Can anyone help me to understand stress and perhaps depression (long, sorry)

[howardsway]

DH and I have very different personalities but first I should say that I love him very very much and he is a great husband and father.

I am a positive person, the glass is not just half full it is full to overflowing. DH is very negative, the glass is not half empty it is empty, with perhaps a few dregs in the bottom.

We have a very straightforward, non stressful life. We have 2 lovely, healthy DCs and a 3rd on the way. Our parents are both alive and well and we have no family stresses. He earns a high salary, works close to home and I work part time as a consultant when it suits us - but we can manage without. We live in a lovely town where he said he always wanted to live and his commute has been cut from 1.5 hours when we lived in London to 15 minutes! I am currently not working so there is no home pressure on him.

However he is always, always stressed and worrying. From minor stresses and over reactions to whether or not we will get a parking place to major stress over work situations which manifest themselves in a perception of poor health. He recently made a very rare error of judgement at work which has prayed on his mind around the clock and now he is has self diagnosed stomach ulcers, and also skin cancer. He blames his constant tiredness and health conditions on 'stress'.

The crux of the issue is that I can't understand where this stress comes from. He has what I would call a 'pressurised' job which befits the high salary which he has always chased but I don't think it has to be stressful. His boss is an arse to lots of people but respects DH - he cannot claim to be bullied and has alot of flexibility over his role. What he calls stresses, I call difficult situations to be managed (for many years I have had a similar role). The problem is when he had far lower paid jobs with less responsibility his behaviours (stress/worry), were exactly the same although he can't see this himself.

A recent non work example would be during this pregnancy when I had an amnio - this was private because the odds were not close to the NHS borderline. While I focused on the next step (the amnio procedure), DH asked detailed questions about the eventual termination because to him it was a foregone conclusion that the baby didn't have Downs but a condition which was incompatible with life. The results were clear but we endured weeks of him being depressive about it. This is repeated regularly on a myriad of isses. NOTHING bad has happened! Even when he was made redundant 15 years ago it worked out fantastically.

Its clearly a very deep seated issue with which I can't identify and I just feel like I am the opposite of a help to him. On a good day (today) I want to understand and help him. On a bad day I feel so angry that he can't see how unbelievably blessed he is and is wasting away precious moments. So many people we know have real, heart breaking problems from lost and sick children to dying parents and redundancy without hope of employment.

My big big concern is that one day soon he will suffer a nervous breakdown really about nothing important (money/jobs are not important), or his worst fears will be realised and he won't be able to cope with a real situation.

Sorry this is a very long ramble but does anyone have any insights which might help me to help him ? I do know he's a potent mixture of perfectionism and lacking in confidence (don't know why he's gorgeous and great at his work).

He isn't a mixture of perfectionism and lacking in self confidence - the two go hand in hand. After a lifetime of having that type of reaction to things, it almost becomes a personal mantra - that you have to be hyper vigilant and always plan for the worst possible outcome in order to be able to avoid it, and the more perfect your life is, the more you have to lose, so the more you have to worry about. So reminding him how perfect his life is and how wonderful you think he is is just reminding him how much he's got to lose, and if he does lose it all, he probably will blame himself at first, because he's spent a lifetime building up a semi-conscious belief that he has managed to get where he is by being the way he is, so if he sits back and relaxes or makes the wrong move, he will lose it all, and if he loses it all, it's because he wasn't vigliant and self-critical enough and because he is the way he is, he maybe believes he won't be able to cope if he loses it all like someone else might be able to, so he must do everything in his power to keep all that he has, so he doesn't accelerate everything going wrong and everyone realising he isn't the man they thought he was if it ever does... But until someone actually does have their worst nightmare happen to them and has to confront the harmfulness of their belief system, or exhausts themselves so much with their own self-made stress that they realise they must confront their own attitude, it is quite hard to persuade them that a touch of relaxation therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy, and several brisk walks and a swim a day might help them think in a way slightly less reminiscent of a tightly coiled spring!

You could tell your dh he's lucky not to have a partner with the same personality!... Otherwise, I think he has to want to help himself??? Maybe someone else could be more constructive...

Thanks Rabbitstew - that was constructive. I've fleetingly thought in the past that its a 'shame' he has no experience of what a genuinely stressful experience is like. I suffered a sibling bereavement and witnessed subsequent parental breakdown a long time (going to out myself here) and that may have been quite influential in my attitude.

