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My dad is toxic. What do I do?
I suffer from the WORST generalized anxiety disorder known to man. It's my genuine, legitimate disability. I am super anxious every. single. second of every. single. day. I can't work. I can't drive. I can't function like normal people even though I've tried therapy a billion times and too many different anxiety meds to name. I *CAN NOT* stress enough how *NOTHING* works to even lessen my anxiety. At all.
My dad knows this for a fact and always says he understands.
But every day he says the MOST irrelevant comments to me. He knows for certain that it triggers my anxiety horrifically. He tells me all the time that he understands that he stresses my anxiety and makes it worse.
I literally mind my own business all the time. I do my part in my family's household. I'm the one who cleans so my parents don't have to do it. I help my dad with yardwork.
I will literally be minding my own business whether it's just watching a movie or studying or cleaning or talking to my fiance. And then he'll say something so insulting to me and so unnecessary which immediately triggers my anxiety and boils my blood to the heat of lava.
For example, I'll be watching my favorite television show after I took my antidepressants. And he'll just angrily shout, "Take your pills! I know you haven't took them, I'm not as dumb as you think I am!" And that'll immediately trigger my anxiety. When I'm yelled at, especially for no reason, my anxiety is so severe that it'll just explode.
Another example, I'll go outside to spend some father-daughter time with my dad, then he'll randomly say something to trigger my anxiety.
The thing is: he's told me a BUNCH of times that he KNOWS that he triggers my anxiety and stresses me out too much. So why does he still do it?!
Please do NOT tell me to get a job and move out. I'm too sick and fucked up in the head. I've tried working countless times, but I'm always fired because they say I'm obviously "too sick to deal with it." I have MAJOR panic attacks whenever I try to work. Hell, I even have them when I'm behind the wheel of a car!
Even if I had the money to move out, I would be freaking out and probably would end up killing myself in the process of trying to live on my own. I'm TOO sick mentally to live on my own.
I'm respectful to my dad. He's the one who always starts these fusses, because he's TOXIC.
We've tried therapy, but stopped because the therapist believed him instead of listening to my side of the story.
I don't know what to do. He makes my anxiety and major depressive disorder infinitely times worse than it already is. I can't deal with it anymore. I ALWAYS am my sweetest towards him, but he just yells at me and insults me and talks behind my back. I just want to die.
Any advice, please?
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It is hard to know whats going on when we are not there to observe it first hand for ourselves. So what we say may not be relevant. We can only go by what is shared and what possibilities crop up in our minds. I know you may find the other advice giver seemed to pick on you but I used to have anxiety, and I've known people with anxieties or depression and people with mental illness. And of all those, I still don't think I have ever come across a person for whom their disabilities took such a strong toll on them to where they literally could not function and do Anything. I was a caregiver of people with mental disabilities and many of them, even with all their issues, were able to work with a job counselor for the mentally disabled and find something they could handle. Any issues or training of such an employee had to go closely through their job finding advocate/councilor. So my guess if that you have been just going after regular jobs on your own in the past, and not with a councilor of DSHS working on your behalf to fit you to a job where the employer is okay with hiring a physically disabled or person with mental disabilities. If you get disabilities checks, then you qualify. Just call your DSHS representative and ask for a job councilor if you ever get better in the future and want to try work. Not pushing you into that cus I agree, in your current state, you are not ready.
I know nothing of any kind of treatment you have recieved or what type of doctors you have seen, but clearly, if what you have can not even be made manageable with medications, then perhaps like someones already mentioned, you have not seen the best doctors in the past. There are psychologists who find what the problem is and then medications are prescribed. There is mental illness in my family so I am familiar with it. I also had severe social anxiety as a child long before Drs began to give out meds for anxiety. I followed a simple program to get healed of it.
If a doctor told you that you have a terminal illness, wouldn't you want to get 2nd, maybe even 3rd opinions and be rechecked to make sure that the first doctor wasn't quite right. Maybe its not terminal? Maybe theres a way to recover and not die. If you can say yes, then I believe you may be ready to do as suggested and see a professional. But I am not talking of just any psych councilor but some one who is trained in the CBT version of Psychiatry. CBT is short for cognitive behavioral therapy. Remember, at the end, you simply asked for advice...this is My advice. Considering how crippled your condition makes your life, don't you wish you could live a more normal life and actually find yourself enjoying it rather than feeling as you currently do?? I would hope so. I am assuming that you may be ready to try one last time something that Might bring some normalcy to your life. I do not know of anyone who has received the CBT treatment which is non medicinal who hasn't gotten completely healed, and normal without meds. Its actually very few people who with this treatment still need meds. But if their condition is already way better but they still need medications, they will still be ahead of where they were before treatment. The sad thing is that most of us do not realize that in cases like this, our mind is our worst enemy. It is our own distorted thinking that gets us like this to begin with. If you want to scoff at distorted thinking, I had it a-plenty before I was healed by following through on the assignments I was given to do that would help me to realize all my thoughts were not true, and nothing bad ever happened. True, I only had one anxiety and not everything you deal with. But I have read comments of other people who have dealt with much more an varying situations and all thanking the Dr. who helped them.
