Hi
I have posted before about my partner's anxiety - there are quite a few things she gets anxious about. I don't know this time whether this is her anxiety or whether she has a point this time. I want to help her but don't know how.
Her son is quite alternative and likes going to raves. They're the type that get advertised at the last minute and are not particularly authorised. I think some are held in warehouses or similar types of spaces.
She doesn't really like him going to these, but he's 18, so she doesn't feel like she can particularly ground him!
A couple of weeks ago, he was chatting with her and said something along the lines of "there were rumours that the place a rave I went to a while back had asbestos - but then that was proved to be false". She tried to question him on this - like where the rumours had come from and how the rumours were proved to be false". He immediately clammed up and has refused to engage in any conversation about it .
She's now feeling completely paralysed. She went onto Google and read about secondary asbestos exposure and how you shouldn't wash clothes with asbestos fibres on them as it breaks down in washing machines and contaminates them. She often uses the dryers at her local laundrette and is worried in case she's unknowingly put contaminated clothes in the dryers there. She has a mounting pile of hers and her sons laundry that she is scared to wash and they are running out of clean clothes.
She feels that she can't do anything about her son's possible exposure, but she is worried about making other people ill - especially from having put clothes in the dryer at the laundrette
YABU = It's a very legitimate concern. Someone needs to come and test all their clothes and the laundrette needs to be warned in case it has become contaminated
YANBU = there's nothing she can do about it now and she needs to forget about it and wash their clothes - including going back to the laundrette
Or maybe something in between. Her anxiety and avoidance of things means their house is quite messy and the piles of laundry are big.
I'm kind of losing my grip of what is my partner's anxiety and what is real iyswim