Alcohol and Anxiety - Please help me :(

[Louise990]

First of all I should mention that I suffer with severe anxiety and OCD - I'm currently having CBT but I'm just not coping.

I'm 35 weeks pregnant and I've got worked myself up into such a state.

I haven't touched a single drop of alcohol during my pregnancy and would never in a million years dream of doing so - I love my baby way too much..

Last night I was sat on the sofa with my boyfriend and I turned to him and kissed him on the lips. It completely slipped my mind that he was drinking a can of beer and the moment I felt that his lips were cold and moist I completely froze and had the biggest panic attack.

I wiped my lips with my sleeve straight away and then got a baby wipe and scrubbed them. I didn't taste any alcohol but feeling the cold and wetness from his lips was enough to send my OCD out of control.

I appreciate any replies but please don't try and make me feel better by saying a drop of alcohol in pregnancy is not harmful - this is irrelevant to me. There is no excuse whatsoever to drink any form of alcohol in pregnancy in my opinion and knowing that other women have sips or even the odd glass of wine/can of beer when pregnant doesn't comfort me.

I feel like I've ruined my pregnancy and can't cope knowing that I've managed to avoid it for 35 weeks and now I've gone and done this.

Please help me.

[Nishky]

treacle I didn't accept for years that I had PND - I just thought I was a crap parent. I'm sorry to hear it affected you for such a long time. I watched a programmer years later where Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen's wife described her PND and it was such a shock-everything she described was how I had felt at the time.

[Louise990]

Thank you. I'll never give up trying. I tell my midwife and therapist everything, my GP knows too but she keeps pushing me towards medication which I'm reluctant to take until baby is born.

The hardest part is to separate reality from anxiety. I can think rationally sometimes and know that when I kissed him that I didn't taste or smell any alcohol on him (it was only a peck!) and that whatever traces there were on his lips would have been tiny. I wiped it off immediately anyway even if it was just saliva!

But when anxiety takes over and I start panicking, all I can think is that I've gone 35 weeks without a drop of alcohol and then I go and ruin it all. I may as well have downed the whole can for how guilty I feel.

I don't know how a 'normal' person would have reacted in my situation.

It's so exhausting. I just want to enjoy my pregnancy and stop messing things up.

[differentnameforthis]

But when anxiety takes over and I start panicking, all I can think is that I've gone 35 weeks without a drop of alcohol and then I go and ruin it all. I may as well have downed the whole can for how guilty I feel.

You haven't gone 35 weeks with out a drop of alcohol & then ruined it...you have still gone 35 weeks with out a drop.

Alcohol hasn't gone into your system via a kiss, anymore than it would have done so by you holding a glass with alcohol in it.

It was a kiss. Chances are, there was no alcohol on his lips, therefore no chance of anything getting passed your lips.

You need to do whatever it is you have been told to do in these situations & keep telling yourself that you have done nothing wrong!

There is no excuse whatsoever to drink any form of alcohol in pregnancy in my opinion and knowing that other women have sips or even the odd glass of wine/can of beer when pregnant doesn't comfort me.

You don't seem to understand that YOU HAVEN'T ACTUALLY CONSUMED ALCOHOL, so how can you have ruined anything? Please relax if you can, you haven't ruined anything!

[treaclesoda]

honestly OP, a 'normal' person wouldn't have given it a second thought, it would have been as irrelevant to them as if they had kissed him and he had traces of toothpaste on his lips.

I'm not posting that to make you feel worse (I'm an anxiety sufferer, so I do understand the irrational nature of it), because tbh you can't feel any worse than you do. But you are suffering a very extreme level of anxiety for something that is as close to 100% safe as anything can be.

[DocDaneeka]

Speaking as someone who has recurrent anxiety, and did take medication for PND - a 'normal' person just wouldn't have registered an issue with the beer. Just WOULD not have occurred that there was a problem. If they'd accidentally downed a vodka and coke thinking it was coke, they'd probably think, 'oh dear how silly, no harm done' (and would know this from reading the research and statistics)

My anxiety is intermittent now, and I feel like I could do with a checklist headed 'A normal person would think: '
Anxiety REALLY messes with your head. I look back on episodes and think WTF was I thinking. But by god it felt totally logical and rational at the time. I really feel for you OP. Hope you can get some help with this. Counselling and medication have worked wonders for me. I'm still not fully over it and I'm still waiting for CBT which I have fairly high hopes for.

[CabbagePatchCheryl]

OP I think you are very brave and strong - well done you. You are poorly but you refuse to give up and you clearly have so much love and drive to protect this lovely baby you are going to have. I know that's got itself muddled up with your illness a bit but that doesn't diminish it.

You haven't messed anything up, and I think you know that really.

I hope you'll keep pushing forward - use the techniques you're being taught, communicate with your GP etc, advocate for yourself but also take on board their advice. Personally I have a good feeling that you and your baby will be just fine, one day at a time.

