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Married to someone with anxiety

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Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#181

Post by greenshackle2 »

draw_down wrote: post #166
jacalata wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Life is hard enough without your partner making things that should be easy difficult. Would you make the same argument about a partner with cancer, or Alzheimer's, or multiple sclerosis?

I don't like when people compare mental issues to physical disease because three doctors will all diagnose the same cancer as cancer, not so with e.g. anxiety. (Not to mention the race, class, and gender biases that come into play with diagnosing mental issues). Beside that, there is some element of choice if the condition exists at the time you decide to make the other person your partner. If you meet someone with c…

Cancer is not the best example here. Cancer, like anxiety or depression, is not a single disease, it's cluster of symptoms that can have a multitude of different causes.

You can tell when it's bad enough, like if there are visible tumors, but try to get 3 doctors to correctly diagnose whether a cancer is completely gone after treatment.

On the other hand, I guarantee 3 out of 3 doctors will diagnose my panic disorder as panic disorder.

I have recurrent tonsillitis, clearly a physical disease, yet 3 doctors couldn't figure out the cause.

When it comes to disease things are almost always murky, whether it's "physical" or "mental".

Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#182

Post by skybrian »

dominotw wrote: post #92
michaelkeenan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a different impression from the post. Rather than quitting and marriage solving the problem immediately, I think she still has anxiety, because he wrote: "She still has anxiety, and I imagine she always will. But we are able to deal with this in a much more productive way. Sure, there are times where it all gets a bit too much" I don't think it's correct to say "None of the therapy stuff did them any good" beca…

>She still has anxiety, and I imagine she always will. Wouldn't it be strange for a human being to have no anxiety ? >we found a private counsellor who could help get to the route of what was causing some of this anxiety I understood this as the counsellor putting a rubber stamp on what they already knew, so that the decision could be made guilt free.

Feeling anxious sometimes and suffering from anxiety attacks are different things. Most people (I assume) don't suffer from anxiety attacks like described here. The people who do get anxiety attacks would like it to stop.

Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#183

Post by dvdkhlng »

valuablevalve wrote: post #61

After a 10 year fight induced from stress, I can positively say that I'm free from it, just reading a page like this would have floored me 5 years ago. Some stuff I learned: - Stop* with coffee, for some reason tea does not the same thing to my body, coffee is like gasoline on the anxiety fire, I cant stress this point enough. - Stop* with nicotine, (almost) same as coffee - Stop* drinking, you need to stay strong 7…

There are some indications that coffee's effect on anxiety depends on specific genetic pre-disposition:

http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v33/n12/full/npp200817a.ht...

So not everybody will benefit from reducing caffeine intake. I think for most people, moderate caffein intake will actually have a positive effect on mood.

Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#184

Post by throwaway_52049 »

pitaj wrote: post #180
throwaway_52049 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I had mild self-diagnosed anxiety for a large portion of my life, which really took hold in college. I went through a majority of college without speaking to anyone, evaded those that did try to reach out to me, and eventually dropped out. And my online persona wasn't much different; I still remember strangers messaging me on IRC and my heart rate jumping several BPM from just a "hi". I think I have arrived a…

I think these are two different things. Social anxiety where being around other people makes you anxious is very different from anxiety where you are just worried all the time. I say this because you are obviously talking about a completely different condition than the woman in this article.

You're absolutely right, at worst it was a mild inconvenience for me, nothing even close to the authors wife has to face.

Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#185

Post by randomdata »

digler999 wrote: post #168
lisper wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted you, but I would like to say that I think jsprogrammer's remarks being downvoted into oblivion is not warranted. He (she?) may have made his (her?) point inartfully, but it is a valid point: what is the basis for believing that "therapy" (whatever it may mean at this particular point in time) actually works, that it is anything more than a placebo? For example, this to me is a yellow flag: > talking to a li…

> jsprogrammer's remarks being downvoted into oblivion is not warranted. he's making loaded statements out of ignorance because he wont bother to google psychotherapy's definition. There is a therapeutic process to talking and learning to manage emotions and cope with defenses. Licensure is a key feature so you prohibit people from making fake therapeutic claims or quackery. Or to limit taking advantage of emotionall…

> Licensure is a key feature so you prohibit people from making fake therapeutic claims or quackery.

Here in Canada, diary farmers need to be licensed to sell dairy products, as do poultry producers (chicken, turkey, eggs, etc.)

Not because anyone is worried about someone selling fake milk or trying to claim ducks are chicken (quackery, get it?). If they were, they'd be equally worried about farmers producing other kinds of food, whom we do not require licensing from. Rather, the story behind it is much simpler: The government at one point found it important to disallow competition to give the people operating in these markets an advantage to help them remain viable, for similar reasons as to why the US has provided farm subsidies over the years.

Anyway, the point being that regulation does not necessarily legitimize a profession. It may simply be an indictor of what interests lobbied hard enough to get economic protection.

Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#186

Post by tmalsburg2 »

drdeadringer wrote: post #147
soared wrote: post #146

> a 4 hour commute (both ways) What the fuck is this person doing and why do they think its okay? According to that paragraph she's home at 8pm. She leaves for work at 4am. That leaves 8 hours total to eat, sleep, and live your life. He just brushes over that until later when she casually leaves her job (for no reason given). C'mon guy.. that was the root of the problem!

I had a 1.5h commute both ways and that caused me anxiety problems.

Yes, there is research showing that long commutes are associated with depression. Don't have the reference anymore but it shouldn't be difficult to find on Google Scholar.

Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#187

Post by tmalsburg2 »

physcab wrote: post #5

Thank you for writing this. When people talk about these issues it becomes easier and more acceptable to society and it helps lessen anxiety stigmas. As someone who suffers from anxiety and who regularly seeks therapy, I can say that the rituals that have helped me are: - Realizing that anxiety isn't who you are, but more like a disturbance that will pass - Eating, sleeping, exercising, and practicing mindfulness go…

> Realizing that anxiety isn't who you are, but more like a disturbance that will pass

This is the right attitude during an anxiety attack, because while it is happening there isn't much you can do but to remind yourself that it's going to pass. However, my personal experience is that anxiety is not a random infliction but something that can have very concrete causes that need to be worked on. Identifying these causes can be a long process, though. In many cases anxieties arise when we have deeply rooted unhealthy habits that seem so much part of our lives that it doesn't even occur to us that they could possibly be changed. OP writes that his wife had to commute four hours a day which in itself will affect mental well-being but which may also point to career issues. Fixing that was apparently part of the solution.

Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#188

Post by heisenbit »

josefdlange wrote: post #163
JohnBooty wrote: post #89

When your partner has anxiety, every problem you have now becomes two problems. Because when you have a problem (work, health, whatever) you now either have to (1) figure out how to tell your partner without causing a meltdown (which will probably fail no matter what you do) or... (2) just keep it to yourself (obviously unhealthy) So that sucks. You have to partially mitigate it by reducing your partner's overall str…

The last line is the important one. > It's not their fault, they didn't choose this. You did. That's exactly right. You chose it. You chose to be a partner to that person. In the case of marriage, typically that means "in sickness and in health" and so you either step up to the plate and be the support they need, or you realize your mistake and move on before it destroys both of you. That's the positive (yet realisti…

> Mental health issues are not emotions. They may interplay to a degree, but do not mistake clinical anxiety or depression for someone being excessively emotional. It is a medical disorder of the brain that causes it to malfunction. My ending statement is a bit hyperbolic, but not really: dismissing a mental health disorder as emotions is how people end up dead.

This is not true. Anxiety is an emotion. And in a close relationship there is a lot of transference going on. Often avoidance (key behavior with anxiety) is leading to game playing. Emotions you feel, you now as a partner have to deal with. First of all identifying them as not of your own. Just imagine waking up, your partner feeling ill and fearing for their life. You feel some fear too. And that is without even stepping into the wonderland of personalty disorders.

Anxiety can reach a level where it strongly impacts behavior and thinking. A lot of the schools of therapy of mental health therapy (particularly the cognitive-behavioral ones) are built on the interplay of strong emotions and thinking.

If it is all a physical brain problem then outside life events should not be able to trigger it so easily. There is a feeling-thinking-feeling connection and it seems there are often unfortunate persistent feedback mechanisms too. Especially emotional connected mental health issues are reachable these days with targeted psycho-therapy.

For a partner it can be vital to seek out professional support for themselves even or especially if the person with anxiety is not in therapy. As a rule of thumb the healthier partner often seeks help first.

Calling emotions emotions is not dismissing it. Mental health is a general label, emotions is a more specific label and anxiety an even more specific one. The more careful we describe the better we can tackle it. Emotions and in particular overwhelming anxiety needs to be taken very serious. This stuff can kill, that I agree with.

Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#189

Post by valuablevalve »

dvdkhlng wrote: post #183
valuablevalve wrote: post #61

After a 10 year fight induced from stress, I can positively say that I'm free from it, just reading a page like this would have floored me 5 years ago. Some stuff I learned: - Stop* with coffee, for some reason tea does not the same thing to my body, coffee is like gasoline on the anxiety fire, I cant stress this point enough. - Stop* with nicotine, (almost) same as coffee - Stop* drinking, you need to stay strong 7…

There are some indications that coffee's effect on anxiety depends on specific genetic pre-disposition: http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v33/n12/full/npp200817a.ht... So not everybody will benefit from reducing caffeine intake. I think for most people, moderate caffein intake will actually have a positive effect on mood.

Thank you very much for the link, all I know is purely empirical, so this is very interesting read.

Re: Married to someone with anxiety

#190

Post by sankae »

googletazer wrote: post #63
arghIdontwantto wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you are being downvoted. It may seem crass, but it is true. In the last 6-7 years I seem to have mentally and physically aged twice as much if not more. WE are still together but honestly, I don't think I can handle this much more to the point I'm getting depressed as well (suicide thoughts)

Is it worth it? Staying out of "obligation" or "guilt"?

I see my wife as "family."

You don't abandon family.

Then again I'm Asian so perhaps our sense of family is different. For example, we often treat our cousins like siblings.

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