[kikki]

Thanks Mermaid  More patience required

[Anjae]

It's not only that the process of intellectualising calms the emotions. It's also that it helps to  understand that their are a range of psychiatric, neurological, chemical, genetic, and emotional reasons for our spouses' behaviour. Personally, it makes me feel a little less hurt, a little less angry. I hope it may help others, too.

This approach works for me. Mine was totally overwhelmed with work, both from his steady job and our joint projects. We have been discussing changing to a more slow paced life.

Since a few months before h left he keep getting more and more busy and now has 3 jobs plus all his clubbing. He has told me several times he cannot afford to stop. Otherwise he will start thinking about all he had done. Also, when he tries to slow down he feel ill and tired, so he keeps doing more and more and more.

But I think a point comes, after they have already messed up a lot, when they really just want to keep running from all the confusion they created.

Odd how my already burned out one does not totally burnout and crash...

[kikki]

Personally, it makes me feel a little less hurt, a little less angry. I hope it may help others, too.

This approach helps me not to take it all quite so personally.  I need to make some sense of the nonsense. 
It frustrates the heck out of me, how little is known about all of this. This is not new - just perhaps more prevalent now. 

Exactly AnneJ - Odd how my already burned out one does not totally burnout and crash... How do they keep on and on and on

[Anjae]

Exactly AnneJ - Odd how my already burned out one does not totally burnout and crash... How do they keep on and on and on

Think the answer is : adrenaline. The oldest of my brothers explained me that, when you are running on adrenaline, the adrenaline rush overrides everything else. You don’t feel pain, you don’t feel tired (or you don’t realise you feel), you’re on a perpetual state of high. Hence the MLCers feeling terrible if they stop. If they stop no more adrenaline rush, no more fell “well”, high and full of energy.

However the perpetual high of adrenaline comes with a price, at a point you will start to look terrible. Add to this the rest of the inbalance brain chemicals and MLCers is living with…

My cousin, the one who’ve had a mild MLC confirmed that he had lived on adrenaline for ten years. Then, it no longer worked. He keep trying but all he felt was cranky, loosing touch, feeling left out. It progressed to become more and more and more dark for him, until, about an year ago he hit rock bottom. He has been on the road to recovery since. But my cousin never left or caused half of the destruction most of our MLCers do.

He manages to recognise some of my husband’s behaviours and says either my husband manages to end his Replay within a year or my husband’s heart/brain/body may no longer take it and serious health issues can come up.

[calamity]

This is not quite on topic but I can't find where it belongs.  Came across it looking for something else.  Note, not about mlc but...


Depression in Mid-Life Linked to Higher Odds for Later Dementia
by -- Robert Preidt
Updated: May 7th 2012
MONDAY, May 7 (HealthDay News) -- People who suffer depression when they're middle-aged or elderly may also have an higher risk of dementia later, a new study suggests.
Researchers evaluated long-term data from more than 13,000 people in California. They found that depressive symptoms occurred in about 14 percent of participants in midlife only, while about 9.2 percent of cases of depression developed in late life only. Just over 4 percent of people in the study had depression that stretched over midlife and late life.
Over six years of follow-up, 22.5 percent of the participants were diagnosed with dementia. The study found that 5.5 percent of the participants developed Alzheimer's disease and 2.3 percent developed vascular dementia, which is caused by brain damage resulting from impaired blood flow to the brain.
According to the research team, people with late-life depression were twice as likely to get Alzheimer's disease and those with both midlife and late-life depression had a more than threefold increased risk of vascular dementia.
The research team was led by Deborah Barnes, of the University of California, San Francisco, and the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Writing in the May issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, they say the findings suggest that depression extending throughout the lifespan might raise odds for dementia, especially vascular dementia. In many cases, depression occurring for the first time in late life may reflect an early stage of dementia, especially in the case of Alzheimer's disease.
The study was only able to find an association between depression and Alzheimer's risk; it could not prove cause-and-effect.
More than 5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer's disease and the health care costs of the condition were about $172 billion in 2010, according to background information in the study.
"Prevalence and costs of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias are projected to rise dramatically during the next 40 years unless a prevention or a cure can be found. Therefore, it is critical to gain a greater understanding of the key risk factors and etiologic [causal] underpinnings of dementia," the researchers wrote.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about dementia.
This article: Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

[kikki]

Wow Calamity - that's sobering, but makes sense. 
As we know, depression causes major blood flow reduction to the prefrontal cortex in particular. 

[fornow]

Hello All,

The thing about evidence, in terms of the scientific and medical community, is that we try to make the gathering and analysis of evidence as objective as possible through scientific methodology.  But the thing is you cannot remove the observer from the observed.  Different interpretations are made of the evidence.  It happens in simple things, for example many years ago scientific evidence held that eggs lead to high cholesterol and that we should not eat more that 3 eggs a week.  Today the evidence points to the fact that eggs are rich in omega three which lowers cholesterol and now eating eggs every day is a good thing.  So if scientific evidence can change in a material way, imagine the possibilities that exist with trying to find evidence for the workings of the human mind.