I've got to go now but I wish you luck and positivity

[squizita]

Doc Yeah I could do with a list like that too! On a bad day I check the doors locked 5 times, then get DH to check it (in case I did it badly) ... on a good day not. Normal people know crime doesn't vary with seratonin levels. And that I am perfectly capable of checking a door.

It's such a bloody stupid thing to have. So frustrating.

[treaclesoda]

did any of you other sufferers ever look at other people and think they We're the strange ones?

I used to think 'how can you all just go about your business day to day, do you not realise you should be worried sick about x,y, Z?'

[squizita]

Yeah. And the judgeyness is part of it I think - it's the anxiety disguising itself. Particularly bad when either something happens (randomly to someone in the news or local e.g. in my case a victim of burglary or someone being falsely blamed for something awful) to 'validate' an obsession, or when the media/someone you know actually praises you because they read the daily mail or just have no idea for being 'vigilant' or having 'willpower'.

[Louise990]

I'm feeling a bit more positive today but my anxiety is still trying to tell me that I was careless and stupid to kiss him.

I love my OH to bits but he's made me feel worse by calling it a 'mistake' and saying that he could understand why pregnant women wouldn't want to kiss someone who was drinking a can of beer. I wouldn't have done it by choice but I completely forgot that he was drinking so didn't see the risk.

I didn't smell or taste any alcohol thank god but I realised within a second that he was drinking as his lips felt cold and wet and I noticed the can on the side.

I don't want to view this as a mistake. I just want to put it away somewhere and move on. Desperately.

The issue here is not that I think it's harmed the baby - no alcohol passed my lips. The problem is my OCD and my need to avoid alcohol completely otherwise everything is ruined.

I don't mind being around people who are drinking and if I was anxious about something else at the time like I am now then the issue with the kis would have probably never crossed my mind as I would be too consumed by something else..

For a while now it's just been one anxiety after another and when one starts to fade away then another one creeps in and takes its place, just like this one did. I'm hoping that this is just another one of those things that will be forgotten when something new comes along but I can't see a way out yet.

[squizita]

You need to talk to your OH about helpful and unhelpful things to say, avoiding triggers. I'm a bit puzzled tbh why he would say that, it sounds the worst thing to say and factually incorrect.
I had to ask DH never to talk about "hypochondria" with me: due to being called this as a child I tended to doubt my instincts and this has impacted on my health at times. If I wonder if I should call the MW he is banned from suggesting "no" - because weirdly my fear of calling then makes me anxious but guilty to call.
It is something you need to be clear on.

[Louise990]

When he first said it I cried so much and felt worse than ever. I was starting to think that everything was okay and that it was a silly worry but then as soon as he said that it set my anxiety off again. I feel like such a failure.

I asked him why he would say that to me and he said he didn't mean it the way I took it and that I was 'fishing' for it. I might have been seeking reassurance but that's the last thing I wanted to hear.

Now the truth is all muddled up in my mind again but I'm just trying to rely on my own thoughts which is pretty difficult at the moment.

[dottytablecloth]

I feel sorry for you as you sound so stressed and uptight over this.

You know that you haven't actually consumed any alcohol? I don't see why you are getting so worked up. I mean this in the most genuine way as I really don't know anything about OCD!

In what way do you feel that kissing your boyfriend, even if he had been drinking, has ruined your pregnancy?

[Louise990]

dotty thank you for your honest reply.

I know I haven't consumed any alcohol but my anxiety tells me that what I did is just as bad because I kissed my boyfriend when he had been drinking.

I feel like I've ruined my pregnancy because I should have known better and before this I'd had 0% alcohol and now it feels like I've broken this.

[treaclesoda]

I think I understand what you mean OP.

Am I right in thinking that it's sort of safety behaviour? To feel 'safe' you need to be sure that you haven't allowed alcohol to touch your lips for the duration of your pregnancy. In the same way that someone else with OCD might need to lock and unlock the door a certain number of times. Or fold their clothes in a particular way.

You can't start your 'ritual' again because you can't go back to the start of your pregnancy and begin again. So you are anxious.

Does that make sense?

[Louise990]

treacle it's sort of like that yeah.

Any involvement with alcohol in general is a complete no no for me. I check ingredients on pasta sauce etc to make sure it doesn't contain wine or even wine vinegar and I wouldn't feel comfortable holding someone's drink for them while they tied their shoe laces or whatever which might sound ridiculous.

It is safety behaviour as you say and now I feel like I've lost control because of what happened. It just doesn't make sense to me and I don't know now to rationalise it so that I can enjoy the rest of my pregnancy.

[PacificDogwood]

Oh, Louise, you poor thing.
The problem is your anxiety/OCD and overanalysing, not whether or not you had a molecule of alcohol from this kiss. But I think you know that.
On this occasion it was the thought of alcohol, the next time it could be germs or radiation or who knows what.

Please continue with challenging your unhelpful thinking - you are making yourself ill because it is impossible to stick to the levels of perfection you have set yourself up for.
Having a baby will expose you to far more situation in which you don't have total control over what happens and you have to be able to relinquish that control without feeling sick about it.

