DH says my anxiety is too much for him

[feelingblue1922]

Bit of context - have always suffered hugely with OCD and anxiety from childhood. Mainly at that time it was focused on excessive hand washing and rituals. My parents never noticed (or did anything about it) and so over my life, it has gone untreated and got progressively worse.

When I was a teenager I had these ocd symptoms coupled with an eating disorder and my mum used to shout at me and tell me how selfish I was that I was putting the family through this. My anxiety at that point would lead to crying fits, binge eating, throwing up and excessive worrying and asking people for reassurance that I hadn't done something terrible (intrusive thoughts started), My parents sent me to therapy (talk therapy) which I never felt helped - but I also had some mindfulness therapy and went on medication at this point.

Things didn't really improve, I think I just got better at hiding the symptoms and had really unhealthy coping mechanisms.

When i became an adult, I knew I had to get some help. I had a course of CBT as if thought that would be The right way to try and tackle the problem. I've done loads of courses online, paid for private treatment and gone on and off medication now for the last 5 years in order to try and find solutions. The medication I was on for around a year with varying doses from Gp and different tablets and none seemed to make a difference to me.

Im not delusional, as I know that I have often been difficult to live with and that I can be a hard person to be around but I try really really hard to not tell anyone the extent of how bad it is day to day.

Now I'm pregnant again I feel like it's got even worse and my DH is sick of it. Ive been worrying about things to do with the baby, pregnancy symptoms, handwashing, my toddlers hygiene, imagining scenarios like standing on infected needles in the park and worrying constantly that something bad is going to happen.

Now, my husband is saying he's had enough. He says my anxiety ruins even basic days out as he never knows what is going to trigger it and he is out of ideas. I'm scared he's going to leave me.

I'm pregnant, we have a 1 year old and I don't know what to do, has anyone been through anything similar?

I reached out to the mental health midwife's last pregnancy and found that they didn't help at all they just phoned me constantly!

I think you need to go back to your gp again.

this must be a horrible way to live for you. But it’s important to get further help as it will impact your kids as they grow up.

for your husband, it’s very hard to be with someone mentally Ill. Mental illness by definition makes someone very selfish, it’s all about them and their issues, which is likely where your mother was coming from

there maybe a point he can’t cope any more. There is no blame on him foe that, we all have our breaking points, but maybe he also needs to seek help.

Living with someone with a long term illness, mental or physical can be very, very hard. Your husband may be reaching his limits. I think you both need to seek help, separately and together. But it may be that he will not be able to stay with you. I have every sympathy with you both, it’s an absolutely horrible situation.

That sounds incredibly difficult. I think you need to take responsibility to actively seek out every possible avenue of medical help you can.

Loving & living with someone with mental illness is exhausting & depleting & will have a profound affect on your dc & dh.

I am the adult child of a parent who had / has significant problems & it's left me exhausted.

Seek help & don't only rely on your dh to ballast you & to be the anchor in your lives

I wish you well

People do have their limits. If he's reached his he's reached it.

You do have a massive responsibility to get a handle on this now you have kids though. It's going to affect them in a negative way eventually.

Maybe you need some sort of DBT.

This all sounds very hard on everyone, but your husband is entitled to say he’s reached a limit, living with someone with ongoing mental or physical health problems is incredibly hard and everyone has their limits on how long they can handle living in a situation.

I think you need to reach out to your GP and your midwife - the fact you recognise your behaviours aren’t how you want to be is actually a huge step.

Could you go to couples counselling together to talk to talk things through? Your husband needs support here as well.

We have inherited ocd in my family and my first every memories are of ocd behaviours. My mum has ocd and so does my children. Although sadly my daughter has it quite significantly and sounds like you I am sorry. It’s relentless and the whole family is effected but she can’t see past her obsessions and intrusive thoughts. Mine was made worse during pregnancy too.
my first suggestion would be refer yourself to Mind if you have one in your area or speak to your gp. The nhs was brilliant and gave me years of therapy.
it’s likely your meds needed to be higher - my daughter is on 125mg of sertraline and we need to go higher unfort
my son and myself have made significant progress but only because - in my son’s words when he was 8 - choose your greatest fear and risk that happening. I also realised that I was a role model for my kids and they were modelling their anxiety on mine. I had no choice but to be mindful of this
a therapist once said my parents did not know how to Manage their anxiety so were not able to teach me. A lot of this is working on anxiety reduction techniques like alernate nostril breathing to trigger your para nervous system

Your husband just cannot handle you freaking out about ridiculous things anymore, and he's allowed to feel that way because even you must see that worrying about stepping on a needle in the park is ridiculous.

