Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
Posting again for my good friends, again appreciate all your help.
1. Two Jennies Periodically when talking to my wife, I refer to regular Jenny and anxiety Jenny. My wife said that makes her upset, but I do not want to validate behavior which has made us both miserable. When her friend travelled to go to the beach for the day and I would like to go there and it was somewhing she enjoyed, why can't I say regular Jenny loved days with her friends, her husband enjoying the water and get togethers while Anxiety Jenny just likes for things to be miserable, moping in an empty house with her husband under near house arrest. When we're talking about cure and getting better, why can't I say, regular Jenny would take her medicine when required (no one was more compliant than my wife), do yoga and meditation because people say it will help, organize a schedule, while Anxiety Jenny sits in a house doing nothing because Anxiety Jenny wants to make sure Regular Jenny is miserable, accomplishes nothing, and just regrets her choices.
People talk about honesty. If your spouse had an affair, I could see forgiveness but when he or she says I never meant to hurt you, I'd call him on that and say, no, that's exactly what you meant to do, you picked a course that would cause maximum pain and heartbreak, you had many choices but chose the one that would hurt me the most, at least be honest, say I wanted my jollies and didn't mind hurting you in the process, it just seems that part of a marriage needs to be some form of honesty.
I guess the professionals say one cannot control his or her anxiety, but what is an illness and a choice can be a difficultthing, if someone comes home drunk at 3:00 in the morning can they say I'm an alcoholic and I have an illness rather than say, I made a poor choice, need to understand the reasoning behind it so I don't do it again.
My wife is getting modestly better, we played golf, she went in a store alone, and took a walk with her friend. But it still goes up and down and today she is depressed and anxious. Questions,
1. Rebound Somehow it takes effort to relax and enjoy things and we notice that after a good day will come depression and anxiety.
2. Talking about mistakes She's talking with her sister about mistakes she made and its hard to respond. I said the obvious. You're in a beautiful house, everyone likes it, the area is great, there's music, beach, nice restaurants, your children are all doing well, as are your grandchildren, and anxious Jenny doesn't like that. So she surveys everything, eliminates all things that are good, focus on some minor thing. Why does it matter what happened and why aren't you focusing on the good things in your life and if you need to be constantly negative, fine, but I don't have to join that.
3. CBT One approach is CBT, identifying and reframing negative thoughts. She has one therapy session for 40 minutes. I'd like for her to get a therapist and approach negative thoughts in an organized fashion, and my son agrees.
Is it realistic to think I could get her on such a program.
4. Sleep She should acquire good sleeping habits, everyone says that. She now gets in bed at 8:30 or 9, tries to sleep and tumbles during the night. She will then ask me to hold her, then hold me, and while the affection is nice, constantly being woken up is not something I enjoy. Earlier I had a horrible headache perhaps partly from sleep disruption.
5. Phone focus Somehow she has a thing with my phone. I have no passcode, she can periodically look, but questions why there are calls, I get a lot of solicitations and she asks about this. Again, in a busy workday, I don't have time to have a detailed discussion about who called and why.
6. Paranoia How do you handle delusions and paranoia. Example, she wants to leave the house, or will ask will we be all right, something bad is going to happen. Our prior house was near the beach, a lot of activity and she worried about different people. Now there are few visitors, one time she commented about how quiet it is, so one would think fear would decrease.
Her psychiatrist understands the issue, has prescribed an anti-psychotic, though medication has been limited. She will take a single drug, though has rejected multiple drugs saying they won't do any good.