nobody ever saved a drowning victim by drowning with them, livingly.

kudos that you are recognizing her triggers. can you take it to the next step and find coping mechanisms to help you cope? a coping mechanism i use in such circumstances is to ply detachment exercises while i let the anxiety sufferer vent their anxieties with zero attempt to talk them out of them. they run out of steam more quickly when i don't engage the psychosis.

after the venting is done, i give them the relationally appropriate empathy and continue on with my own day, as planned.

Over time I learned there is no use arguing with her or trying to tell her differently so I just nod my head and agree and listen so I guess that’s similar to what you’re saying. The tough part is there are times where I’ve genuinely questioned her perception of reality with some of the things she has worried about and sometimes her anxiety can transfer to me and become my anxiety.

I totally get what you are saying about how it feels the anxiety of another person transfers to you. Sometimes my anxiety starts ticking up when I am with someone else who is sort of reeling in their own anxiety. It’s like their unregulated energy fuels my unregulated energy. I even sometimes find my anxiety starting to creep in when I read about others’ anxiety on this board. All this is to say I have to remove myself a bit when that happens, physically, emotionally, whatever is required.

Take care of you, first.

yes, the nodding is a form of detachment. not so much the agreeing. agreeing with psychotic notions has a way of increasing my own anxiety. instead of agreeing, i give votes of confidence that they will find ways to work it through. when the votes of confidence are attacked, i let the ranter know i am praying for them. when that fails, i resort to, "whatever you say, dear." for sure less is better when it comes to hearing out a psychotic venting. i avoid engaging psychosis at all costs.

anxiety gets my vote as the most contagious pathogen on the planet. i am utterly convinced science will one day identify and be able to measure that pathogen. part of my own detachment exercises is to guard against contagion. when i get around to closing my covidic social distances far enough to be in the listening position once more, i might even visualize myself in a covid mask. maybe. for now, the social distancing is safety enough.

When I find myself falling into 'anxiety' overload mode, I switch to fact/evidence in working out a resolution for me.

It's difficult to remove our feelings from the equation until we see for ourselves that taking care of us FIRST allows us to help move the individual experiencing acute anxiety forward in their own way.

One of the most common patterns is that by including our voices in their 'anxiety', we allow them to keep following the same path without change. So, to make the first tiny step forward is to change how we respond for our well-being.

Here's to finding your path to healing as you continue to help your parent with their healing.

Other people’s fretting can rub off on me, too. I feel my own anxiety going up and it’s not even my issue, it’s theirs! Livingly, I don’t know how old you are but this is the time to start building your own self care toolkit. For self care, you may need to learn to walk away, memorize some canned phrases like, sounds rough, mom, and do internal logic and rationality dialogue. If you don’t recognize cognitive distortions, or unhelpful thinking styles, google this and read up on it. Google CBT and ask your therapist to teach you this or take a course on it. I use my rational thinking skills to challenge my anxiety. Practice a lot. Works often but it’s better than fretting and ruminating all the time. We can love difficult people without getting sucked into their dysfunctional stuff. And we can start recognizing their stuff immediately and not try to fix them. Set internal boundaries, which are rules for ourselves, of how we are going to act and think about situations. We can’t really set rules for other people’s behavior, that type of boundaries don’t work. We can’t change others but we can work on ourselves to have a stronger happier life. Be self protective and don’t engage beyond one minute- although this may upset mom because your listening validated her anxiety and she has trained you to listen and engage. The world is full of difficult and unhappy people. But we can love them anyway, just using better self care skills.

Thanks for the advice. I do my best to detach but it’s not easy. Some of her triggers are harder to detach from than others. For example she often worries a lot about my thyroid almost to an excessive level. She is very adamant about trying to get my thyroid levels down to a normal place. The trouble here is no one not even the doctors are as worried as her. Some triggers are definitely easier than others. I will definitely work on creating a good self care toolkit that’s definitely a good idea.

Right now your focus seems to be too much on mom. I get it, living with a person with a brain health disorder can be difficult at times. But if you change your focus from her and her problems, to yourself and your healing, self care toolkit, stress and anxiety relieve and FUN, it will be an easier life for you. She can't change until she decides to change. But you can right now today decide you will change whatever it is you feel needs changing. We all have to work our own programs. Life is not ever easy all the time. I'm glad you wrote what you wrote because it reminds me to also focus on my own self care. A friend said this to me in a text: My way forward is taking care of my well being!

WOW CAN I SYMPATHIZE WITH YOU. Welcome to my world and my wife. Complaints about small items, focus on problems, negative ideology. Imagine there's some papers in the garage and someone saying I'm so upset about all the papers there. You say, let's clean it up, we can get rid of some, organize others, I'm happy to help you, but nothing, just complaining about the papers in the garage day after day.

The people here, and indeed my own therapist, say its a Men are from Mars Women are from Venus, issue, many women like to verbalize their frustrations and the best thing is to offer support. And the first 1st, 2nd, 5th time you tell her about understanding the garage but it goes on and on and on and on. I dream on a machine which goes on automatically in situations saying everything's fine, calm down, it's not a big deal, starting out at 25 decibels and rising to a deafening 175 until the complaints stop. .

Solutions are tough but include,

1. therapy for both of you,
2. consideration of medication for her,
3. getting her busy,
4. getting another living situation for you,
5. exercise for both.
6. getting out of the house as much as possible

Thanks Bobby 5000 and thank you hasty 05 I’ll take all of what you said into consideration and try and use these things to help me.

My mom is going through the same thing, she also gets Pseudo seizures. BUT.. her life has fell apart so many times..she is realizing she needs to put in the work to get through it.