Hi I will keep this short I’m not looking for advice tbh just need to get my feelings out I’ve been on mumsnet in the past and it’s always helpful basically the crux of the issue is my mother suffers with intense bursts of anxiety I wouldn’t say it affects her day to day but every now and then something will set it off and she will totally shut down, like now, something is worrying her (health related) all her tests have come back clear and she’s fit and healthy but she’s convinced she’s got cancer and is going to die.
She has medication which she was prescribed a few years ago but she won’t take it and never has because there’s ‘nothing wrong with her’ I’ve offered to go to the doctors to help her change them (she needs them) but she won’t she says she doesn’t want to involve me in stuff like that (in case they tell her something is wrong)
the thing is sometimes it just feels like it’s a lot to cope with. she just paces the floors and fidgets constantly like she can’t relax. She won’t or can’t listen to me when I ask her to do her breathing exercises or do something distracting like play a game on her phone and it makes me feel helpless there’s nothing I can do. She lets me go to university but when I do as I’m on my way out the door she’s often crying and begging me not to leave her alone and why am I leaving her alone, similarly she lets me go to my friends house but she cries and asks why I’m leaving her. Even when I just go into a different room to work there are tears and she will sometimes follow me upstairs and will keep pulling my hair or poking me etc to ‘make sure I’m okay’. sometimes she’s been too scared to sleep at home so we’ve slept in hotels or in family member’s houses but she always wants me there too which affects my studies as it means I can’t focus on or submit work. It breaks my heart but I can’t be there constantly it’s my final year of uni and I have work due in this week and next week that I can’t afford to miss or not do but it’s increasingly hard to do and I feel so guilty. She’s turned up in my university lectures on times too just burst into the room to ask if I’m alright, it’s mortifying, a few years back when she was suffering like this she asked me to text her in the lecture to make sure I was fine I told her I couldn’t as no service in the room/uni doesn’t like people on phones but I promised her I’d text when the lecture ended at 1pm but because I didn’t text her during lecture hours she looked up my timetable and came to find me. It was mortifying and I dread that happening again
I feel so guilty but lately university is an escape for me, I start feeling sick when I have to commute home I feel like the house is too suffocating like I’m suffering mums’ anxiety with her? I just feel like there’s nothing I can do to help her obviously I make tea or cook meals if she’s struggling to but I can’t actually help her or soothe her and it’s really scary (childish of me to say I know) sometimes I do worry she’s going to die or will be dead when I arrive home. I also have some issues myself which mum has to help with obviously she can’t when she’s suffering in this way and it’s hard for me to combat them alone although I try my hardest
It is just me at home I’m an only child so there’s no one else, sometimes my cousin comes by or my auntie but that’s rare and there’s just nothing we can do for her to soothe her at home the doctors are useless and say she needs to take her meds (true) but it’s not as if I can physically restrain her to take them is it?!
I feel so selfish and helpless and I don’t know what to do