First post, increased worry and helplessness
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Hello this is my first post and I'm not really sure what I'm doing but thought writing might help. I'm 47, married with 2 adult children who have both moved back home in the last 12 months due to relationship breakdowns. They both suffer mental illne... View more
Hello this is my first post and I'm not really sure what I'm doing but thought writing might help. I'm 47, married with 2 adult children who have both moved back home in the last 12 months due to relationship breakdowns. They both suffer mental illness, both smoke cannabis and drink, and neither work. I worry so much about them as well as my elderly mum, for whom I am carer. I find myself laying awake, listening through the night for crying or other sounds of distress. When I first wake up my heart starts racing and again, I listen to who's up and what mood they're in. I take on their problems and feelings like they're my own, crying when I'm alone but smiling when they're around so they don't know and to keep their moods high. I'm exhausted. My husband worries for me, and tells me if I don't stop I'll die from worry. I find myself dreading going home, dreading going to my mum's (she lives in a retirement village) and without any real place of rest and solitude. I love them all so much and can't bear the thought of any one in distress and want to make everything ok for them. I worry if I don't they will think I don't care. That they'll then harm themselves or something. It's unbearable. I want to know how to switch off from it all. I suffer terrible stomach pains, shoulder and neck pain and have chronic health conditions myself that I am neglecting. I often make Drs appointments for myself that I end up cancelling because someone else's problems become more important, or in the kids cases I give them my appointment because our family Dr is hard to get into spontaneously. I'm so tired.