The thing is he wouldn't see his life as perfect at all - there's always something superficial wanting. I just can't bear the thought of him going through a breakdown for perception of stress rather than something truly devastating.

He thinks I'm unsympathetic about his stress and health conditions (there are currently no diagnosed conditions) but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be sympathetic about or what acceptable noises would be.

Would you recommend I go along with the seriousness of the conditions, rather than, for example, reassuring him that pain in his knee isn't indicative of skin cancer from a small mole! At the moment I veer between being reassuring and frustrated.

All Easter he has been just like a coiled spring. I think he actually would love to be diagnosed with a stomach ulcer as they would support his belief that his life is highly stressful. He was really annoyed when I read from NHS direct that ulcers were not thought to be caused by stress and said it was rubbish. I wasn't trying to wind him up.

He is often aware and jokes retrospectively of the irrational nature of his behaviour re non work issues so I think he may end up accepting some kind of therapy. He has a docs appointment tomorrow to discuss either stomach ulcers or skin cancer...I will suggest he talks about stress management too although will be pushing it for a 5 min appointment.

Otherwise at a loss for how I should respond.

Well, if you are highly and constantly stressed or anxious, you eventually lower your immune system. If he wanted to do his best to cure his health problems, he should start with the stress/anxiety and work from there, because stress/anxiety exacerbates things it didn't cause in the first place, including stomach ulcers (which are most frequently caused by h pylori bacteria, but stress can make the symptoms more acute), heartburn, irritable bowel syndrome, eczema, autoimmune conditions, and insomnia and resulting exhaustion etc, etc. And lots of people suffer from health anxiety when they are feeling stressed, because stress does make you feel ill (or lots of people suffering from health anxiety, or any other anxiety disorder, find the condition stressful and that even relatively mild external stress exacerbates the condition!...). It is not unsympathetic to express concern that you don't think his personal method of stress management (to ask the GP to rule out serious conditions in order to calm himself down and have something health related to focus his mind on) is actually doing his stress levels much good and you would really like him to seek advice on alternative and longer lasting ways of dealing with stress, because you would hate to see him making himself ill with worry and drive himself towards a self-fulfilling prophecy.

ps it is never a perception of stress, it is stress - different people have different thresholds. You dh is highly stressed and anxious. He gets stressed easily and that is genuine and a highly unpleasant physical experience for him. You can't "talk sense into him," because what is stressful for him is stressful for him - he has to learn how to change the way he reacts to the stress feeling, so that his own thoughts don't make it spiral out of control. Until he can get control of his own thoughts, you trying to calm him down is just providing a sounding board to argue against and prove he is right, or at the least, prove that you might be wrong and he could be right.

It does sound like he suffers from some sort of anxiety disorder. He seems to be catastrophizing simple events. That must be very stressful for you both.

Encourage him to chat to the GP tomorrow about his anxiety and woes, etc. Agree, cognitive behavioural therapy would be beneficial to him.

Well I have to say I can relate to your husband as he sounds similar to myself.
You are so lucky to have the personality you do and you were probably born like it. Happy and optimistic !
A few years ago when I suffered from stress I read the book'' self help for your nerves'' and took prescribed anti depressants. For the first time in my life i stopped worrying and actually started to enjoy life more. But I am not sure we should be taking medicine just to make us all happy extroverts .I do not think that is the answer.I think you need to accept him for the neurotic personality he is and just support him. One day when a disaster strikes he might just surprise you and himself.

Thanks both - this is really helpful. We are so different that I can miss things like there being no such thing as a 'perception' of stress and the very real link between stress and immunity (I have never suffered from long term stress or anxiety but have had my share of stress headaches and low immunity when working at full speed which I tend to forget).

Anyway we've had a lovely evening because of your input - (including an hour spent comparing pictures of skin conditions online together!!)

Will look at CBT - he would be open minded about it. Although when things peak as they have done in the last few weeks, he can't see beyond the immediate stresses, once the fog starts to clear he can talk rationally and doesn't enjoy being this way and I'm pretty sure he had some kind of therapy as a child for OCD.

I'm glad it was helpful . OCD is considered an anxiety disorder, btw.

Sometimes people fall into the trap of thinking negatively and it becomes second nature to live like this over time. It is possible however, to retune the brain to think positively instead if he actually wants to change! In my job I help people reset negative mindsets and I can tell you it is very possible to do so! Habits take approx 28 days to break and the success rates are high. Have a look at NLP and self hypnosis tapes as a start

Also google 'the stress society' ....they have some really useful resources on managing stress