Can’t live with my husband’s health anxiety anymore

Respectfully, that's terrible advice.

OP, I likely wouldn't be here if it were not for the support of my husband literally forcing me to get help for my debilitating mental health issues (by forced I mean personally booked me a bed for a month at a private psych hospital).

Two years on, I'm a different person and we really are BOTH living our best lives.

He's obviously mentally ill and if it wasn't health anxiety it would be manifesting in another way. If you leave he may threaten suicide which is rather ironic but it's his responsibility to keep himself alive. You need to issue an ultimatum that he either gets help or you walk. Please start preparing you and your child mentally and financially for life alone. Best of luckxxx

Good god no, I cannot imagine being the cause of so much pain to another and an innocent child. But I only have the perspective of the one suffering and I’m personally glad I was not left alone. But I did all I could to seek help: is that a choice? I’m not sure. Maybe I was lucky.

It’s very very painful all around I just want the OP’s husband to get help, to recover. He is (unfortunately) the person I identify with here.

which is why I’m not sure he should just be left to get on with it.

He should be ‘just left to get on with it’ whilst he is adamant his sickness is physical and not mental.
OP should withdraw with love, she didn’t cause this; she can’t cure it; she can’t control it.
The more I think about it, the more obvious it seems to me that the addiction analogy is completely appropriate.

You are so utterly determined that he most be the focus of all efforts, that you have forgotten that OP… and their child, are valid people too. They aren’t just some resource to be used up, and then temper tantrummed at when they have the audacity to want to live their own lives.
If you genuinely think Op has not given enough and is short changing him, you really are going to have to come out and say that openly.

He's not a child at the end of the day. He's an adult and yes he has a terrible mental health condition, but if he refuses all help, and actively disregards the needs and wellbeing of his own young child, why should op have to stay and endure a horrible life for herself and especially her child?

As I said before, if her husband was actively accepting help, that is different. But her husband is bordering on violent when challenged. He doesn't want to know.

Sorry, but no one is obliged to stay in that situation and sacrifice their own lives regardless of how genuinely unwell he is.

so is alcoholism a choice?

We have two diseases, both difficult to get people to accept treatment is needed, both very bad for the whole family.
with the disease of alcoholism we know that enabling makes it worse and prevents treatment happening, and with HA: I suggest that the same principle applies, and you disagree and suggest that the whole family should support the sufferer as the sufferer wishes in that moment, regardless of their own wishes, and regardless of any negative impact on their own physical or mental wellbeing.

You are going to have to help me out here, and explain in some detail why that should be the case. (Especially for the OP who has had 20 years of this)

I do not mean to minimise addiction. I get it’s not an active choice, but MH just manifests from your own brain and does not need anything adding. It’s there when you go to sleep and wake up and go for a walk.

Imagine that you had all the symptoms of a terrible disease. So you kept going back to the doctor who told you you most likely don’t have it. But they don’t do tests, as you are low risk. And then you read about someone five years younger than you that went to the doctor with your symptoms and they are now dead, as they most likely did not have it either.

And then you start having palpitations that keep you up all night, tingling limbs and dizziness. Chest pain from being held in a weird stuff pose all day as you try and google your way out of a certain death diagnosis. I’ve pick headaches. All stuff that could mean you are seriously ill. But you’ve been to the doctor 4 times and now they just think you’re a crank.

Not going to the doctor becomes the new coping mechanism as if you go there you might actually find out you are dying. And then that’s it. Being told there is a pill to turn off your brain doesn’t make any sense - hello I’m most likely dying here!

So you continue in this anxiety spiral and occasionally feel okay but most days you spend 3/4 hours googling.

It’s actual living hell: which is why I’m not sure he should just be left to get on with it.

Alcoholism isn’t a choice. It’s an addiction, which is just as much a mental health issue. People dependent on alcohol aren’t making choices with the same rationale as those of us without an addiction.

One is a choice and one is not.

Truly staggering lack of understanding.

HA is as much of a choice as any physical disease. My doctor told me that as I sat there crying for wasting her time.

Why should she stay for this MH issue, when it is just as catastrophically bad for the family as alcoholism, which we know she should leave him for?

You have done your best. You are allowed to leave a marriage that you find intolerable.

Look after yourself and your son.

You are a saint to have stayed so long. It sounds so claustrophobic.

