Worrying not heard from husband

I hope you’re feeling better OP. Try not to take the posters being nasty to heart. Clearly a lot of people don’t understand mental illness and think it’s something you can just turn off. If you could then mental illness wouldn’t exist! And just because you posted this in AIBU doesn’t mean you deserve a kicking, there’s plenty of nasty comments on chat as well. Some of them just like to feel big and tough. I hope you manage to get some medication sorted that works for you and I can tell from your posts this level of anxiety has taken you by surprise.

That level of panic and anxiety must be terrible to go through. I hope you feel better now he's been in touch. You must be exhausted! Fingers crossed you get the right help at your GP appointment.
Your thread made me realise that I haven't seen or spoken to dh since last night, he left for work before i woke up. I don't even know what city he is in at the moment, he could be anywhere! It would never cross my mind to worry unless he didn't arrive home in the evening.

I'm not talking about the people who said 'yes you are' I'm talking about the rude, condescending and unsympathetic comments to a woman who is acknowledging it was an issue. AIBU is not a synonym for give an OP a kicking. 🙄

Stuff happens. I forgot my phone on the day of the July bombings in London in 2005. My route to the office was down Upper Woburn Place so my OH was frantic.

Fortunately we still had office landlines so I could call her.

Perhaps that would have solicited more understanding responses, but the whole point is that her brain was like a runaway train. So what happened was a panicked, stream of consciousness post detailing her spiralling thoughts. If she had been able to reorganise her thoughts into something more likely to garner sympathy, then she probably wouldn't have needed to be here at all. But extreme anxiety doesn't work like that.

OP if you'd wanted people to focus on your spiralling anxiety attacks over what you know are almost always irrational and silly fears, you should have just led with that and you would have had quite different responses.

You could have just said 'for example, I sent my DH a whatsapp this morning and because a couple of hours have gone by without him opening the message my mind is now going into overdrive with worry and thinking the worst. Rationally I know he's probably just in a meeting but I but I can't help stressing over it.'

But going into the thread with lots of specific detail about what time he left home, what train he caught, how long it would have taken him to walk from A to B etc, makes it sound as if you want people's advice/opinions about whether to start phoning hospitals/the police, or speculating on what might have happened to him. That is going to get you different responses altogether.

You need to focus on the problem of your anxiety, not the problem of not getting an immediate response from your husband when you text or phone him.

Hopefully the GP will be able to help you, OP.

I can both sympathise and empathise with you. My Mum is exactly same and will utterly panic at times if she can’t get hold of one of us. This has then been passed onto me and one of my siblings as an irrational fear. If my Mum messages me and doesn’t get a reply quick enough she will start to panic and try ringing etc. It has calmed down a hell of a lot since she has us on a location app. She can see where we are and that soothes her. It also stops her panicking that we haven’t replied if she can see that we are travelling somewhere. I’m in my 40s, btw! I’d rather my Mum didn’t know where I was at all times but if it helps soothe her then I’m ok with it. It’s not like I am going anywhere exciting lol.

It has given me a bit of the same though. I do panic about my loved ones if I haven’t heard from them for a while. It is snowy at DP’s home today so I was worried about him getting into work. At the time he was due to get into work I was delivering a presentation which did help and hinder at the same time. It helped keep my mind occupied but I also couldn’t check to see if he had messaged me. I don’t ask him to let me know when he has got to work on a regular basis though. Only when the roads are dodgy. I think that is reasonable.

Tbf OP says it is a new problem that's suddenly popped up with a previous history of anxiety some time ago. Do I think unless it's ongoing, day by day and out of control posters have posted reasonably bad s GP spot seems unnecessary. They are hardly going to start ( shouldn't start) medication based on a one off catastrophising event.

You clearly have not RTFT and have no understanding of genuine anxiety. The OP suffers from this anxiety as do I and several others in this thread. We know it is not “normal” but it cannot be controlled. Many of us take medication to help us function.

your response is unhelpful at best and cruel and at worst and I strongly recommend you read a bit about the condition before posting on threads like this.

he is at work. There is no need to bombard him with messages. He is a grown up. Just let him do his job! If he wouldn't have arrived by now, work would have probably contacted you by now. Maybe get some help with your anxiety. This isn't a normal behaviour/reaction and not healthy.

