(Trigger warning) just want to stop having so much distress

Is there anything I can take or do that will turn the dial down on my feelings by like, a lot?

I'm acting like a lunatic lately. I broke one of my partner's favorite pieces of drinkware from their childhood on purpose (and another that they like a lot), I'm covered in cuts and one stab wound (from myself), I'm alternately sobbing, being so angry I'm shaking, or lying still staring at nothing and the only thing I can feel is terrible discomfort.

Problems at hand:
1. I'm in a poly relationship and I don't know I can make it work even if everyone involved is nice and well-meaning.

2. Not even sure if my partner is nice and well-meaning. I love them very much but honestly, I think they're probably not a very nice person, even if they try really hard for me. Then again, maybe neither am I, but I try too. This has been a remarkable few days.

3. Their other partner, who IS nice and possibly well-meaning, visits town on the weekends and it's torture every single time. I don't get enough attention during the week and all my best time gets eaten up by someone else

4. Don't understand myself at the moment. I thought I had a really good handle on it but lately it's been baffling. I was asked "I'm doing work right now; what are you doing?" in a pissy way this morning after breaking aforementioned glass, leaving blood everywhere, etc, and I honestly didn't have a great answer. I think I'm trying to calm down but everything feels terrible and continues to feel terrible. My behavior doesn't make sense to me and it isn't constructive and yet I keep doing it.

5. Feeling like maybe life is just kind of a bust in general? I found out for sure in the last six months that not only do I have repressed memory, it's of a childhood of witnessing domestic violence and at one point assault and attempted rape of my mother by my father. So I have ages 0-10, abuse in my house, ages 10-18, violent bullying and molestation and getting hospitalized, ages 19-23, being in a seriously violent and psychologically abusive relationship myself and getting hospitalized 5 more times, and now what? I'm probably broken permanently.

1-3. I'd sit down with your main partner and have a big talk about the poly relationship. It's not for everyone, and unfortunately, the only way to know for sure is to try it. It's great that everyone involved is nice, but that still doesn't mean it has to be your thing. If you're feeling this much distress over it, a big talk is going to come up sooner or later; it's better that it come up during a time when you're calm and collected, as opposed to when you've just been triggered by something and are screaming loud enough to shatter glass.

4. Of course you don't understand yourself well. You're too close to the situation. It happens to everyone. Others notice things about us, either in our behaviours or the reasons for them, that we wouldn't ever piece together. Why? Because they have less vested interest in it than we do, so they can be more critical and impartial in their analysis.

It's hard to not take things the wrong way. Remember though, we're not mind readers; we don't know what's going through someone's head. If someone sounds pissy, ask them openly if it was meant that way. If they say "yes", then it's on like . If they didn't mean it to be aggravating, though, it gives them a chance to reword their last statement, and gives them a heads up to watch their inflections a little more closely in the future.

5. Is your left arm where it's supposed to be? What about your legs? If you said "yes", then you're not "permanently broken." Even if your conscious memories of these traumatic events were suppressed for all these years (and it's completely understandable why they would be), they still helped make you who you are today.

Believe it or not, you may even be a little better off now than you were. Now that you remember some of the memories that shaped your psyche to the way it is now, you (and your therapist) can start addressing them to help you deal with them in a more effective manner. They may not be pleasant, and the recovery sure won't be (since you'll have to deal with them even more), but learning to cope with something always has greater success when you know what it is that you're up against, and now you do. It was a hard step, but it was a big one; good on ya!

Casper wrote:1-3. I'd sit down with your main partner and have a big talk about the poly relationship. It's not for everyone, and unfortunately, the only way to know for sure is to try it. It's great that everyone involved is nice, but that still doesn't mean it has to be your thing. If you're feeling this much distress over it, a big talk is going to come up sooner or later; it's better that it come up during a time when you're calm and collected, as opposed to when you've just been triggered by something and are screaming loud enough to shatter glass.

I agree with Casper. Poly relationships are not for everyone and you really need to talk to your main partner about it. I'd add that if it doesn't work out, it doesn't mean that you failed at poly. I struggled for a long time in a poly relationship before very recently figuring out that it wasn't for me. It's totally ok if it's not for you. For me, generally non-monogamy worked a whole lot better than having multiple partners. People have different relationship models that work for them and that's ok! Just wanted to add that as it was really hard for me to let go of poly as this super idealized, radical way of having relationships.