Think I need some sort of therapy to let go of this anger, resentment and jealousy.

[beentheretoo]

Name changed as this is outing. I’ve had a pretty rubbish life and things never seem to go right for me everything seems to be a struggle. Childhood was a mess, father was useless mother abusive. I’ve very limited contact with him, no contact with her, DHs parents are dead. We’ve never had any family support there’s only DH and I, we moved around a bit for work then settled in a new area and have never really made friends. I’ve never felt I’ve fitted in anywhere.

4 years ago after being a SAHM I retrained into a career I’ve always wanted to do but it’s been a bit of a disaster. In my latest job things were going ok we were very short staffed and I got hurt (it’s a job where I often get hurt), I went to the GP who signed me off work for 3 weeks with stress and the injury said I needed time to heal. When I got back I was asked then told to leave my current role for one where I could be better supported, I was stressed just angry at having to do the job short staffed and at getting hurt all the time. The other role is paid the same but is rubbish (the person who did it last year hated it and left). It’s not even the role management tried to sell to me. They change the goalposts every week. Today I was back working in the same job filling in and management never take into account it might be upsetting for me. Everyday I go into work I feel like crying, it’s as if they said I’m rubbish at my job. I know I have to get over it.

That’s my problem I have all this anger at things like this, when I hear other people talking about what their Mums do for their kids or going on holidays with their in laws I just feel so jealous.

What kind of therapy would give me inner peace and make me let go of all of this?

It sounds as though perhaps your job is evoking other ways you’ve been hurt/let down and the hurt about the job is stirring all the rest up as well. The main thing with therapy is finding a therapist you feel safe with and comfortable enough to work with; what modality they work with is actually less important. I’d say go for it; your long-term happiness and wellbeing can be greatly improved and you can heal from an abusive childhood.

I understand completely. I struggle with letting go of things that are unjust and unfair, so much so that my hair is falling out from the stress. I try and breathe through things, tell myself things will be fine, and when I'm lying awake at night, heart pounding from the shitness of it all, I try and list positive things I've done, great days out I've had, things that make me happy, etc and then the very second I feel calmer, the intrusive thoughts start again. It's the unjustness of it all, I think.

How do you even get therapy? How do you know you can trust them and they won't be slagging you off to their mates? How does therapy work?

Check out something called Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT). I found it very powerful because it encourages noticing and accepting your feelings (rather than changing them per se) but using the anchor of the things one cares about to pull oneself forward through them and towards your values and aims.

Sorry to hear your work sucks and you’re so unhappy.

You may well benefit from some kind of talking therapy to help with past stuff, but I’d be thinking more along the lines of looking for a new job to deal with the current problems.

Your employer legally has a duty of care to protect you. If they are understaffed or staff are not sufficiently well trained to the extent they/you are being injured that’s not good. You may even have a constructive dismissal situation but you’d have to seek the advice of those more experienced in such matters than me.

Are there other employers in your area that you could look for vacancies with and leave your current job?

Would also suggest ACT. Problems with parents and in-laws here so we don't have that support as a family. I've also struggled with lack of career opportunitues. I've not seen a therapist but have used Acceptance and Commitment therapy workbooks and I'm pulling myself out of the doldrums. Also liked Rick Hanson's book Resilient. He comes from a neuroscience/ mindfulness perspective. 💐 It's not easy at the moment OP. - be gentle with yourself.

I used to be like this. I too had a terrible childhood, both my parents were horrible to me albeit in different ways. Therapy has helped me enormously. I’m still a work in progress but I have a better life thanks to it. I have found therapy very very challenging if I’m honest and nearly jacked it in so many times. I used to lose hair too, from fury and distress, I used constantly to fall out and argue with others, which in turn made me feel so terrible and trapped. That agony has not totally left me but is much better now and doesn’t dominate my life in the way it once did. I’m 7 years into therapy and do not know when it will end. For me, given my background, it would be unrealistic and unhelpful to expect things to have resolved themselves after 6 or 12 months. I see my therapist twice a week, it has been very expensive but I realised that I was so unhappy that the money was irrelevant. There are times when I have felt very very desperate. I recognise however that I am lucky to be able to afford it as it has been a lifeline. The most healing thing for me has been having a relationship with my therapist which has endured. I have found someone I can trust and again I feel very fortunate about that. Having said that, he has put up with some awful behaviour from me as I have struggled to trust him due to the legacy of the abuse I suffered. My therapist is a jungian therapist but as the other poster said, the discipline is much less important than finding a person you feel you can talk to. The other thing I found helpful is meditation, and I have done the vipassana courses too. I wish you luck with whatever you chose but wanted to write on this thread to say that things can get so much better and there is a way out.