This brings me to sharing a site calling 'Feeling Good', created by a now author, past psychiatrist who only gave out meds and saw so many patients like you never get any better. Colleagues decades ago told him of a new treatment called CBT and he scoffed at first but finally agreed to try it with his worst off patient. He was amazed when that patient healed and became normal.
Here's an interview where if you start at around 8 and half minutes again, he speaks of another method, T.E.A.M. which helps to melt away any resistance from patients before they use the CBT method.
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
Resistance is some times merely a person's belief system. Once any negative, untrue beliefs can be dealt with, a person is ready for CBT. So it is important to find a Dr. trained in both. We may be going on 40 yrs that this info has been out there but still so many Drs. do not know this or believe it. In one interview he says it is now the standard for all therapists in England. They all use these therapies. Unfortunately, it is not yet so in the U.S. Well meaning family Drs. end up recommending therapists who do not know this stuff and so patients continue to suffer. There are many you tube videos of interviews with David Burns MD, just put in a search and You will see very many.
On his website,
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
you can find some places to go for referrals of Drs. Just click on referrals and begin reading. The referrals are at the end, but he does mention one of the locations that will do therapy via Skype i suppose for those too fearful to leave their homes. So either way, there is no reason you can not get help that really works for you.You already know this is not an optimal way to live life. You have nothing to lose and only better mental health to gain. What if something so simple as these methods can actually turn a person's life around? Heck if even David Burns was a skeptic and thought this was a bunch of crazy foolish stuff when he first heard it, but now totally believes in it, then so can you. I do, I believe in it because it helped get rid of my anxiety. And I know there are people way worse off than me who have been healed by this.
Don't focus on what your Dad is doing or you may never get the help that could turn your life around. I won't even go into whether your Dad is being more hurtful than helpful. But don't let him hold you back. It is your life. YOu are an adult and so it is up to only you to reach out for the right kind of help. I so hope you will even at least take the next week to go over any and all youtube videos you can of Dr. Burns to gain at least a small glimmer of hope for yourself, to at the very least, get a little better or get totally healed. But you must be willing to work with a therapist trained in TEAM-CBT to even have a chance of getting better if there is such a thing as you being able to be healed at all. I don't know it and neither do you. Even the professionals have issues at times and have benefited themselves personally from the TEAM CBT method. A Dr. trained in only CBT which there are many of, enough to find someone near you, may not be enough for you. You may require someone who knows who to use and is licensed to start off with the TEAM method of breaking down resistance if you have any. I did not have any resistance and was so ready to be healed which is why going straight to CBT worked for me. Don't give up before you start dear. You deserve a wonderful life just like the rest of us. Don't let your thoughts hold you back. Just start doing the opposite of what your thoughts tell you, like don't bother watching the videos, you'll be disappointed in the end, or it is just a bunch of hype and someone trying to make money or whatever negative thoughts come to mind. Try to do this to get some hope that there might be relief for you and then contact the people on his website. If you do not have insurance, don't let that stop you from contacting them and finding out if there are any alternatives for people unable to pay. Just Do it!
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There's what you are perceiving as toxic and what the reality is. He's not out to rile you up or make life difficult with anything he may say to even if if you see it as him doing it deliberate. It seems that just about anything can spark the anxiety problem and no matter what he or anyone says to you can have that affect.
Believe me he's not trying to do anything on purpose here. The things he says or anyone else to you are what happen normally with everyone else but with the disorder you have it warps this and turns it into something that to you is very different and not as benign as it is to others.
I think you need to stop seeing him as someone who is toxic and as someone who genuinely loves you but doesn't know what to do to reach you. Even in therapy the therapist is not playing one person against another.
I think what you really have to do is try to make him feel exactly what it it is like to have this problem and how intense it is and perhaps he will make comments about different things in a softer tone to you. The man is trying and hasn't given up on you. If he can see your world through your eyes you may find a deeper connection than you think.
Next, regardless of what diagnosis you have been given the problem should NOT be to the point of having zero ability to function period. Also, never trust a therapist to do the job of a psychiatrist who should be the only person treating you and doing therapy or prescribing medication.
I think what you should do is find another doctor and have them refer you to a different psychiatrist and go over your history, meds conclusion others reached and let them reassess you. You may have anxiety but I think it may actually be an undercurrent and not the main illness itself. You may have something on top that nobody has looked at and I say this having been through the system.
With medication they may not have levels set right with you or the right ones to treat it. I would get this looked at top to bottom all over again as I know you can live somewhat normally.
As far as him yelling to you about taking your pills that's actually a loving thing to do and watching over you but the bit about being dumb not so much. Point out that these remarks or snickering doesn't help. The reminder about pills does and it's so vital you take them as prescribed and when you need to and not miss or your problem does become ten time worse and treatment ineffective.
I have to level with you maybe he's yelling that because he knows and you know that if he didn't you may not take them and or forget them. Maybe you have told people you did and didn't. This happens a lot with people with mental health issues having false beliefs about pills being poison or harmful to them etc so why I mention it.
If I were you I would actually go to an emergency room and detail every aspect of your anxiety problem again and let them have a psychiatrist do a new exam to search for other causes than ones you were given for this problem because they may find something different and a treatment that actuallly gives you a decent life as right now it's lacking.
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