ashes.