The thing that is making you ill being your own head is impossible to bear. There is no escape and it’s a literal prison of your own mind. There seems to be an undercurrent here that he is being selfish or self-absorbed. It’s nothing to do with that.

I didn’t even really believe in anxiety TBH until it happened to me. I assumed it was weaker minded people. Horrible I know and did I get a slap in the face.

There is a way out. And yes he needs to accept help but it’s so hard to explain to others, when it sounds like just normal stuff on steroids.

Oh I'm so sorry. I've been through similar with my husband's health anxiety. I used to come home and he'd be like a crazy madman all swivel eyed and screaming about how he was going to die.

The only thing that helped was medication from the GP. How you get him to accept that I don't know though.

Second time around it took a friend of ours telling him he was heading back down a hole again before he would get help. He wouldn't listen to me.

You cannot help him
Prioritise your child and yourself and get out

If there wasn’t a child involved I’d try a grey rock type response “ call the gp” on repeat but you can’t go on like this with a child also involved.
Think it’s time for ducks in a row and plan to leave. Not sure if you’ll get emotional blackmail.

Yes, sorry I saw the updates after I posted. I don’t post LTB comments in here as they’re glib and you never have the full picture. But just reading this OP’s posts makes me feel claustrophobic. It must feel like torture being held hostage to someone’s selfish, self-absorbed obsession like this. And now the self-absorption is spilling into doing serious harm to others. It’s one thing if he wants to harm himself. He doesn’t get to harm others. OP has to take responsibility for herself and her child - someone has to look out for the child. You can’t blame someone for their mental health struggles. But you absolutely can blame them for inflicting them on others and not wanting to spare those you love. OP says he doesn’t tell her he loves her anymore. Maybe he actually doesn’t. Maybe this whole health anxiety is just his way of pushing her away.

What a sorry mess. And what a sorry excuse for a husband, father - and man :(

But Op has tried all that and he is refusing and has now involved their child which is really fucked up. She needs to leave or plan to leave. But I wouldn't be letting him know.

Well, he is unwell. Mentally. He has severe anxiety.

Tell him to focus on treatment for that. See doctors and whatnot, take the pills. If he doesn’t, he’s going to lose his family and then he’ll have a slew of other problems to deal with.

I think there has been an enormous amount of sympathy for him.

Compare: You feel you lost 2 years of your own life to an illness which you have sought to recover from.
OP: lost 20 TWENTY years of her life to someone else’s illness which they refuse to get help for, and drag their child into.

It is your illness talking when you suggest that the OP should give even more. Would you give what she has?

Absolutely spot on @MoveToParis It is very interesting how posts like the one you responded to clearly illustrate the very selfish, self centred nature of the illness, how everyone around must give and give and give whilst the other party just takes, takes, takes.

Can you issue an ultimatum? Seek help or I have to leave for my own good? A couple of private health checks brought me back to reality too.

The OP issued the ultimatum, he threw a chair and then started wailing about not wanting to die. The OP has suggested going Private and that has been refused. Her husband does not want help, he just wants to wallow in the illness and for her and their child to do so too. It is impossible to help someone who refuses to be helped.

For the future health and sanity of OP and her child they need to make a life without her husband.

The key point is that ops husband refuses any help or to find any solution to his issues. He is determined to drag op and his own child down into his personal hell with him.

Of course if he was actively seeking help and taking responsibility for the effect on his family it would be a very different ball game.

Op don't feel guilty. You've done all you can for him..

Nobody understands HA unless they have it themselves. It’s truly awful.
Somehow you have to explain the whole household is being affected, though he probably already knows.
Being a sufferer virtually all my life, the last 15 years have been more bearable with anti anxiety drugs. For me CBT or Counselling didn’t really help.
So sorry for your situation. Your DH is suffering from a mental disorder similar to OCD. The right drugs can be extremely helpful.

I have good friend in a similar situation. Her life, and their kids lives, are overshadowed by the MH problems of a self man who won’t get help.
she Should leave him. You should leave him.
Separate and it might be the kick up the arse he needs to seek help.

Time to look after yourself. However that looks (with or without him)

I think there has been an enormous amount of sympathy for him.

Compare: You feel you lost 2 years of your own life to an illness which you have sought to recover from.
OP: lost 20 TWENTY years of her life to someone else’s illness which they refuse to get help for, and drag their child into.

It is your illness talking when you suggest that the OP should give even more. Would you give what she has?