My husband cannot handle my feelings

[Volley2014]

I am quite an anxious and fearful person. Stems from tricky childhood, where I was put in ongoing situations which left me feeling on edge/abandoned/without means to survive (i.e. food, drink, go to toilet, keep warm etc) and like my parents were constantly in danger. I am having therapy for this. PTSD and attachment therapy.

Even as an adult I tend to fear the worst case scenario, am tormented by anxieties of death/destruction/illness/suffering/losing my home/not being able to help people I love or to prevent their suffering. I have a lot of anxieties I need to process every day, even more since I got married, because - for me - adding people and their lives to my life only increases my collection of thoughts and potential terrible scenarios and makes me worry for them too. To be honest, I suffered less with anxiety when I was single and I saw nobody, as I only had my own feelings to process and console.

Naturally my DH gets the brunt of my negative fantasies. As is the way, I seem to have married someone who is (or appears to be) completely fearless, or rather, doesn't "welcome" fear as an emotion and would rather experience any other emotion other than fear.

So when I tell him about my worries concerning myself or him or our family, he reacts very badly and gets angry with me. He says they are a complete fantasy. Obviously they are because they are not (yet) a reality, which is why I feel I have to process them in order to know what I would do if they did actually become a reality. I also feel I have to know what HE would do should they become a reality, and try to ask him "what he would do if..."

DH just doesn't want to deal with these hypothetical scenarios.

I know that most of this problem is me, but he fails to understand that I just need to go though my worries for a while and he just needs to listen and tell me that they won't happen - and then I'll calm down again.

I have now become very fearful of abandonment. And when DH goes out I just cannot deal with it. I either feel something awful is going to happen to him, or he is going to cheat and leave me - both scenarios which will collapse the safe world I have constructed by myself, and so tentatively and slowly and fearfully decided to share with him (PFB on way, joint money, house etc.)

I can work myself up into such a state some days, where I feel that I cannot trust him, where he is secretly against me, where something might happen to him or me or a future in which something bad happens, that I just feel like walking away from everything and detaching again.

Tonight is one of those nights. He is out. I just feel like I want to disappear into the night and never see him again - even though I know this is completely irrational, and I have no cause to feel like this, other than his refusal to process my feelings with me.

What should I do?

You have an amazing insight as to why you react in the way that you do. Use that to rationalize your feelings, not many people can do this as I'm sure you are aware. I suppose it's about probabililities, your rational beliefs know that your fears are unfounded but your past experiences cloud your judgement. How likely is it that he is up to something, what other clues are there? Tormenting yourself has become second nature. I wish you peace x

I had this to an extent, but mine was actually made worse by my ex. It is very very unhealthy and will only cause your relationship even more strain, I realised the hard way that obsessing over things that haven't and may never happen only stands to ruin the now. Your DP can't understand your thought pattern and to be honest he shouldn't have to go through those things with you, reassure you yes, but he doesn't have to put himself through the stress and worry of a problem that isn't a problem. In fact I found me behaving this way caused extra problems and just gave me more to add to the spiral of things I had to worry about that day!

Ex made the situation worse by reinforcing my belief that I can't cope. He would drop comments like "you won't cope without me" and "I know you will never leave" etc. Well I left him and he was the one who suddenly did not cope and I was fine. I realised that worrying about a problem doesn't stop it from happening and being focused on it before it is an event doesn't make you any more prepared. Ex was a last minute person, so would add to the worry, or he would say he would sort it etc but in the end it would fall to me to fix it, arrange it, sort it all out etc at the very last minute.

Now I'm with a new DP and he is amazing, I never worry with him because I know nothing bad will happen, he won't let it if it's preventable and if it isn't preventable he will be there and do what he can. I can't ask for more than that. Is your OH usually supportive? Have you been like this in other relationships?

Try to remember that working yourself into a state over something that hasn't and probably won't happen isn't helpful to anybody, least of all you. X

I understand that you think him going through the "ideas" with you seems like a relief.
You say to him "But what about.... and what if ....what will you do if..." and he reassures you.
Except...
That never works. He is not reassuring you, he is participating in you anxiety.
You worry, you go to him, he reassures you, you feel happy, until you can think of a new worry.
If it really helped, you would be doing it less as time went on, not more.
The problem is, you will still be anxious, just worried about something else. You will keep finding new scenarios and ideas to worry over, and keep expecting him to reassure you.
It becomes a never ending loop, where he is receiving non stop stress too. It is exhausting and frustrating, and futile.
Get help, ctb is amazing for this sort of thing. Keep trying, this is something that could really make it hard to maintain a strong relationship, especially if you are adding new changes and situations, like a new baby.

If you're having therapy and it's not working, please seek alternative therapy or medication. Your DH is presumably not a health professional or an expert in psychology and, rather than 'failure to understand' or him being especially fearless, I think he is trying to deal with the excessive anxiety/paranoia in the only way he knows how. I have a lot of sympathy for him because I'm currently trying to deal with a family member who is suffering from a MH condition and nothing anyone can say convinces her that she isn't under some kind of threat. It's extremely upsetting and stressful.

I can be a bit like this. I think cbt is good. I think realising your thoughts of abandonment are multiplied by your past, rather than on how bad it would be in reality helps rationalise. For me, it helps to know I would, in the end, cope fine, if someone left me, or something bad happened. Sympathies. Sounds quite torturous. In the end there are no guarantees for anyone and finding path to being autonomous, yet loving, but not detached is tricky like you say.