newbie

[mlh1026]

I'm new here, so I guess I'll just explain my anxiety issues. I'm a 35 y/o female who has 3 little girls under the age of 4. One of my babies is 1 month old. I have anxiety related to pretty much everything there is, and I just don't know how to make it stop. I've been diagnosed as Bipolar, which was incorrect, and just recently the dr I went to said I have a biological depression/anxiety. I am a severe perfectionist, and I become very anxious over every activity b/c I can't make it perfect. I wanna be the perfect mom, wife, employee...etc., I'm late for everything b/c I freak out thinking about being late and it just makes it worse! I am basically paralyzed from doing anything fun/worthwhile in life b/c of my anxieties/panic issues due to my inability to make everything perfect. I've been taking Zoloft since November and it really seemed to help a lot while I was pregnant, but once the baby came, I started having trouble breathing, and sweating...etc., I am a licensed attorney, but I left that field b/c of my fear of not doing it well enough.

My marriage is totally jacked up, and I often yell at my spouse and blame him for all kinds of things. He does his best to help alleviate my stress by doing all kinds of things for me so I don't have to, but I feel like he's just enabling me. That's a whole other animal and stressor for me in life though.

I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow, but I'm stressed b/c of the changes going on at my place of work which I will return to in June, and I know I will not be able to continue seeing my dr when I go back to work due to having a crappy supervisor. So, I kind of have a limited time to figure out how to deal w/ my issues. Before I got married, I was in law school,and I was a lot less stressed, b/c all I had to do was deal w/ me, going to school and partying w/ my friends. Then, I got married and stopped the partying and going to law school and i could not transition smoothly to that life. Then, I realized that my husband and I had nada in common,and I wanted to leave him. We had just started to do things together when I got pregnant w/ baby #1. I was so stressed about being pregnant that I strongly considered having an abortion. I didn't, and I embraced being pregnant and having a baby. After the baby came, the stress returned, but my hubby and I carpooled to work and worked in teh same building, so that significantly decreased my stress.

10 mos later, we moved to Germany for work, and the anxiety/stress started again. I did NOT want to move here, but I wanted to support my husband. So here we are 3 years later, and 2 more babies and I'm more stressed out than ever.

I'm just wondering if I'm crazy or if anybody else out there has felt this way, and is there any hope for me?

Maggie

[mlh1026]

Yes, you're right I have a lot of stuff I need to work through. I just wish I knew where to start. I believe that the Zoloft helps to take the edge off, but I still need cognitive/behavioral therapy as I do not want to take it for the rest of my life. I really don't like taking it at all, but it helps.

I believe that my mom is the one who instilled this perfectionist attitude in me,and she always used to tell me, "you're not that attractive or smart, so you'll hafta work your ass off to succeed in life." So, like you, I always set out to prove her wrong and I've always been looking for her approval and I've never gotten it. Never once has either of my parents said they were proud of me or that I've done anything good in life at all. My mom also used to say, "anything worth doing is worth doing well,and if you get below an A in school it may as well be an F." She also used to threaten to kill herself all the time and cried constantly when I was a child. I had a sister who was physically and mentally handicapped who was a year older than me and I shared a room w/ her until I was 18 and moved away to go to college 3 hours from home. There was also some sexual abuse in my childhood. I have virtually no relationship w/ my 3 brothers and my sister passed away 14 years ago. I hardly have relationship w/ my parents either. The whole family is extremely dysfunctional and I spent pretty much my young adulthood trying to run away from it which explains why I now live in Germany!

Believe it or not, I have actually improved significantly from years ago, but I am nowhere near where I need/want to be yet. One of the biggest problems is my marriage and the fact that I can't talk to my husband about my anxieties, b/c he thinks it's crap and I should be able to "get over it." That's kinda why I'm here. I need to have somewhere I can go/someone I can talk to who gets it.

Any advice anyone has is much appreciated.

[lifeconfusion6179]

hi mlh, have you tried therapy before? its always a good feeling to be able to talk to someone that can appreciate what you are going thru. i have people that i can talk to but choose not to because they dont understand and i feel i dont want to burden them with that. Sorry to hear about your parent situation. I was never a believer of alot of emotional issues stemming from childhood but it does. my mother was a constant worrier and always showed that in from of me and my 2 sister. A person tends to think this just comes out of no where but it never does. theres always a source. Sorry about not being able to talk to your husband but understand he is on the outside looking in. Even i who suffers from gad and a host of other things, use to not be too understanding when my ex would tell me things she felt symptom wise or thoughts that i could not relate too. its not easy to make someone who doesnt understand to understand, try not to. its only gonna cause u to look at ur husband in a bad light. hope u feel better. And theres plenty of people here who get it.

[mlh1026]

I have been in and out of therapy for various issues since 2001 only then I refused to take medication and had no idea what was actually wrong w/ me. My mom is a constant worrier and she was constantly freaking out in front of all of us and I vowed to never be like her, but damn if I'm not!

At least now I'm finally figuring out what is going on. I just want to be a good mom to my kids and be happy in life and not be paralyzed w/ worry all the time.

You're right that my hubby is on the outside looking in, and one of the issues we've always had is his inability to empathize w/ others and the fact that he can't see anything unless it's black and white. I'm already seeing him in a bad light for reasons besides this, but it doesn't help! One of the other issues we have is that I desperately need an intellectual connection w/ the person I spend my life w/, and it's just not there. I've only just acknowledged that I am an intelligent person, and he's just NOT, not in the way I am anyway. I am constantly trying to learn new things and trying to better myself in life and he does nothing in that department at all. I often ponder things and like to discuss it w/ others,and he just stares at me like I'm crazy. For example, we could be walking down the street and I notice an oddly placed street sign or something, and I say, "I wonder why they put that there in that particular spot." He say, "I don't know. Why does it matter?" Sigh.

We will also be going back to marriage counseling next week at my insistence. Not sure if it will help since he says he's just going to be attacked again. There was never any attacking before, BTW. He just doesn't believe in counseling and wants to act like there's nothing wrong and when his flaws are addressed and the counselor (also a male) attempts to help my hubby w/ some issues he has, he gets mad. I can understand getting mad initially, but at some point, you get over it, and try to work on yourself. Not my hubby. He thinks he's such a catch that he doesn't need to fix anything!

I digress on this topic... My last counselor said I had two choices w/ this relationship: I can divorce him or I can lower my expectations for him and realize that I'll never get what I'm looking for from him. I've decided not to divorce him yet, and to really make an effort to accept him even though I really don't want to. Don't get me wrong, he's a good guy. He doesn't beat me or cheat on me,and he helps out at home all the time w/ the kids and he has a good job...etc., He tries to give me whatever I want or what he thinks I want to make me happy. Too bad he has no clue what that IS even when I tell him directly! I just have lost my attraction to him. When we were dating he at least made an effort to take care of himself. Now he says it's not necessary anymore, b/c he's already got me to marry him! I'm sorry, but I didn't used to work out and put nice clothes on and makeup on for him. I did it for me!

Okay, so clearly I just really need someone to talk to besides him. My fear is that if I do start talking to someone else, I will have no need for him any longer. If you can't rely on your partner to listen to you when you need them to, what are you doing w/ them?! We don't really have anything in common besides our kids, so this is gonna make it really difficult. I guess I'm afraid that if I start doing my own thing in life, I will really have to divorce him and that's gonna be really scary as far as my kids go, b/c I don't want them around his family members unattended as they smoke weed and are pretty stupid, in general. He lacks common sense, so I don't really trust him to do the right thing in this department.