Sometimes anger is really grief, underneath it all.

Without belittling or ignoring the hurt and neglect and injustice you have suffered, focus on the good things you also have. It might sound sickly sweet and inauthentic, but it's actually very powerful to calmly remind yourself of all that is good in your life despite the shit.

You could, for example, reframe work moving you to consider that they might like you and not want you to get hurt, so have found a safer position at the same pay scale. Or you could say to yourself, so many people have lost work during lockdown and feel sick not knowing how to cover basic bills. I am glad DH and I don't have that problem.

It is easy but entirely unhelpful to single out all the good things that other people have in life and group them all together as though everyone has everything you don't. But it's just not true. The women with the wonderful helpful hands-on parents might be seriously ill or have a cheating husband. The helping grandmother might be really interfering and critical. You don't know. People might envy you not having to do duty visits to boring elderly family every weekend. They might think you have free time to live as you please etc.

To the pp worried about finding an ethical and competent therapist: try BACP website or UKCP, also Counselling Directory. Anyone advertising on any of those platforms must be qualified, insured and members of professional bodies which mean they’ve signed up to an ethical code of conduct - including confidentiality.

There are some kind souls on Mumsnet. ☺️

Interesting. I think I need this. I have had a great life, very happy childhood, teenage travelling, fab time at uni. Then something bad happened to Dh and I. Mot just one bad thing but a series of them. My mum says I need to let it go and I agree but I've been unable to, because the anger and resentment of the injustice just won't go away, and I really have tried.
I've recently had some counselling. She was so nice but it was useless.
I will look into this.

I think alongside the brilliant advice you have been given, I would also be looking for a new job. You shouldn’t be crying at the thought of going into work every day. How did you feel in the time you had off sick? Did you dread returning? It sounds as if the terrible management in your place is massively contributing to your emotional state

I always recommend open ended integrative psychotherapy - you can find people on the UKCP site. If it lists qualifications the look for training from Sherwood Institute (SPTI), Metanoia or Matrix.

You will get a different experience with a counsellor and there are different requirements upon them in training but ACT is good. At its basic sense, if you have experienced a bereavement (for example) a counsellor will help you have skills to manage the grief and a therapist will talk about historic loss, endings, your right to look after yourself and what might come up as concerns if you do that etc.

It depends on what you’re looking for. It’s always worth trying a few people and seeing how the relationship works.

@Oblomov21

Interesting. I think I need this. I have had a great life, very happy childhood, teenage travelling, fab time at uni. Then something bad happened to Dh and I. Mot just one bad thing but a series of them. My mum says I need to let it go and I agree but I've been unable to, because the anger and resentment of the injustice just won't go away, and I really have tried. I've recently had some counselling. She was so nice but it was useless. I will look into this.

I wonder how old you are. I'm mid fifties and have been thinking a lot recently, now DC are grown, that what I was certain was brilliant parenting was not, after all. I was always there for them. I wanted them to never feel neglected or unheard or overlooked. The end result can be that a child becomes an adult with an expectation that life should be an easy ride, that bad things should never happen and if they do it's too unfair. Unfairness is a part of life and there was a parenting trend to avoid teaching children this which is a great disservice to a generation. People need to learn life sucks and what sucks also passes, giving way to brighter times, which also won't last forever without bumps along the way.

@Oblomov21 - have you tried taking account of unfair things that happen to other people, so you start to see a pattern emerging that everyone has a shit time sometimes. One friend has had four gruelling rounds of failed fertility treatment that cost a fortune, another had cancer, another lost their job/ partner cheated/business failed. child is seriously ill/ had a brutal childhood, even though they are now a phenomenal success/ don't get on with their parents/ spend life in a wheelchair. All around us, people are battling with horrendous life experiences. It's part of life.

We are a very happy family and I think that I have a great life, but I could write it down in a way that would have people thinking we were the unluckiest people on the planet. Depends what you choose to focus on. It really does.