Hi all,
Just wondering if anyone can help at all with this... My anxiety is well into its sixth month now, and recently, over the past few weeks, I have developed a terrible fear of being on my own. This is new for me - I have always been fine on my own and when my wife has gone out for the evening I have looked forward to a night doing my own thing, just me and the cats!
But it is true to say that I have never lived on my own - always lived either with girlfriends or flatmates or family. I don't think I ever could live on my own, the thought of it is not a pleasant one.
I live with my wife, who recently told me the effect that my anxiety and depression have had on her, in that she feels scared for the future, and worried that I will not get better. I have found myself very disappointed and hurt by the things that she has said and the emotional distance she has now put between us, and have become obsessed that she is going to leave me, even though she says she is not going to. It feels like our entire relationship has suddenly changed, and that I can no longer rely on her being around - its kind of like I am trying to prepare myself for the worst by telling myself that the relationship is already over, when in fact it is not. This is clearly not helping the situation as these thoughts make me more depressed, and I therefore act more depressed around my wife, making me think she is more likely to leave me, and the circle goes round and round - all perpetuated entirely by me!
I think I am living with the sudden realisation that my marriage is not unconditional, and I am scaring myself constantly throughout the day with thoughts that my wife is going to leave me. All she has done is be honest and say that she is scared for the future, but I have taken it to its most horrible degree and am obsessing about it. All another symptom of the anxiety, I'm sure.
So on nights like tonight, when my wife is away from the house, I fear leaving work and going home to be on my own. I don't fear what will happen, I guess I fear the feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Its silly because I haven't been abandoned.
In therapy I have identified that I have a low sense of personal safety, i.e. I don't provide emotional support for myself because I don't know how to, and I have an underlying sense of insecurity. My parents split when I was 13, my mother then went through breakdowns and depression, and tried to kill herself when I was 15. I found her and called the ambulance. My therapist thinks I am reliving the emotions that I didn't go through fully then - the sense of abandonment, the sense of being completely alone in the world, the fear of losing everything. It certainly makes sense, I DO feel like a frightened kid with no-one to turn to.
The question is, what to do about it. How do I get a sense of security from myself? How do I find within myself the strength to be my OWN support, to feel comfortable on my own? These are the things that I want more than anything else. Every other relationship you have is insecure, because you never know what the other person is thinking, but your own relationship with your SELF should not be insecure - if it is, what have you got???
Sorry - don't really expect anyone to have any answers to this - just helps to write it down I suppose.
Gareth
*** I think, therefore I'm anxious ***