Husband is ready to leave me...

[allthingsbrighter]

I’ve been with DH for 14 years (married 3)

Last year we had our first baby who is now coming up to 11 months old.

It’s been an incredibly tough time. I was diagnosed with post natal anxiety and I had 20 weeks of CBT.

I’m still not coping and it’s changing me as a person.

I’m struggling to focus on family life. I feel withdrawn from DC & DH.

My mind is completely consumed with negative thoughts and they’re all around Covid.

I feel like I have a death sentence looming over me, there’s this danger outside my doors and once it gets me, I’m done.

I’m coming up to 35 and I fall into the vulnerable category, although I’m not CEV / shielding.

I’m irritable all of the time, and it’s always with DH.
I feel annoyed by him. Wound up when he’s around.
He tries to have a conversation with me and I feel in a rush to finish it because my mind is so so consumed by thoughts of Covid and death that I can’t seem to concentrate on anything else.

I feel like I’ve become incredibly selfish.
DH is brilliant. He’s a great dad and husband.
He cooks, he helps to clean, I don’t think there is much more he could do.

He’s considerate of how I feel. He WFH and he gets up early during the week with DC so that I can have an hour extra in bed whilst he does breakfast.

All this sounds great but then overnight he gets uninterrupted sleep whilst I’m up feeding / settling DC.
I’m not sure if this is a fair arrangement, but I feel irritated when he’s laid there next to me asleep and I’m awake with the baby.

When it comes to weekends we both have one sleep in each, but when it’s his turn I again feel irritated and angry at him.
I will remind him not to be spending all day in bed, even though to date he’s never done that, and he’s never once said anything to me about how long I choose to sleep in for.

DC won’t settle with DH for sleep and it’s me that does the bedtime routine. (DC breastfed and feeds to sleep)
DH will sit with us upstairs until DC has gone down, but again I feel irritated by him like he should be doing more(even though I don’t know what)

I know my behaviour is really upsetting him, he’s spoken to me about it and I’ve told him how anxious and worried I am about Covid.

He keeps repeatedly telling me I’m irrational and my fears aren’t logical.
I feel like he’s just humouring me and he doesn’t understand that I’m vulnerable.

He’s shown me stats of the deaths for the under 40’s, told me they account for less than 1% of the total deaths.
But when he’s telling me these things, my mind is telling me to ignore him because he’s wrong and just trying to humour me.

I feel like a lot of the time I project onto DH.
I can spend the day playing and doing lots of activities with DC, but I know my mind is running elsewhere. It’s in the clouds worrying about Covid, going back to work, DC going to nursery, DH popping to the office, DH going to the supermarket....

When DH comes home I feel so emotionally fatigued that I take it out on him, I feel like he’s thinking I’ve been a crap mum for the day, I’ve not done enough around the house or I haven’t been focused enough on DC.

He’s never said any of this to me, but I’m conceived he does think it.

Today he’s told me he’s had enough and that living with me is too difficult for him.

He said he loves me but he’s really tired of trying and getting nothing in return.

I don’t want him to leave, but I can’t think of a reason why I want him to stay.
I know that I love him, but I know that he’s better off without me.

I don’t know how to make him happy anymore.

My life is such a mess. I’m completely stuck in my mind. 😔

I’ve a bad feeling the op has elected not to speak to her gp and has chosen a very unwise route due to her illness. I really hope I’m wrong.

Anne at almost a year old, a court would certainly be looking at overnight stays.

Hope you're doing ok today op

Forget the baby feeding thing. Number One is OPs welfare. Please come back and tell us you have spoken to someone.

@allthingsbrighter - Have you thought about stopping breastfeeding? I had severe anxiety with my first and it stopped within days of me stopping.

It didn’t make a difference to how much sleep I got , not straight away anyway, so I don’t know if it was the difference to my hormones that helped, or just psychologically not feeling so tied and trapped by the baby (that might not sound kind but it was the truth of how I felt l)

Your baby needs a mentally well parent, as mentally well as possible anyway.

Just saw this subject has been discussed, sorry, I replied quickly without reading it all through.

@allthingsbrighter I was just thinking about you OP and hoping you are ok. Did you contact the GP. I know picking up that phone will feel like the most massive step you can imagine, but it's really necessary. Do it for your baby, if nothing else. They need a healthy mum more than they need anything else in this world, and will for years and years. Your big fear is not being healthy for them because of Covid so don't let anything else take you away from them (even if it's just in a cloud of anxious thoughts) any more.

How are you doing OP? I really hope you called your GP. I’m worried that you didn’t because some of this thread might have scared you and you’re worried about SS and being sent away. But you really need help OP, I hope you get it.

It feels real. I 100% believe I’m at risk from severe illness or death.

Of course. Severe health anxiety always makes you think the things are real. That’s the point. Sertraline can stop the obsessive thoughts very effectively.