Accept you don't have control over everything. Accept that there are things that you'll do that will not be perfect or ideal. Remind yourself over and over and OVER again that No Harm will come from minor transgressions.

Give yourself a bit of slack. Look after yourself. Love yourself. Do things that make you feel good. Look forward to this baby and enjoy the thought of it growing inside you . You are its mother - now and in future.

I'll say it again - your problem is not about alcohol in pregnancy, it is about this need for control. Abandon the idea of being in control before you have the baby, otherwise things will become much more stressful for you once the baby arrives.

[Louise990]

Pacific last week it was germs, then I convinced myself I'd banged my bump and hurt baby..now this. I just think that this is so, so much worse because it involves alcohol. I wish I could go back to my previous worried because they seem tiny in comparison to this. If only it was that easy.

[PacificDogwood]

Why is it worse because it involves (a molecule) of alcohol?
You do know that many many women do not totally avoid alcohol in pregnancy and have healthy babies, don't you?
Do you see how HOW you think about alcohol is making you feel worse, not what actually happened.

You must try and find a way to get a handle on this before the baby arrives as babies can be very scary to look after indeed.

The problem is not alcohol or germs or minor bumps, it is your anxiety and what sounds like your need to be in total 'control' over this pregnancy. You are not in control, none of us are, and I know that is terrifying. Allow that thought (OMG, this is scary) and then try and let it go: let it float off, further and further away from you, like a log on a lazy river. Or like a cloud in a breezy summer sky.

It is ok to feel frightened, particularly when you are expecting. It is not healthy to ruminated and go over and over and over and small non-event until that is all you can hold in your mind. You are thinking these unhelpful, intrusive thoughts, you can send them packing, really, you can. With practice and persistence you can at least assert control over how what you think affects you. Easier said than done, I know, but it can be done.

[Louise990]

I think it's worse this time because my mum was an alcoholic and she passed away due to cancer a couple of years ago - I'm not sure whether the cancer was linked to the alcohol but there's a good chance that it was. I resent alcohol because it's had a huge negative impact on my life and still does to this day.

Before I became pregnant I used to enjoy a drink so it's not like I'm teetotal but now I'm pregnant my anxiety/OCD has latched on to this 'non-event' as you say and is running with it.

I didn't even taste OR smell alcohol on him, the only reason I panicked is because his lips were cold and moist so it was then that I realised he had a beer. Literally NONE passed my lips so the danger of it getting to the baby is not my concern.

I'm pretty sure that if I was in the middle of being anxious about something else such as the germ thing then I wouldn't have even reacted to the kiss. It's so frustrating.

[squizita]

It's a ritualised behaviour - I have them too. Break the ritual and it's like the charm has been broken and you're exposing yourself to danger in general: everything is ruined.
Eg on a bad day, I need to check the door is locked 5 times then look at an object in my garden to anchor that. Of course it means nothing, if I did it once or 6 times its still locked: but if I don't do it "right" I will not be able to shake the feeling I've done something bad/lazy can't be bothered to secure my house ... so if anything happened (not just theft- flood or anything) it will somehow be my fault for neglecting such a simple task.
It's not the lock ... its the ritualised safety behaviour.

OP sounds very similar with alcohol.
It's not the booze. It's the conscious avoiding of it in a deliberate way which reassures her.

Thankfully I haven't had a bad day in a few months... Thanks to CBT etc. OP I urge you to be assertive and demand help - or a new therapist if yours doesn't help you.

[squizita]

...and I agree with OP about the future.

I "caught" my anxiety and ritual behaviour off a parent who would show symptoms (eg "the car was broken into because you left a toy in there last week and we should never leave things in cars", repeatedly asking if things were done "are you sure" so I now think multiple checks are normal). Essentially, I learned to be anxious and repeat behaviour: luckily I'm not fully OLD but it does impact on my life.

That's why I'm working very hard to sort it now. I would hate to accidentally give a kid anxiety.

[misskipper]

Hi Louise,

Define what you mean by "I feel like I've ruined my pregnancy....". What does a 'ruined' pregnancy feel like to you? Is the baby still moving?

[squizita]

Misskipper I think the OP has clarified this up thread. It isn't a physical thing.
Asking her to double check movement if it hasn't been an issue could be triggering (in the same way as her oh saying "a mistake").
For normal people " you can not be too vigilent about movement" ... For someone with anxiety who is looking for a problem or new safety ritual?

Put it this way. A couple of weeks ago I spent several days not really eating/sleeping just laying on my left side checking movement. In tears. For no reason bar a triggering comment (and message) on mumsnet (that because I quoted NHS/count the kicks advice I was being too lax).
Thankfully I use "Count The Kicks" method religiously and DH convinced me that as patterns/safety nets go, their advice is much more organised than lying there. He also prompted me to use some of my coping strategies.

[squizita]

To clarify: I felt regular movement throughout. It was the "have you felt enough? Internet strangers think your baby might be in danger" trigger which made me act irrationally.