My GF is being pushed away from my anxiety

[Trent1481]

IM loosing my GF it's really hard for her to deal with my Anxiety, and she has been great. We decided to take a break, but i feel like im going to lose her it terrible felling!

[honeyp1e]

Well am in the same boat :( me and my bf are now on a break (which i have never believed in) but we are and its killing me so so much and to be honest making my anxiety worse but i hope that deep down if he loves me as much as he says then he will come bk we just have to hang in there but dont wait around forever no one is worth that just get yourself better xx

[Jules147]

When I was going through the worst of it (checking behaviours, asking for reassurance etc.) my wife was great. As long as I wasn't nasty to her, which I wasn't, she told me she had no problem with it and just wanted me to get better. She also used to try to make the muscle tension go away by massaging my neck, back and shoulders.

"Taking a break," if instigated by the non-sufferer is pretty mean.

[PokerFace]

It can be a bit overwhelming for people who haven't experienced anxiety on this level so maybe she's just a bit scared and needs time to get her own head together about it. My family and friends didn't really know what to do with me when I was at my worst, they just didn't understand what was happening to me and didn't know how to help me. That made them all get frustrated and angry with me.

Maybe ask her to research a bit about anxiety, or come on this site and read how many other people are affected by such extreme anxiety, let her read the success stories and she'll realise there IS light at the end of the tunnel and you aren't going to be affected so badly forever.

Maybe you can find some information on the internet for non-sufferers taking care of/helping sufferers with anxiety so she'll have more of an idea how to support you and help you get through this.

Hope it all works out for you both x

[fozzy is crying]

I lost my partner and all my friends as they could not cope seeing me so ill. As with so many they did not understand and did not try to. They did not ask how they could help and there were so many ways they could have and still could.

My loss has left me having to try and cope with absolutely no family or friends for a long time. Added to the fact I have lost my support network as well and I am retired and also registered disabled my life is one of total isolation from human contact alone in my home. Abandoning someone does not help the sufferer in most cases it makes it a hell of a lot worse and can start a massive downward spiral.

I have before and after I lost my partner and friends tried very hard to explain my illnesses and also to make sure they had the support they needed. However they all choose to turn their backs on me. For them that was the easy route and they all have family, friends and a happy life. Cutting me out of it is no loss to them. With one in four in the UK suffering some form of mental illness it is amazing anyone can ignore or abandon any sufferer. Even more so as one day they could be in the same situation and then might be faced with having to struggle to hand onto those they love.

[Greenman50]

I,ve seen it both sides . When my mum suffered with anxiety / depression and OCD after her sister died i couldn,t handle it and didn,t understand what she was going through and why she couldn,t "pull herself together".
I was no help as i didn,t know how to help so buried my head in the sand :blush:

I now know different as it happened to me and my other half was as usefull as a one legged man in a Arse kicking contest . Not really her fault but it still pisses me off as all the pressure was on me finanially and no one seemed to give a shite really as long as good old me would sort the money mortgage out (only me working) and get back to normal eventually .

Hence the utube video in my signiture which was how i felt at the time .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta0a3DFUU0Y&feature=related

Never really got things back to how they were with the wife pre "anxiety / depression" but i don,t really care anymore to be honest , be strong and look after yourself is my moto from now on as sometimes it feels like no one else really gives one .
Onwards and upwards tommorrow is another day .

[fozzy is crying]

I,ve seen it both sides . When my mum suffered with anxiety / depression and OCD after her sister died i couldn,t handle it and didn,t understand what she was going through and why she couldn,t "pull herself together".
I was no help as i didn,t know how to help so buried my head in the sand :blush:

I now know different as it happened to me and my other half was as usefull as a one legged man in a Arse kicking contest . Not really her fault but it still pisses me off as all the pressure was on me finanially and no one seemed to give a shite really as long as good old me would sort the money mortgage out (only me working) and get back to normal eventually .

Hence the utube video in my signiture which was how i felt at the time .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta0a3DFUU0Y&feature=related

Never really got things back to how they were with the wife pre "anxiety / depression" but i don,t really care anymore to be honest , be strong and look after yourself is my moto from now on as sometimes it feels like no one else really gives one .
Onwards and upwards tommorrow is another day .

Gulp. That video take me back and shows how old this Bear is when I first saw Gordon Lightfoot live in the late 60's :weep:

Gordon [aka Fozzy NOT Lightfoot]

[JackInTheBox]

I had the same problem with my GF...

Anxiety is a bitch, it makes us scared, irritable, physically ill, and self-centered. Health anxiety is all that plus the constant fear that we are going to die an untimely death over some maladie.

I can only speak to my (and GF's) approach to the matter, since I'm not in anyone's shoes but mine.

When I went to my "dark period" of Health anxiety, at first GF was worried sick and was very supportive, at time we didn't know if there was something wrong or not with me. She was a real trooper about it, I woke her up at night because I was scared shitless about my palpitations or chest pains, she put up with my constantly depressed mood and was there everytime I went to the doctor or make a an exam/test.

Then the first rounds of exams came out, all clear in all fronts. I was fine and I shouldn't be worried... We all know that is not the way it goes with Health Anxiety now do we...

