Anxiety destroying marriage

[Anxiated]

I'm not sure if this or relationships is the best place to post this. My wife has suffered with anxiety for years, for all the time I've know her there has been something she has worried about obsessively. This time is worse though, and it's on the point of making her walk out on me. I've repeatedly suggested that she get some kind of counselling, but she refuses, saying she doesn't want to, and she believes that her worries are justified. She did get a course of CBT a couple of years back when she had bad health anxiety about our daughter, but it only helped a bit and didn't last.

We need help. I don't know where the best place to seek it is or how to convince her to try to sort things out rather than just walk away. Desperate for advice.

[AnxiousCarer]

Supporting someone with their MH can be really hard. Ultimately she has to be the one to ask for help and no one can force it on her if she doesn't want to. At times when DHs MH is bad I find it really important to focus some time on me and doing the things that help my MH its so easy to get sucked into the other persons MH problems to the exulusion of all else.

Would she consider couples councelling? Thats not focussing on her problems directly, but might be a way in for her and for you to address how the anxiety affects you as a couple not just her.

[Itisnoteasybeingdifferent]

Can you manage to get her to come here?

It may be difficult because she may genuinly think she is OK... I certainly thought I was normal and it was everyone elso who was off when I was seriously depressed.

[Anxiated]

Yes, a lot of the problem is she thinks she is reacting to the situation she perceives herself to be in and so the problem is not 'her', and trying to point out all the times in the past where she's had similar obsessive worrying about things which turned out to be fine hasn't helped. I desperately want her to get some form of counselling but I can't force her and she doesn't want to.

Things are better today than they were when I posted, she's no longer talking about walking out, but it will just be a matter of time before something sets it off again and we go through the cycle again, and I fear that eventually it will break us.

[NolongerAnxiousCarer]

Anxiated it sounds really hard, keep on looking after yourself, so you are in the strongest place you can be mentally whatever happens in the future.

[yellowpoppy17]

I have bad anxiety and I opened this thread to check it wasn't about me.

It can be a long long process but it's very important that she has a supportive GP and that she goes and seeks help. I don't know how you can make her do that though.