This is why we have therapists who are proponents of the MLC, like Jung and Jed Diamond, and then you have others who do not agree with the interpretation of the evidence as a MLC/depression.  Some therapists think MLC should be entered into the DMV and others do not.  At the end of the day one has to find their own truth and science/therapists are not always going to provide the answers, especially when we are dealing with something as abstract as the workings of the human mind. 

There is a rule that I keep being reminded of as I study the concepts of quantum physics/consciousness.  The 90/10 rule.  90% is perception and projection and 10% is the truth.  This is just as true for science as for anyone else.  Every single one of us carry a different perception of life, it’s no wonder that we all, including scientists, get caught in the 90%.  I certainly do not know what the truth is, including whether H is a MLCer suffering depression or just a self-indulgent narcissist.  All I know is that I need to work on myself and find my peace and  joy again  -  and my wish for all of you is that you overcome this horrible hardship and that you find  that elusive happy place once again, with or without your MLCer.

Take care

[Mermaid]

you cannot remove the observer from the observed.  Different interpretations are made of the evidence. 

Well expressed. You are absolutely right, of course. It's not only in social sciences, but also quantum mechanics (as you know) that observers affect both the data and it's interpretation. (In SS, for example, the profile of an interviewer will affect the answers given by an interviewee) It's not only the you cannot separate the observer from the observed (although we have methods to try to overcome this), but the very questions we ask are loaded with value judgements.

On the other hand, there is a big difference between using scientific methods, however flawed, and cultural narratives (A system by which people organise their knowledge about the social world), which are non-systematic ways of making sense of life.

This is why we have therapists who are proponents of the MLC, like Jung and Jed Diamond, and then you have others who do not agree with the interpretation of the evidence as a MLC/depression. 

The difference between Jung, Jed Diamond, and non MLC therapists is not just a question of the observer effect. Jung had a totally different historical context to Diamond, and his methods were at least partly intuitive, drawing influence from a wide variety of theologies and philosophies, but not neccessarily systematic clinical analysis. Jed Diamond has a completely different background,   and shows (at least some) research supporting that the reason for irritable male syndrome is hormonal. (There is reserach to show that actually hormal decline is slow, constant from age 21, and only presents major decline in a small percentage of the population). Esentially Diamond's books are pop-psychology, have made him a fortune (an important observer effect is motivation and values), and are not at all in the same category as Jung.

There are certainly people who have psychological crises. My H almost certainly had one, and it wasn't his first either (he had one at age 21, and another at age 29, too). This was confirmed by a number of observers, some who had no idea of what he was going through, but noticed that he didn't seem himself, seemed lost, as well as by H himself (although he prefers to forget now). But that doesn't make it about midlife. Yes, he had traumas from his youth which shaped his personality (so did I, although I had a very safe and stable childhood compared to his; don't we all?).

My contention is whether MLC is really a useful category. Yes, it's useful for us, because we can pack up a range of behaviours and put them in a box, and it gives us some feeling of control, of knowing something about the unknowable, by labelling our spouse to be in a tunnel, and so on. I found it useful (emotionally) even while (increasingly) question its existence (rationally). 

Yes, there are some traumas relating to aging, and Jung, Erikson and other psycho-social therories of personality development are useful for that. But many are not. My H's was not about hormones, or aging (despite my therapist wanting to put him in that box), it was more complex; it was about life (which had been unstable since was very young, with major emotional shocks), about stress (relating to external and internal pressures, his personality type and interaction with life events) and about chemicals too (statins have strong effects on behaviour, and almost certainly triggered his TGAs). Here on this site, there are some spouses who are extremely emotionally immature, some who are clearly psychotic, some with substance dependency problems, others who have different types of PD.

It seems to me that MLC is just too broad a category to be therapeutically useful. It would be better to break it down into sub-categories both for the person in crisis and for the people who suffer as a result of it. How can a therapist equally deal with an addict, a psychotic, a narcissist and someone in the throes of an identity crisis, or equally deal with their LBS?

  All I know is that I need to work on myself and find my peace and  joy again  -  and my wish for all of you is that you overcome this horrible hardship and that you find  that elusive happy place once again, with or without your MLCer.

This is our reality, no matter what label we put on our errant spouse. A hard path, yet one which has been trodden by those who go before us, as well as those by our sides. Handling our expectations, our incertainties, and our heartbreak is made so much better in the company of the wise and experienced on this site.

[calamity]

Nothing to disagree with here.  I think that we, lbs's are trying to explain the inexplicable: a major personality change in your spouse is difficult to accept.

I am holding on to the theory that,
1. if he doesn't want me, he's crazy.  &
2. we are not crazy they are.

Just kidding.  Kinda.
cj

[Mermaid]

Nothing to disagree with here.  I think that we, lbs's are trying to explain the inexplicable: a major personality change in your spouse is difficult to accept.

I am holding on to the theory that,
1. if he doesn't want me, he's crazy.  &
2. we are not crazy they are.

Just kidding.  Kinda.
cj

Wish we had like buttons