Hello!

I’m a 30 year old male living with my wife on a 3rd world country. We have no help from our families and we’ve been through some very difficult times, but we managed to get by. My wife had a severe case of depression and even tried to take her own life at a point.

Now things got a little better, even though we are in a tight financial situation. We both feel a lot better and we even managed to get off our meds (it’s nice to be able to save the money and get rid of the side-effects).

But, there is something weird that came as a consequence of all those bad times. Whenever I receive a text message from my wife, my heart races and my anxiety goes through the roof. It’s an irrational fear that the message will be bad news.

I don’t really know if there is such a thing as “text phobia”, but that’s how it feels (english is not my main language, so it’s kinda hard to explain). I alread mentioned this to my wife and I think it made her feel bad because she thinks it’s her fault. Of course I said it’s not her fault, but now I’m kinda afraid to bring this up again with her. We both are trying so hard to be strong for each other.

I wonder if anyone else had a similar problem and I would be very grateful if someone could give me some tips on how to work on this problem.

Thanks a lot and I hope you have a great day.

  • SomeoneElse@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    It’s a bit complicated. I live in the UK so healthcare is free - but the NHS is in a dire state at the moment. It’s so underfunded by the government it’s on its last legs. The diagnosis I mentioned before was lupus. I was desperately ill for the whole of my 20s, mentally and physically. When you’re deathly ill or suicidal a lot of the smaller complaints are deemed unimportant. And taken in the context of my other illnesses, not being able to speak on the phone was relatively insignificant. For the last few years I’ve been largely stable. Just as I felt ready to confront my phone issues, my psychiatrist retired and wasn’t replaced. For the last 10 years that man was my life raft, I saw him every 8 weeks. And then he was gone and they couldn’t afford to replace him fully. There’s a part time psychiatrist now but he only deals with the acutely mentally ill, and this doesn’t qualify. My depression has significantly worsened since then, but again, not to the point where I’m considered in need of emergency treatment.

    18 months ago my family paid for me to see a private consultant for medical cannabis treatment - primarily to help my pain, but the effects on my mental health and sleep have also been really positive. It was the private consultant who diagnosed the PTSD. Medical cannabis is legal here, but only about 9 people in the whole country (I’m being literal here, no hyperbole) qualify for it on the NHS - mainly children with severe treatment resistant epilepsy. So in order to keep taking the medical cannabis which has improved my life so much, my family, friends, even neighbours have been chipping in so I can afford it, approx £150 a month. I can’t work due to my ill health, so I am completely reliant on my loved ones to pay for it. Nobody can afford for me to have private psychiatric treatment as well, and the NHS simply do not have the resources to treat me.

    So that’s where I’m at. Even if I stopped the medical cannabis (and honestly that would be a ridiculous thing to do - I’ve managed to reduce 90% of my opioid intake, I sleep through the night, I actively want to live for the first time in over a decade…) I don’t think you can even get a single private consultation for £150, let alone be treated.

    Sorry for my life story, it was a bit hard to explain without going into it. And thank you for the support.

    • Shelena@feddit.nlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      That sounds like many complications for getting the help you need. I am glad people are supporting you, but it still seems very stressful.

      If you ever get the chance to get further treatment. Maybe you can ask whether EMDR is useful in your case. For me it worked very well for my PTSD. I also think that, generally, it might require less treatments than other forms of therapy. So it might mean less of a financial burden. I am not a doctor, so I do not know what is best in your case, but you might ask about it.