I was fine for a while and then the fear came back, I now realize that I've had a sudden intake of stress and the papitations returned. This time she was less tolerant, she started to hint about the fact that maybe this was me overconcerning and that I really should move on. In one or other occasion she dismissed my "severe" maladies all together. I started to struggle with the conflict of reason vs anxiety and decided to do more tests and re-take some of the others.

She was supportive of this idea and all and all her posture was rather mild, it appeared being in doubt of real sickness vs finding me paranoid about the matter. After the second round of tests came out all hell broke loose.

Again it all returned OK, but I kept feeling scared shitless out of my mind everytime my heart raced a bit more. This time she struggled with the anxiety because she couldn't take it anymore.

She told me that I was different, consumed by this obcession of being sick, making my life and her's hell by association. She told me I had to snap out of it and be the lively, bright person I allways was, get my thirst for life back and stop being this soulless zombie that lurks around people. And that I should do all this....for myself, not her, not anyone else, because I was the only one being harmed by it, wasting my time concerning and obcessing.

Her words struck home that day, she was right, she allways had been.

People like us need help and support, that much is true. But we tend to either consume everything around us with our fears or just shut the world out and suffer in silent agony. We need to know when to stop or allow ourselfs to be stopped.

I for one couldn't have stopped myself, I just couldn't break the cycle. But I kept an open mind about the matter, specially after getting two OK batteries of exams. I started to look at the people around me and to myself, when they told me I was wasting myself with this, I listened.

After a while I realized they were right, that regardless of having a condition or not, this is not a good life. So only then did I started to stop myself and started to look for help on tackling this (thus the forum).

This rant isnt' about me, it's about how my anxiety afftected my loved ones, something that I forgot all the time, because "I'm gonna die!!!" And how accepting and actually trying to fight this helped to make things better.

Put yourself in your GF/BF's shoes, specially if this was a recent thing in your life, that has never happened before. Talk to them, make them see that you are aware of how much of a selfish creature you are, but that you do it out fear, and that you are more than willing to snap out of it...with their help. Don't suck them dry, ask for their hand to get up, and at the same time you will be actually helping yourself get out of this ;)

Right now I still have bad days (and nights), I don't bother GF with the "fear" part, we now approach this as anxiety. I don't tell her I think I'm have a heart attack, I tell her I'm anxious and that my heart is racing (which is the truth), we talk about this sometimes, I tell her about my progresses and we do a normal couple's life, no restrictions, so things are practically back to normal between us.

Sometimes I do make an effort to forget or to ignore my anxiety just for a while, for me and for both of us. It's worth every second trust me.

[ElectricAlice]

I 'made' my BF read a book on health anxiety, there was a chapter at the back for family and friends to understand a bit more.

Get your partner to read more about it and set a plan with them to assure them you are doing your best to change.

Stopping seeking reassurance is actually one of the first and most recommended steps, but THE HARDEST :( I know this, but it does help.

Use this as motivation and say "no! I won't lose you, I will get better and be happy"

That's what I did when my BF said it was getting too much.

It's way hard, but the more you explain your trying and get them to read books, the better they'll understand, because people cannot empathise with us without experiencing our fears.

To the outside world a lot of what we say seems 'crazy' at first, because our loved ones are SURE we are fine. Which we should be too :)

[JackInTheBox]

Amen Alice! Well said ;)

[cos123]

Hi all: The cruelest cut of all is what our mental illness does to our relationships with our significant others and families. It's not enough to suffer with the unbearable anxiety and depression but to know how it wears on our partners to the point where they are fed up with us is an extra strain we do not need. Even when they don't mean it, feeling their anger and frustration is so hard to bear.

I too, like one of the other people on this thread said have seen it from both sides having dealt with a sister with serious depression and anxiety for many years which has inevitably pushed me into my lastest break down, because i wasn't strong enough myself to bear the burden. By the way I loved your comment that your partner was "about as useful as a one legged man in an arse kicking contest." I never heard that one before :)

One bit of advice i will share is save your deepest darkest thoughts for your therapist rather than your family members because it terrifies them. Some things my sister has said to me I will never get out of my head and i never want to do that to anyone. But if they're willing to try to understand about the illness, information is good because they have no idea. Did anyone see the documentary Michael Lansberg (sportscaster from the show "Off the Record" did about depression and famous athletes. My husband watched it with me and it helped him to understand a bit, it was really good.

wishing you all hope, because there is always hope
cos123


As our families or friends draw away

[confus3d]

I feel in a similar situation and am really stuck on what to do as I have been struggling over the last year and have been recently been given an uncertain diagnoses of definite anxiety, mild paranoia and possible evidence of emotionally unstable personality disorder which my gf of 6years knows about as we live together although i must add my problems go back over a 10 year+ period and i am 33, gf is 38. My problem is that my girlfriend knowing my issues speak to other local men via facebook but allways seems to try and turn the laptop if she is next to me so i cannot see whats on the screen which makes me suspicious and i am not sure if its just me or if my worries are validated with her knowing how much im struggling as when i mention it to her she gets all on the defensive and walks out the room.Feeling lost with how to deal with this as i am recieving 1to1 cbt therapy and am on antipsychotics but still does not help with me feeling suspicous and that she is just waiting for me to get better so she can get rid of me.