Mumsnet"s law in action. Any thread, whatever the topic, will eventually turn into a bunfight over breast feeding or trans rights

Yip.

100% predictable, 100% tedious.

OP, Nothing stays the same forever. Don't waste your babies precious, tiny years worrying about a future you can't predict. Be with your little person now or else you will have an awful regret in the future

OP when I was 16 I became ill with a horrible virus. I developed health anxiety as a result, I would disinfect everything, wouldn’t touch things like doorknobs, light switches etc with my hands and started doing loads of things with my feet instead. I washed my hands so much they were sore. I burned my face by putting neat TCP on it. In the end I wouldn’t leave the house in case I picked up any other germs, it was like living in a prison. Luckily, for me, it only went on for around six weeks before a close relative took me aside and gently talked to me about it and got me to see I couldn’t live like that. I was lucky enough to be able to stop it myself but I well remember how horrible it was and how stressful and miserable it made my life. Please seek professional help and talk about the severity of your symptoms because you are not rational at the moment. When you come out the other side - and you will - you will feel like you’ve been set free. I’m rooting for you, please take the first step.

Hi OP I'm a CBT graduate, did you know it's got an 80% success rate of working long term and it did for me.

Bit of backstory. I was ill (panic disorder) for 18 months. 9 months into my journey I started CBT. I had just DD1 at the time.
The panic attacks started after I'd burnt myself out, but my world got very small very fast.
Things I could do without thinking about it where nightmarish. I remember going to the supermarket and everything literally being a blur around me. I couldn't concentrate on things I picked up because the panic was so extreme. So I stopped going to the supermarket. Then I stopped going to any shop. Then I stopped going into the street. Then I stopped going into the garden. Then my days consisted of agaraphobia crying in the shower thinking my DD1 was going to die.

It took a LOT to even to go the sessions. I would be crying hysterically in the waiting room counting down the minutes to get home.

But CBT is more exposure therapy, building your tolerance up so you know that your thinking is wrong and harmful so you change your pattern of thinking.

Your OH is doing the right thing by showing you the factual statistics. These are facts! We can all go down Google's dark web and find what we need to justify our thoughts but numbers don't lie.
So are you going outside? You won't catch it from holding your pram and going for a walk but stepping away from the phone and doing exercise will help you tremendously.

Start building up some routes to take baby. In my case I had to start in the garden for 10 minutes, feeling all the fear and then going back in the house. Evaluating was it really that bad? If it didn't seem that great repeating the exercise the next day. Or if it was fine moving further away from the house and pushing myself to feel scared but realising eventually that my fears were unfounded.

9 months into the course. The counsellor had changed my thought pattern so much that he had managed to convince me to do driving lessons and book a driving test.

I have had 2-3 panic attacks since finishing in 2013 and my last one was 2016. But after that change in thought pattern, (Realising if I just let let it pass, 20 minutes is the maximum it would go on for because the cortisol in my body couldn't make it last longer) I could just get on with my day afterwards.

I can now drive. I have a FT job. I'm on maternity waiting for DC3. I actually left ex because he wasn't supportive like your OH and was a whore. Brave enough to say this is enough and be a single mum. Met my DFiance now. Life can be better but you have to work on your false thoughts.

I didnt get on with cbt at all. It felt lile gaslighting myself.
Psychotherapy on the other hand, was a game changer.

Hope you re doing alright op x

@Branleuse

I didnt get on with cbt at all. It felt lile gaslighting myself. Psychotherapy on the other hand, was a game changer.

Hope you re doing alright op x

It sounds like you had a poor therapist @Branleuse. That’s not what CBT should feel like!

I dont think its that,i think different sorts of therapy work for different people. Cbt is often pushed aa a way of trying to reprogramme negative thought patterns, but i think its a sticking plaster if you dont delve deeper into why.
Ive tried a few different types of therapy and a really good therapist will work out what are the best techniques to use

CBT can be a helpful tool for many people, but it's not a miracle cure all on its own. For CBT to work, the person needs to be in a place where they can properly engage with it.

In my case I tried CBT as a first step but it didn't really help. What did help was medication and counselling.

Agree with PPs. CBT can be great, but no one therapy helps everyone. I've found ACT more helpful this time around. It's important to find the right therapy and therapist for you. No one size fits all solution and often the solution involves medication as well as the right therapy. Even if just short term, medication can work in concert with a psychologist or counsellor allowing you the mental space for the therapy to work.

I didn't find CBT helpful at all. I lot seems fine for relatively short term issues or dealing with something specific- a fear or anxiety over something tangible.

But I don't think it's at all helpful for people with long-standing conditions. I had suffered with anxiety and panic attacks for 15 years, several courses of CBT and exposure therapy didn't help me at all.

Whereas gestalt and psychotherapy were amazing and changed my life.