Your responsibility now is to seek help, tell your MW, truthfully, how bad it has gotten as I cannot see how this will get better. In fact having a newborn will surely only make it worse and maybe you will need the help of a psychiatric Mum and baby unit then?

I hope your husband doesn't leave, as "in sickness and in health" etc, but I totally feel for him as living with someone as anxious and paranoid as you have described would be exhausting.......for you both.

I really hope you get some help 💐

How were the midwives unhelpful last time? Were they simply phoning to check in but not referring for more support?

Csn you afford private MH help? You can’t help your MH issues but your DH can’t help reaching a limit with them.

If you read your op again slowly. Maybe uou will be able to see it. Other than saying you know you’re difficult to live with, and then mitigating it with a “but I try really hard” there is no understanding given at all to the significant negative impact on others lives.

It is solely about uou and your need for people to put up with it and support you. As said, this is a key symptom of mental Illness, it makes the sick person inherently selfish as they cannot see past their own needs. It’s a core part of being ill. It is all consuming.

but you don’t say what treatment you are currently undergoing. Other than you called the mental health midwife last pregnancy . Well over a year ago.

what about now, what have you been doing in the last year to try to get well. It is one thing to be ill. It is another to not be having it constantly managed and expecting others to just live with it. It is particularly important now there are children involved. Whose lives cannot be significantly negatively impacted by this.

so call your doctor tomorrow morning and say you need an urgent referral for help.

good luck, I hope you get it at least under control to make everyone’s, including your own, life more bearable.

Am sorry but I agree with many pp, your dh is allowed to reach his limit.

When you say I reached out to the mental health midwife's last pregnancy and found that they didn't help at all they just phoned me constantly!

That does sound like you were getting a lot of help from them, what would have been what you were looking for from them? They can't really offer things like cbt or counselling I don't think?

Definitely speak to your gp fo.r the CMHT

Whilst not ruling out your GP

Can you commit to practice to bring your nervous system and vagus nerve into balance? Meditation, yoga, chanting, breathing exercises, vigorous exercise, remove caffeine and alcohol.

Calming your nervous system is going to help your mind deal more rationally with intrusive thoughts and can very very quickly (days) show in your demeanour and coping skills.

It is surely worth considering.

Calm the breath and nervous system and the mind will follow.

Again...not saying don't go to GP but trying to offer an alternative or addition

OP, two pregnancies in such a short space of time are bound to make your anxiety worse. You need to have an open conversation with your DH and lay it out. You are noticing your behaviour is difficult and it's difficult for everyone, yourself included. I think you need to look into getting a referral to perinatal MH team asap. Also you might need other therapies, either a combination of different meds and therapy together, or perhaps other therapies, such as hypnotherapy, EMDR? If it's that severe I would say what yoivehad to date hasn't worked for you so you need to explore different meds and therapies or a combination thereof. You will get better and it will get easier for all of you but in time and you need the right help. I've been at both ends of having anxiety and also having a partner and mother with other MH issues and it is really hard, I have a lot of sympathy for you and him. First and foremost I think you focus on what is good for you now, what you enjoy doing, what makes you calmer and what is healthy for you and baby. Do it every day, prioritise it. Ask DH to take more care of your little one, draw in others to help. You need to feed yourself with good, nurturing activities to have the energy needed to deal with your anxiety, otherwise if you've run out and you don't refill your cup you know you'll struggle. Don't be so hard on yourself. It's a difficult time, but you'll get there 💐 xx

Contact the specialist midwives and ask for referral to the perinatal cmht.

Are you medicated?

You may want to consider this of not.

Sympathies, I suffered with OCD terribly. I say suffered in the past tense as fortunately I am mostly recovered now, although I do have to argue with the OCD most days.

The thing that worked for me was realizing that bad things had already happened to me so my OCD wasn't 'saving' me at all. I tried to imagine OCD as a little person in my head. I then started getting really angry at the OCD person as it was ruining my life. I also realized that actually, I have very little control over most things in life and that life isn't and cannot be perfect, despite what the OCD tried to convince me. Nothing I do and nothing you do can make everything bad go away. That is simply not how life works. You know that, the same as I know that.

I also realized how much of my time I was wasting. It truly felt so freeing to say fuck it and even more so when nothing awful immediately happened. And even if it had, we are not the rulers of the world, bad things happening is most of the time completely out of our control.