Perimenopause can make you very anxious even if you’ve never had anxiety before, so I’d imagine it will impact you negatively. Have you tried HRT? It had done wonders for me and I realised that I’d been in Peri for a very long time without knowing, I had horrendous anxiety and would ask my husband to txt me on arrival at work and when leaving to come home. He still does this now, we’re not in constant contact.

This was me too. Made myself ill. Huge sympathies

No - the point is she did not know he was safe until she did.

until then anxiety fills in the unknown with terrible scenarios. Even if scenario is highly unlikely the rational part of your brain is completely shut down by the anxiety.

I wish people understood this. Anxiety is utterly miserable

That's not what's happening here though, is it?

She's messaged him in order to sort something out, then realised she can't get hold of him and then spiralled.
It doesn't appear that him telling her his whereabouts regularly is something that she insists upon.

Have you tried CBT @Polkadotbabushka ?

I know you said you'd had some therapy.

CBT could help you control your thoughts so they are more rational.

I'm sure you're worrying if he had an accident.
Run over, kidnapped, heart attack, whatever.

Rationally, you need to tell yourself this is 99.9% not happening. Most of the time it will be an IT issue or he can't respond because he's at work etc.

What you're doing is called catastrophising- a term your therapist may have used. It's jumping to the very worst outcome immediately.

I hope they are teaching you strategies to control this, which may work far better than drugs.

I’m glad all is well and just wanted to say that I totally get the spiralling. It is my default reaction to anything I can’t control or get an immediate answer to. I still remember when I was a child pacing the floor waiting for my mum to come home from visiting her sister. I used to go and stand in the street and watch the buses go by on the main road, waiting to see if she would get off. My dad wasn’t worried. Neither were my brother or sister. Just me. I wanted to be like them because I knew what I was feeling was extreme, but I couldn’t help it. I have learned to suppress it over the years, to the point where, the vast majority of the time, only I know it’s happening. It resurfaced to the point of being unable to suppress it when I was pregnant with my eldest and again when my mum took ill. I find that generally raised levels of stress in my life make it much worse. Honestly, you have my deepest sympathy because it’s no joke. And people telling you that you are being ridiculous (even if you are!) doesn’t make you feel reassured in the moment.

He was always safe, isn’t that the point…

You were ofc being extremely unreasonable

But that’s anxiety - I suffer from it as well and can spend days over thinking things other people wouldn’t even think about for 5 seconds.

The people piling on don’t understand and are lucky enough to have never experienced an anxiety spiral.

It is literally impossible to ‘just stop thinking about it’ so you have my sympathy OP. Glad nothing bad had happened.

OP I’m so glad your husband is safe.

I understand this level of anxiety completely. I have been in identical situations and reacted as you did. Fortunately my DH understands it is a medical issue unlike some of the dicks on this thread.

You have got some terrible responses here from people who have literally no idea what actual proper anxiety is. medication does help me but not 100%. I hope you can get help too.

proper anxiety is completely disabling. It’s nt just being a bit stressed, it’s an all consuming spiral which makes you feel physically ill. Those who do not understand and recognise this hideous condition are being deeply ableist.

I mean it kindly but I would absolutely hate having to text my DH during my work day and have to say when I’d arrived etc. It’s a lot of pressure for your DH. It’s sad for you both.

I def think you need to go back to the GP.

Oh come on, there are a hell of a lot of posters who have been down right nasty and condescending to a woman who was clearly in distress.

It’s obvious the OP knows she’s being unreasonable. She has explained she’s got an upcoming GP appointment and needs help.

It was obvious that the OP needed healthy encouragement and kind words of support. Not snarky replies. Such a shame that a lot of nasty arsed bullies don’t have the emotional intelligence to be understand that.