What an extremely difficult situation for everyone.
I was with you 100% up until you mentioned that your children can see that something is seriously wrong. That’s not fair on them and the way you wrote it doesn’t seem particularly worried or understanding about the effect your illness is having on your children.
Or should I say, the effect of the way you are managing your illness is having on your children. Because it’s about getting it under control and learning ways to cope that don’t leave everyone around you emotionally damaged. And I say that not to hurt you, but as a wake up call because it’s easy to fall into a pattern of ‘just about surviving’ rather than striving for that bit further, and deciding that just because you Can go on this way, doesn’t mean you Should.
Im saying this as someone who has become seriously ill and disabled since my son was born, so have had to do all my parenting by putting my child first in a big way, and everyday I slap on my ‘mummy face’ which hides the pain and exhaustion and fear and worry, and I do it even if it’s killing me inside. Because I will not have my child’s mental health damaged by me. It’s really fucking hard and of course there are moments when I can’t do it, or I get it wrong, but the point is, it’s the focus of my life, to do my best for my little boy. Because it terrifies him when he can feel / see that his grown up, his foundation and protector and pillar of the world, when that person is falling apart and leaving him vulnerable... it’s terrifying and I don’t want to do that to him. I guess I’m very motivated as I don’t have anyone to take over for me, my husband left us when I got I’ll, and we have no other family now. But even if there was someone else, I don’t think I could just abdicate my responsibilities, my child needs me too much.
So that’s why I’m saying, hang on, you’ve lost all perspective to casually mention that your behaviour is at best unnerving and making your children very anxious themselves ...
Your husband has to share responsibility for this as well, as you say you were clear that this would happen and he ignored you. But, you can’t go on living like this, and you need to find other ways to cope rather than relying on your husbands physical presence. Please stop coasting along using this extremely difficult way to balance your illness. Just because this crutch is available to you, it doesn’t mean you should be using it. As you can now see, I hope.
On another note:
I sighed when I saw the same old mumsnet boogeyman being wheeled out. That completely inappropriate online diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder.
It mainly means that people think you’re being selfish, they cannot relate to you and they want to ‘other’ you, and also blame you.
But this self focused ness is what happens when you are living with an unmanaged mental health disorder (I mean the one you actually have been diagnosed with, anxiety!). When your only ways to cope, the only ways to control the worst symptoms, are about controlling the people around you, everything becomes about the illness, and by extension, you. And this really isn’t a sustainable situation, and it isn’t going to bring you happiness, or the people close to you happiness either. You are all in thrall to the mental illness, vs it having less power, iyswim?
To some extent your illness will always have to be worked around in some ways, just like my physical one does (exactly the same as in fact, no difference :) ). It’s finding the balance so your illness is not the master and your family are all the servants.
The idea is to find ways of doing things that makes the illness fade into the background and allows you to be free to be yourself again and do the things that are important to you... however, and this shouldn’t really need saying, these ways of doing things should make your illness fade into the background and free your loved ones as well as you. Not chain them up instead of you.
The classic mistake healthy people tend to make is in thinking that by making any adjustments you are ‘giving in’ to the illness and you therefore should cope without any adjustments or taking into account your illness at all... which always ends badly! But so does crowning your illness master of the house and lord of anyone who tries to have anything to do with you. That doesn’t work either.
The way to try and live happily with a long term illness is to have insight into your illness, the triggers and your needs, and find good solutions to meet those needs and stop setting off those triggers. I’d say you’ve found partial solutions but they are good solutions as they aren’t sustainable and they rely on another person being a servant to your illness (master of the house type of thinking). So you need to start again and come up with better solutions...
Eg I need to schedule and plan everything, so I can pace & manage my health resources to spend on the important things like picking DS up at school once a week. If I don’t schedule other activities and guard that health & energy, I can’t do it. So it’s adjusting one area of life eg scheduling everything (no more spontaneous stuff for me sadly!), & learning how to say no, in order to be free to do something super important to me and DS (being at the school gates).
That sounds a simple solution but actually loads of work has gone into making that possible. It’s also about being able to manage my activities because I have someone else to do things when I can’t (I’m bedbound 20-24hrs a day), so I have a PA/ carer. Which I hate the idea of (not the person!), but I have to have as there’s no other way to function and DS would be neglected if I didn’t have help. I had to acknowledge how ill I was and how disabled I am in order to get stuff in place that enables me to do something that’s important to my boy. If I’d just tried to ‘get over it’ and do everything without taking into account my illness, I’d have made myself even iller and less able to do things. If I’d have let my illness reign supreme I’d never be able to do anything as I wouldn’t be able to get it under control and manage it and prioritise my activities l. There are still times when it does all go to pot and it takes over, but it’s when I’ve had to do too much, and go beyond my capabilities that this happens, usually when a carer is sick.
I think you need to sit down, ideally with a mh professional, and really think about your coping strategies, and the adjustments that need to be made in order for your illness to be made less powerful in your life, and less powerful in your husband and children’s lives too.
Good luck 