I think medication and therapy can only take you so far. You need to really really want to challenge your OCD. I used it as an almost crutch for so long as I wasn't ready to really make myself vulnerable and really hit my anxiety head on, the rituals I did kept the anxiety away, if only for a bit before the whole damn sequence would start again. But my life was worth more than that and one day I snapped.

Think about all the things that have happened in your life, good and bad. How has the OCD protected you? How have your rituals helped? It's not helping you - it is going to destroy your marriage. It is destroying your life. It is going to affect your children. Get mad - take your life back.

Who prescribed your meds? I think you need a referral to a psychiatrist- this is beyond General Practice and you need specialist help.
DS 20 has significant mental health issues. I've come close to tipping over myself over the last few years, and now his younger brother is struggling as it has been traumatic for us to live with. It's awful for you but it is also awful for your DH.
Keep trying- some meds work for some people, others don't. Some need dosages monitoring. Psychiatrists have much more knowledge than GPs and can prescribe meds off licence too. Keep fighting for something that helps.

Remedial hypnosis gets in touch with your subconscious mind - the part of your mind that controls your imagination and emotions, both of which are currently in overdrive - in order to change your thought patterns, simply because they are not helping you at the moment.

Have a look at this video about anxiety;

OP - you are setting yourself up to be critised by posting in AIBU - I think you might want to ask mumsnet to move you to the neurodiverse mum's net board.
People who don't have OCD can't really imagine what its like to have your brain be obsessive about something your own brain realises is not rational - but your fight or flight response has been triggered and its like having a zillion phobias.
My daughter's OCD is mostly intrusive thoughts and she wants reassurance...but she can never be reassured. Giving her reassurance only feeds her OCD...not giving her reassurance only feeds her anxiety which triggers her OCD. Its tricky so you have my sympathy but the best thing you can do is look for 'your tribe' people who understand you rather than posting on a general public thread.

Everyone experiences things differently, but my other half used to be like this. Excessive hand washing, extreme caution, anxiety over the smallest things. Literally, he needed CONSTANT reassurance. I could never understand it, he showed an extreme aversion to risk. Not necessarily danger, he was happy flying, or rollercoasters etc… but more hygiene and decision making, he would throw away his coffee at Starbucks if he saw the server push the lid down by the mouth but. Needed to talk every decision through however trivial. I suggested therapy and he refused.

Ive found he’s much better these days, not 100% but it’s night and day honestly. It happened gradually. The only thing I can think that changed is people around him, I always talked everything through with him, explained if he made a bad decision it wasn’t the end of the world etc and wouldn’t change anything in any meaningful way… I encouraged better boundaries with family members (who definitely triggered his OCD), over time he’s become far more confident.

Does your husband support you emotionally? do you find people in your life and the things they say etc… to be triggering?

It sounds like you did get support in your first pregnancy, as lots of regular phone calls is support.

what other support did you want from the midwife?

can you tell your current midwife that you need more help? They may be able to refer to the perinatal mental health psychiatrist/team ( it is called something similar to that anyway).

however, as others have said, your mental health is affecting your husband and he does not have to stay with you if he is unable to cope. He needs to do what is best for him.

That's unpleasant.

@MNHQ please can you move this thread to Mental Health or Pregnancy for OP, AIBU is not the right forum.

And those of you who can't help but be nasty, please keep your nastiness to yourselves or comment elsewhere. She doesn't need your BS now.

Thank you for this. Already felt like I was the worst partner and mother alive but that's helped even more 👍

Hello OP- it’s really brave of you to post about your situation and shows real insight too about impact in yourself and family of your MH. Please talk to your midwife urgently and insist she makes a referral to the perinatal mental health team for you now - they are the service you should be accessing and will have a psychiatrist and specialist CPN to assess and support you, midwives alone are not enough as support. As another poster has already said GP is not appropriate for your condition and it needs more specialist care.

As much as I sympathise with you OP, living with someone with acute MH issues is utterly exhausting, thankless and the onus is on that person to always tolerate all kinds of behaviour. In an ideal world it would be like the movies where you have ‘your person’ who loves you no matter what and you work through issues together. In reality, it’s so fucking tedious being the ‘strong’ one and it’s a role that taken for granted. What I see you doing OP is effectively shrugging and saying “it’s who I am” but that isn’t helpful and it isn’t healthy. You need to reassure your DH you’re doing all you can to get better, and mean it - your family need you to be healthy.