Can’t live with my husband’s health anxiety anymore

[MoSalahsBeard]

We are living under a big black cloud and I can’t take it any longer.

he was always paranoid about his health and death but it’s reached ridiculous levels. Every day he tells me he is dying. He is utterly convinced. He has IBS style stomach problems and has been diagnosed with IBS but for him no it’s not IBS, it’s cancer. For years I’ve been trying to convince him otherwise but I’ve hit my limit. He now reckons he’s got another sort of cancer as well that is affecting his urine.

He won’t see a dr. He won’t get mental health help. Flat out refuses to do either.

his dad died of liver cancer 20 years ago and he’s certain he is suffering the same fate.

we are living under an umbrella of death because of his anxiety. He is in constant gloom. I love him but I’m exhausted.

my reassurance doesn’t help. Getting checked at the dr doesn’t help. He has had colonoscopies and nothing changed.

I’ve told him this is it, no more, he has to get help. I said if he ends up hating me over it then I don’t care. Things have to change. He bashed a chair around then stomped off to the bedroom, put his head under a pillow and was wailing that he doesn’t want to die.

what do I do here?

Yes, sorry I saw the updates after I posted. I don’t post LTB comments in here as they’re glib and you never have the full picture. But just reading this OP’s posts makes me feel claustrophobic. It must feel like torture being held hostage to someone’s selfish, self-absorbed obsession like this. And now the self-absorption is spilling into doing serious harm to others. It’s one thing if he wants to harm himself. He doesn’t get to harm others. OP has to take responsibility for herself and her child - someone has to look out for the child. You can’t blame someone for their mental health struggles. But you absolutely can blame them for inflicting them on others and not wanting to spare those you love. OP says he doesn’t tell her he loves her anymore. Maybe he actually doesn’t. Maybe this whole health anxiety is just his way of pushing her away.

What a sorry mess. And what a sorry excuse for a husband, father - and man :(

If there wasn’t a child involved I’d try a grey rock type response “ call the gp” on repeat but you can’t go on like this with a child also involved.
Think it’s time for ducks in a row and plan to leave. Not sure if you’ll get emotional blackmail.

You cannot help him
Prioritise your child and yourself and get out

Oh I'm so sorry. I've been through similar with my husband's health anxiety. I used to come home and he'd be like a crazy madman all swivel eyed and screaming about how he was going to die.

The only thing that helped was medication from the GP. How you get him to accept that I don't know though.

Second time around it took a friend of ours telling him he was heading back down a hole again before he would get help. He wouldn't listen to me.

The thing that is making you ill being your own head is impossible to bear. There is no escape and it’s a literal prison of your own mind. There seems to be an undercurrent here that he is being selfish or self-absorbed. It’s nothing to do with that.

I didn’t even really believe in anxiety TBH until it happened to me. I assumed it was weaker minded people. Horrible I know and did I get a slap in the face.

There is a way out. And yes he needs to accept help but it’s so hard to explain to others, when it sounds like just normal stuff on steroids.

You have done your best. You are allowed to leave a marriage that you find intolerable.

Look after yourself and your son.

You are a saint to have stayed so long. It sounds so claustrophobic.

Why should she stay for this MH issue, when it is just as catastrophically bad for the family as alcoholism, which we know she should leave him for?

One is a choice and one is not.

Truly staggering lack of understanding.

HA is as much of a choice as any physical disease. My doctor told me that as I sat there crying for wasting her time.

Alcoholism isn’t a choice. It’s an addiction, which is just as much a mental health issue. People dependent on alcohol aren’t making choices with the same rationale as those of us without an addiction.

Imagine that you had all the symptoms of a terrible disease. So you kept going back to the doctor who told you you most likely don’t have it. But they don’t do tests, as you are low risk. And then you read about someone five years younger than you that went to the doctor with your symptoms and they are now dead, as they most likely did not have it either.

And then you start having palpitations that keep you up all night, tingling limbs and dizziness. Chest pain from being held in a weird stuff pose all day as you try and google your way out of a certain death diagnosis. I’ve pick headaches. All stuff that could mean you are seriously ill. But you’ve been to the doctor 4 times and now they just think you’re a crank.

Not going to the doctor becomes the new coping mechanism as if you go there you might actually find out you are dying. And then that’s it. Being told there is a pill to turn off your brain doesn’t make any sense - hello I’m most likely dying here!

So you continue in this anxiety spiral and occasionally feel okay but most days you spend 3/4 hours googling.

It’s actual living hell: which is why I’m not sure he should just be left to get on with it.

I do not mean to minimise addiction. I get it’s not an active choice, but MH just manifests from your own brain and does not need anything adding. It’s there when you go to sleep and wake up and go for a walk.

so is alcoholism a choice?

