For the last two years, Mrs. Lee has been working on her feeling of hopelessness about her marriage. When she first came to our clinic, she was at the edge of taking her life.
I tried so hard to make our marital relationship work, but it became worse and worse, she began. I could not tell my mother because it was only adding more stress to her own life. I could not tell my best friend either because she has witnessed every struggle from the beginning, and it was embarrassing to me. I had no one to turn to.
A long list of reasons for her wish to be dead was in fact controlling her feelings and stifling her relationships with everyone around her.
But, she always came to her weekly sessions with me. Pouring out accumulated anger and resentment toward her husband, she lifted invisible weights one by one.
Her willingness to open up and speak her mind allowed her to slowly liberate herself from the cage in which she was a captive. Progressively, she was able to clear her mind of inner chaos, which led her to approach her conflicts in more rational manner. Her depressive feeling also lessened by the time she stopped the treatment.
After about two month, she returned with the same depressive problem. However, her depression was not as severe. This was because she realized that she was also contributing to her own problem as well as her husbands. She began to understand that she was magnifying the problem by overreacting to her husband. Thus, this time, she didn t blame her husband for her depressive feeling, and she was able to move foreward to take responsibility for her attitude and behavior. As a result, I noticed that she wanted to work on herself other then accuse her husband for her troubles. This was the next step in making herself over.
To my surprise, her husband called me and came for a session. He also wanted to restore their relationship. He was quite open-minded and was willing to do everything possible to make their marriage work.
Despite her husbands conscious support, Mrs. Lee was still experiencing anxiety and the feeling of not being understood when petty marital problems would arise. She feared that her husband might criticize her like before, and as a result her sore spots might open up.
Through the sessions, she talked about how much she was yearning for quality of contact, physically and emotionally. She wished to wash off her feeling of being used as a wife .
Last week, she talked about a recent visit of her mother-in-law, and her husbands changed attitude.
Whenever his family visited us, he used to be a monster around me. Not only talking loudly with belittling attitude, but also was more demanding of me as if I were not doing enough for his family, she said. But this time, I was surprised how much he has changed. He became really different, asking me what he could do to help me. Totally supportive to me! So I should be glad and happy. But I was not. My trouble was my mind. I kept thinking he would soon change back to his old way. I was distrustful of his attitude.
As you know, changing your patterns of viewing your husband will take time and need conscious effort and constant awareness, I replied.
Indeed, it is a very difficult task to forget the traumatized events and forgive the person who hurt us. Even after the person has changed, and the events have long vanished, we tend to hold on to the old memories. That is why the trauma has a rekindling effect on us. Unconsciously, many little things that are connected to emotional pain constantly trigger us.
Mrs. Lee blamed herself and felt guilty for not giving her husband credit for his supportive attitude. No one wants to be confronted by a negative side of ourselves, but Mrs. Lee is now willing to confront herself to deal with her stubbornness of not letting go.
When we don t take enough time to resolve our problem, we can easily role back into a sense of false restoration. It is much easier to focus on external factors for our problems than to focus on ourselves. But we need to realize that our perception of events is not always correct because we tend to see what we want to see and remember things selectively.
We can and do change our behavior and attitude with help. Unfortunately, change occurs slowly and it requires patience to see the change. Furthermore, we have to change ourselves in order to see others change.
Forgiveness is an extremely complicated task when we are constantly reminded by painful memories about the person and the events. With an active loving attitude, perhaps, we can not only forgive others, but also treat them with kindness and retrust them.

Dr. Beatrice Sool Choi is a registered psychologist at the Richmond Area Multi Services (RAMS) in San Francisco. She can be reached at (415) 668-5955 ex. 39
or RAMS
3626 Balboa Street, San Francisco, CA 94121.