Agoraphobia & Social Anxiety Support Group
Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder, often precipitated by the fear of having a panic attack in a setting from which there is no easy means of escape. As a result, sufferers of agoraphobia may avoid public and/or unfamiliar places. In severe cases, the sufferer may become confined to their home, experiencing difficulty traveling from this "safe place."
After 35 years, my wife became depressed, anxious, and agoraphobic.
She has excellent social skills and was always popular. Even today, at a function, she will quickly switch into her old mode, smiling, asking good questions, and is an excellent conversationalist. But getting there or determining whether she will go is almost impossible.
She has missed weddings, funerals, parties, and I tell people I don't know whether she will go. Sometimes she will indicate she will go, have a funny look, and when I ask her to get ready, say give me a few minutes, and I spend (no waste) hours trying to get her along, sometimes successfully. She looks nice, even lost some weight, but will periodically say she looks terrible, something she never used to say and was a calm, pleasant, and optimistic person. I feel sorry for her, and going to functions seems to help her, its certainly better for close family members, since she might call them repeatedly.
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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Years ago, I won a mirrored armoire from my job. It's in my bedroom but I rarely stand in front of it. Yesterday, I had to have a dexascan done so I had to change into a gown. There was a full length mirror in the changing room. I'm aware that I gained 5 to 7 pounds over the last year from cheating on Keto but I didn't know what it looked like. It was a reality check.
You are really struggling to cope. I would be, too. In order to cope, you try to control and make Jenny do things or be normal. Kind of self defeating but perhaps a natural reaction. Everyone wants the old Jenny back. But she’s gone now. Day to day you deal with a lot of confusion and conflict with her behavior. This is bad for your emotional and physical health. Let’s just assume she has a brain health disorder and see it like if the spouse had cancer or Parkinson’s. We wouldn’t be pushing them to snap out of it or go back to how they were.
It occurred to me to mention brain tumor since you say her behavior has changed so drastically. Seek help for yourself as a caregiver no matter what.
1. Meeting with fiance's family My wife did go up to her sister's interacted with everyone, seemed pretty good. My son's finance's family came up for the holiday and we met meet them on Monday, things went well, though she was not sure she would go which was stressful.
2. Off medicine She did not take her Prozac on Monday, on Tuesday saw some discarded pills under the bed, and she's off this. Not with medical supervision or review. She's been anti-drug from the beginning with one therapist diagnosing reverse-placebo effect, (unrelated issues attributed to the medicine). She seems antsy but maintains she feels just as well.
3. Events We had a neighborhood gathering and a friend's party and I thought we could try to do both. My therapist thought that was too ambitious and she was right as my wife went to neither. It was the usual I'll be ready in 5 minutes, just give me 10 minutes as I waited for probably 3 hours. We have two events coming up and not sure how we should approach them. Historically my wife is happier being busy, and now spends most of her day pondering and being depressed. Any suggestions about getting her there.
1. Doing nothing Today it's 2:30 P.M. and my wife has done little. She has not changed or done anything to improve her life. We've discussed creating some goals, but that's not happening.
2. Addictive behavior Perhaps more than Alzheimer's type behavior is a kind of addictive behavior. She acts like an addict without the drugs, in that she cannot control her behavior. Again, we're checking on neurological testing but I'm not sure that will show something that will correlate with a behavior pattern. I get oranges, and she eats 7, cheese a whole package.
3. Functions Trying to do better than in 2022. Sometimes we have things to go to, and get relentless procrastination, and broken promises, I'll be ready in 5 minutes, 10, wait, and its 3 hours and we're late and sometimes don't go to parties and other things.
4. Getting things done. My wife seems to be able to conceptualize what she wants done, and again seems relatively normal talking to friends, but it's almost impossible to get her to do it. Suggestions welcomed.
The more you keep fighting her to be old Jenny, rational Jenny, cooperative Jenny, the worse it gets for both of you. Her good days are not her baseline at this point but yes, be grateful for them, Stop assuming her good days are how she should be. It’s simply not working.
Maybe your own fear and anxiety is how difficult life has turned out in your older years. How your life has been turned upside down. She appears to need someone besides you to be in charge of medicine and food, schedules, etc. She simply can’t do or be what you want her to do or be. You are fighting fire with fire. Maybe it is addiction like behaviors or maybe it’s not. I hear such red flags in your story for both of you. Your whole family, adult kids, sound frustrated and angry. I hope you can find workable answers. It’s a tough situation.
1. Build up confidence My therapist has emphasized that I should be patient, not try to dictate things, look for small steps in improvement, and be positive and compliment. I'm trying to do that.
2. Medication At least 10 friends and family members say the same thing, she needs to reliably take her medication. They have consistently said (with some validity) that she's not taking them. Recently i found about 10 bills under the best.
I'm in the house, just us two. Who would do this if not me.
3. Aide At one point, my son said he had access to a program for home health care aids at a reasonable cost. I said fine and we scheduled a lady to come over. My wife said she wanted ice cream, I took her and said let's meet the lady, and she screamed no, she would not meet her or go back home.
Appreciate your advice, but not sure who will help with medicine. A larger problem, unlike a lot of other women, she never took an anti-depressant for 30 years even through cancer, believes they caused part of her problem, and says they do no good.
4. Old Jenny and New Jenny It's funny, about 80% of the people here find the comparisons to old and new offensive and unproductive, about 80% of friends and family find it sensible and productive. Contrast sensible behavior for herself and her family with what she's doing now they note.
Using it for a second, my wife still conducts sensible conversations with friends, has no memory lapses, does not say strange things like she does to me, and conducts herself like a normal productive person. So it seems it can be done.
When we went out last night for New Year's Eve, she was fine, only in the car did she start her funkiness saying, the old man at the table is a jerk (he was pleasant enough to give us a chair), someone is playing with her phone, when the oven timer did not properly display saying maybe someone came in. I get the dysfunctional, sometimes paranoic behavior, she seems to be able to conduct herself reasonably well with friends and family on the phone and in person.
Yet when her therapist suggests a sensible step, get dressed and get a comfortable outfit you can change into, we invariably go to the next session her telling her the therapist that the instruction or suggestion has not been followed.
We are doing some neurological testing and her old psychiatrist has left so we'll work with a new team.
Thanks for your input.