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Let me say this first, I have been with my husband for 16 years and I love him immensely. I live with CPTSD, acute PTSD, bipolar or borderline personality disorder (it's been up in the air for too long, though I think it's bpd) w/ major depressive episodes, generalized anxiety disorder, an eating disorder, body dysmorphic.... Whee. My husband lives with schizoaffective disorder with either an almost continuout depressive episode or accompanied with major depressive disorder, CPTSD, acute PTSD, and agoraphobia. We are a walking DSM. He was diagnosed with schizoaffective the second weekend after I met him, I've been struggling with mental health issues since I was 12 and for the time we have been together, I've been a mess and it has only been in the last one to two years that I've gotten my own mind in a fairly stable space and in a place where I can actually be of help and real support for my husband instead of us just leaning our broken hearts together.
That said, he went on an anti-depressant this summer that was good for his mood, bupropion, but it wreaked havoc on his heart rate so he had to stop. He's been on lamictal, but if it has done anything other than make him feel physically shitty from side effects, it has stabilized his mood to really depressed and pessimistic. He is paranoid, sees everything as negative, perceives everything negatively. I can go into his room in the morning, knowing he's been awake for upward of 3-4 hours, and ask him what he wants to eat (he is the kind of depressed where he has no desire to eat, and if I don't prompt him to eat, he's lucky to take in more than 700 calories in a day). He, however, takes it like I am badgering him to eat, and I'm being aggressive and pressuring him to eat when he doesn't want to. Of course, I'm just saying "Do you want me to make you something to eat?" or "What do you want to eat?" But he perceives it entirely differently. And everything is like that.
He is not white, and he has had a lot of negative medical interactions in the past due to POC medical bias and so assumes that if he tells his doctor he doesn't like the meds he is taking, that they aren't working, the doctor is going to just write in his file that he is being med non-compliant and drop him as a patient. His doctor isn't like that and has never done anything to infer that he would do anything like that, but he has had past doctors (all women, which is frustrating as a woman) who did shit like that. This doc (a guy, no nonsense attitude like my husband, and around our age) has actually been really great, but my husband can't see it because he is in such a bad headspace.
I've asked him to think about going to a therapist, and his arguments are always as follows: 1) He's beaten therapy three times before. 2) He tried to pay a therapist in the area twice their going rate and they wouldn't take them, and he's asked two others to take him on as a patient and they said no so no one knows what they are doing enough around here (we live in a rural area of New England) to take him on. He does have a complicated history. But that includes the place that I go, and I, too, have a very complicated history but so far they have been somewhat helpful. It's better than nothing. But he is unwilling to consider it at this time.
He feels he can't express his anger and frustration because I become reactionary, and while I used to, admittedly for most of our relationship, I'm in a much better place now. I am able to hold my tongue and not get defensive about everything, not make everything about me, and I understand that when he is upset, even if he is triggered by something I say or do, it doesn't mean it is about me and most of the time, all I have to do is just listen. I don't think he trusts me to be the pillar of support that he needs though because I've not been reliable in the past. I get that, and as much as I know that I can be more for him I also know there is only way to prove to him I can be that and that is just to give it time and be there and show him in action that I can be the support he needs. Maybe eventually he'll stop seeing me in the light that I am still unstable and unreliable and have indeed grown as a person.
In the meantime, he is negative, he is pessimistic, everything is awful, everyone is awful, all situations will end in the worst case scenario, nothing I say or suggest is helpful or is right (even though, honestly, I am right more often than not because I am neither a pessimist or an optimist, I believe in pragmatism all the way). All food is gross, all activities are pointless, he falls asleep after eating almost every time for 3-7 hours so his sleep is erratic which results in him either oversleeping or getting not nearly enough sleep, the pets are just annoying and pointless, my family are just a pain in the ass (his own we haven't associated with in years because they are trash), and he's not annoyed or angry or upset at me, even though he's snapping at me, so stop taking everything so personally!
I'm just at a loss. I know I've been this person, the person who didn't want to be helped, who thought it was all pointless. I know it took my husband to show me patience and keep coming back, showing me he wasn't going anywhere and for me to trust him enough to believe I could get better, that I felt strong enough to seek out help. But man, it took years and the entire time he was neglecting his own mental health which has allowed it to kind of spiral. I can't afford to neglect my own mental health, but I also am not willing to neglect him or pull away from him. I not only feel I need to be there for him, as he was for me, but I WANT to because I love him, no matter how fuckin' grouchy he may be all the time. I may be better about not internalizing that which eats at him, but I'm no expert - this is all still relatively new to me, only 2 years truly stable out of 27 years of dealing with mental illness, and I'm not really sure how to find the balance between being his sounding board even if it means I'm the target of frustrations once in a while (even if I'm not the actual target), and honoring my own mental stability. I know for me I needed pushing to get me to get help, but some people react poorly when they are pushed or gently nudged in that direction and he seems pretty resistant to most nudging. I can make suggestions, but I have to keep them minimal and when I make one that he agrees to, that's all I can do for a while if I don't want to get under his skin and annoy the hell out of him.
I don't know....I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Maybe I just needed to vent or find some commiseration? I'm just feeling emotionally drained. I wake up to this stuff, he wakes up hours before me and is already in this space when I get up, so I go in to say good morning and 2 hours later I've already gotten a day's worth of issues that there is nothing I can do about, and I haven't even had time to have breakfast or meds yet. With his sleep being as erratic as it is, I can ask him to be mindful of my time when we talk about this stuff, but that's also asking him to save it for later in the day when I'm awake, but that's likely waiting for later when he's just waking up. So there is no real winning in this situation, it likely ends up being bad timing all around for both of us.
I don't know, and to top it all off my therapist works at an agency that has a massive backlog of clients waiting for therapists, so right now I'm only getting like one appointment every 3-4 weeks so it feels like I'm not getting any right now, so when I have my appointment next week I can choose to either talk abut this more immediate issue, or proceed with working on my CPTSD and hope that in doing so I will continue to hone my coping skills and workout my own conflict/stress responses and that will improve my ability to support my husband.
I just need help. Am I on the right path? Am I doing enough? Am I doing too much? Are there things I could be doing better? Am I missing anything? Just....am I doing the best that I can? I guess only I can answer that one. But, anyone else got any answers to the other questions?
Thanks in advance. I know this was a long one, so thanks for sticking with me until the end.
