I namechanged for obviois reasons.
My DD (3) has sadly been put by mysef and my DH in the position where she has witnessed us argue quite a lot for the past few months. Life has not been easy since she has been born for a number of reasons, but the past few months have really taken the cake.
My DH has Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED),
and has not been managing it at all in the past few months. While my DD has not witnessed DV, we have argued and, at least on his side, there have been raised voices, shouting, screaming and lots of anger directed at me. It has been unbearable for me so I can only imagine how it feels to her.
She now seems to associate us talking even on a normal tone about logistics upsetting, she will ask if we are going to talk and then say she doesn’t want us to, if she feels my DH starts to raise his voice slightly she will yell “Stop” and sometimes ask him to leave the room if we are together even if we are not even talking. She’s perfectly fine with either of us separately and still wants us to be the three of us, but will sometimes exhibit this anxious behaviour.
Needless to say, I feel like the worst person ever for allowing this situation to even occur, I know I should have left at the first angry outburst and this won’t happen again, but either way, I was wondering what we can do to help somewhat fix the damage caused? Is children’s therapy for things like this too? It’s clear our behaviour has hurt her emotionally and that is killing me.
The only reason I am not allowing myself to be overwhelmed by guilt is because I want to be proactive about fixing this: I didn’t want to add the trauma of a broken home and her not seeing her DD who she does love and has a positive relationship with to the mix, especially as DH claimed he was cognisant of the issue and working to fix it, but aware damage has been done and there might be no other way forward, but I feel like even that wouldn’t directly address what happened and help her cope, just remove the problem, so how can I actively help/what can I do to fix this?