If you have a highly anxious relative, how do you manage?

[OHVanessaShanessaJenkins]

Anxiety is bloody horrendous for sufferers.
For those surrounding the anxious person it is also very very difficult.

I have a relative who goes from one anxiety situation to the next. Is currently needing diazepam to cope with a situation. There is absolutely no reasoning or sensibility getting through.
It is catastrophic. (GP prescribed diazepam to cope with the last event)

I wish I had the tools to help and deal with it.
I was wondering, what tips do you have to share so that I can do better.
Just to add, they point blank refuse any form of counselling so expert help is out of the question.

Feel so helpless and frustrated.

Yes we have two older people in our family very similar, and won’t try medication or counselling/therapy;
so I just speak to them as I would any other members of the family, and don’t adapt to their anxiety.

To add, I have had crippling anxiety, now largely managed with therapy and medication.

Do you live with them OP? I have this problem to a degree with my mother. She won't get help and drinks to self medicate, making it worse. So I just ignore it now, chat about light things, try to be kind to her. I used to avoid telling her anything real about my life as it was just not worth the stressy response. I'm trying to change this now and give her an opportunity to actually be my mother (reassuring, containing, calm...?) but it's hard.

No I don’t live with them but I am their number one go to person for support.

Try to detach. I used to worry about them but now I'll listen for a bit and switch off as it was dragging me into constant worrying.

This. I am also a deeply anxious person, but manage it and don’t let it impact others.

What little information they are exposed to results in catastrophic reactions of zero sleep, stops eating, sobbing and breaking down continuously, unable to function.
The family do not tell them anything, keeps them in the dark, when they do tell them, it’s a fraction of the situation because of these horrendous reactions.
I hate to think what they would do if told an entire story.

eg one of their kids was going to visit family which meant driving on motorways and a ferry ride. The kid knew that the mere mention of them driving on motorways would result in multiple phone calls, zero sleep leading up to, during and after the trip so they said they were hopping on the train for a quiet life.
It can be as benign as a trip.

I would not be if they do not seek help.

I cannot not be there. That is impossible.

Same

its like my DM is somehow using her anxiety about me as a control- and actually always has. It’s stopped me doing things in my life.

now she’s old and lives with us she fixes on things and catastrophic the the ultimate conclusion. Then cries when I refuse to engage with this (it’s usually about something that might happen to me or my DCs- not her). I think of it as her crying ‘at’ me.

she has a particular phobia too which has affected her/my/DFs whole life. She won’t even use the word of the phobia, or even discuss the actual subject of phobias. As a child I was told not to use the word: I now refuse to pander to this and use the word (not gratuitously - when we need to address something relevant)

I don’t have a solution other than avoiding situations and subjects, so watching with interest.

It’s the catastrophic reactions to problems.
The physical reaction as well as the physiological reaction.
They make themselves physically ill.
Yesterday, before the diazepam, they were gasping for breath, couldn’t breathe, had not slept or eaten for two days and nights.

It’s all attached to their now adult kids.
Any life challenge presenting, they react in this way.

Oh OP how awfully hard for you. You say it’s impossible to ‘not be there’ but can you start to think about detaching in some way?

You can’t sacrifice your life to this. I wonder if you would find some support through therapy yourself - in how to untangle some of this and the obligation you feel?

I think you need to view this as a choice, and as (probably unconscious) manipulation. You say it is ‘impossible’ for you not to be there as their main support person. What would happen if you said you are unable/unwilling to continue in this role unless they seek help for their anxiety? What would happen if there were no ‘audience’ for the self-starvation, sleeplessness, breathlessness?

What would you say is the reason this behaviour has become so ingrained?

And yes, absolutely to therapy for you, OP.

OP has this person always been 'Highly strung " throughout your life ?

They have not been this bad. It coincides with their kids becoming adults, I believe it to be an awful helplessness at not being able to make things better or take problems away from them as they could when they were children.

Also, we have an extremely traumatic history of a very very close relative who killed themselves many years ago. The devastating results of this has never left us. It has shaped and influenced everything from the day it happened to this day.

I think that my anxious relative thinks that her kids will do this when facing any life challenges.

My DM is like this and has been since I was a child. Its very, very wearing on those around them. No one tells my DM anything because she completely over-reacts. Maybe I've got cynical but I see it as a) a form of control and b) a way of attention seeking. I wish I knew how to deal with it.

It’s definitely not attention seeking. Honestly.
It is an almost visceral reaction that they have no control over.

It coincides with their kids becoming adults,

Which also often coincides with the menopause or peri at least. This is something worth seeking help with as it can make anxiety much worse, in fact many women report never having anxiety until then.

And yet this person is the direct cause of making his/her adult children’s lives far worse. It’s breath-takingly selfish.

May we ask why?

My DM has been like this, her anxiety started when she was a young adult and my grandparents and Dad adapted to try to prevent her anxiety attacks and generally worries but the more they adapted the worse she got.

When I was a young teen and my DGM could see me curtailing my life to help my DM my DGM had a word with me and said she wishes she had bended less for my DM as she thought that had actually re-enforced my DM's anxiety.

I have limited my life to some extent for my mum but it has been more of a balanced compromise and my mum's anxiety has reduced over the same time. I don't think my DM has done anything to deliberately manipulate but I see what my DGM meant and I think as a family it was made worse.

We are extremely close.
This person is the reason I have the life I have.
Their nurturing, kindness, guidance and care while growing up when I had none is why I am the person that I am today.

I could not, would not step away.
But I need advice on how to manage this in the kindest way that I can.

It sounds like they have some kind of PTSD , post traumatic stress syndrome. There are different types of therapy that can help with this.
Have they ever had any kind of counseling? Would they be open to it?
EMDR is supposed to work wonders for this kind of trauma.

Best of luck to you OP, it is exhausting to be and being around anxious people.

Adult DD is prone to bouts, some anxiety attacks, not chronic.
I detach like crazy, feed her logic, don't engage emotionally. Not sure what else you can do.