We have two diseases, both difficult to get people to accept treatment is needed, both very bad for the whole family.
with the disease of alcoholism we know that enabling makes it worse and prevents treatment happening, and with HA: I suggest that the same principle applies, and you disagree and suggest that the whole family should support the sufferer as the sufferer wishes in that moment, regardless of their own wishes, and regardless of any negative impact on their own physical or mental wellbeing.

You are going to have to help me out here, and explain in some detail why that should be the case. (Especially for the OP who has had 20 years of this)

He's not a child at the end of the day. He's an adult and yes he has a terrible mental health condition, but if he refuses all help, and actively disregards the needs and wellbeing of his own young child, why should op have to stay and endure a horrible life for herself and especially her child?

As I said before, if her husband was actively accepting help, that is different. But her husband is bordering on violent when challenged. He doesn't want to know.

Sorry, but no one is obliged to stay in that situation and sacrifice their own lives regardless of how genuinely unwell he is.

which is why I’m not sure he should just be left to get on with it.

He should be ‘just left to get on with it’ whilst he is adamant his sickness is physical and not mental.
OP should withdraw with love, she didn’t cause this; she can’t cure it; she can’t control it.
The more I think about it, the more obvious it seems to me that the addiction analogy is completely appropriate.

You are so utterly determined that he most be the focus of all efforts, that you have forgotten that OP… and their child, are valid people too. They aren’t just some resource to be used up, and then temper tantrummed at when they have the audacity to want to live their own lives.
If you genuinely think Op has not given enough and is short changing him, you really are going to have to come out and say that openly.

Good god no, I cannot imagine being the cause of so much pain to another and an innocent child. But I only have the perspective of the one suffering and I’m personally glad I was not left alone. But I did all I could to seek help: is that a choice? I’m not sure. Maybe I was lucky.

It’s very very painful all around I just want the OP’s husband to get help, to recover. He is (unfortunately) the person I identify with here.

He's obviously mentally ill and if it wasn't health anxiety it would be manifesting in another way. If you leave he may threaten suicide which is rather ironic but it's his responsibility to keep himself alive. You need to issue an ultimatum that he either gets help or you walk. Please start preparing you and your child mentally and financially for life alone. Best of luckxxx

Respectfully, that's terrible advice.

OP, I likely wouldn't be here if it were not for the support of my husband literally forcing me to get help for my debilitating mental health issues (by forced I mean personally booked me a bed for a month at a private psych hospital).

Two years on, I'm a different person and we really are BOTH living our best lives.

The Op wants her husband to get help, he won't.

What is the difference in impact on the people living with them between an alcoholic who won't accept they are an alcoholic and seek help and a person who has HA won't accept they have it and seek help? None that I can see. Both are extremely selfish and care nothing for the damage they are doing to others.

The OP and her child do not deserve to have their lives and mental health destroyed.

Well tbf not everyone can find 300 quid a night for a month and you certainly can't make a grown man do anything he doesn't want to do... So..

Well, we certainly couldn't afford it and I'm as stubborn as they come. He still managed it, so...

I am currently going through a wave of health anxiety which honestly has made me feel worse and therefore more anxious (vicious cycle). Its horrible so I sympathise.
However, he needs to seek help from his gp and get into counselling. He cannot continue this way, for his sake and his family's.

My father threatened the family with his death throughout my childhood and my mother, also a hypochondriac, reinforced the message. It was mainly about his kidneys packing up because he had to pee every few hours (a condition I seem to have inherited). I left at 18 because I couldn’t stand it any longer. Looking back I think it was akin to child abuse… Anyway, he did die, when he was 90 and five weeks. I have every sympathy for you and your children living with this ‘dying’ man.

I feel for you and this is absolute not an issue with your empathy etc, it’s clear you have tried. My DH ex is like this, one of the reasons they struggled to live together, although she is nowhere near as extreme as your husband. It impacts her children already though - both are very overly worried and dramatic about minor health issues. At least if you and your DH weren’t living together your child would only be exposed to this max 50% of the time.

What actually are his symptoms, other than IBS?

Is he a member of a gym? What physical exercise does he do?

If your DH is up for it, find a strenuous yoga class for him & encourage him to go as often as possible - honestly, so much better than anxiety meds for me, it was a revelation.

If you could get a babysitter, maybe try to find a dance class to do together once a week. Or even just walks. Anything where you both concentrate on something entirely different for a while.

All best

Are you a man like? My husband's head and shoulders above me and weighs twice my weight. If he doesn't want to go somewhere, he won't.

Not everyone can find thousands of pounds for a month in a private mental hospital. Your husband might have been willing to suddenly 'find the money ' but not everyone can. Maybe you should ask him how he did it and pass the info on to the OP if you're so determined to press your point.