Changed my username for this. I am someone who by nature is extroverted and always enjoyed meeting new people and had jobs with plenty of customer and client interaction. However I was orphaned as a teen, had two children with cancer (recovered) and then had cancer myself right before COVID. I also recovered although it took about 3 years as it was very serious.
As a result of relocations and all the family illness, I haven’t worked for over 20 years. I am happily married and my husband is great. I had so much ambition and motivation and it now feels like it has completely left the building. Now I have found that I find ordinary social events quite overwhelming and I am avoiding them.
My husband just texted me from work to ask if I would lime to go to the coast for the weekend (we live in the US). Of course that sounds lovely but I find myself not even wanting to leave the house. I have a psychologist who since COVID I talk to remotely, I have only recently been able to talk about all the trauma I experienced to her as I have been so focused on making sure my young adult and teen children are OK and thriving and spent my time with her talking about them.
I am guessing logically that all these insane events on top of each other have obviously caused my change in how I feel, but I don’t know how to change it. I feel I have always had to emotionally pull myself up by my bootstraps and keep going. I have never had the luxury of falling apart as I had no family to turn to and I don’t want to put that all on my husband who has been fantastic through everything.
I don’t know how to change anymore. Twice I was at Uni completing my Masters Degree and had to leave because a kid had cancer. I have really tried but now just feel I am running on empty completely.