There is a lady who lives across the street. She has major physical symptoms associated with her anxiety and even depression but refuses to see the link. Here are some things to look for. Do you feel bad when the major holidays roll around. The lady across the street was leaving to go to her husbands relatives for Thanksgivng. My wife knew that she wasn’t feeling good the day before so she asked how she was feeling. The husband – who was driving and on the same side as my wife – said – not good – she ate some bad Thai food. Most people, including the husband falls for this. As a matter of fact she has gotten very good at manipulating people to see things her way.
Now fast forward to Christmas. My wife, again, sees her husband but hasn’t seen his wife in several days so she ask how the wife is doing. The husband replies that she has been sick for the previous four days leading up til Christmas. Now if you ask her she wil tell you that she has a cold but start to put things together.
During the summer months she went on Vacation down to Florida with several families related to her family. She was sick most of the time. After about 8 of these it has become very obvious to me that she has massive social anxieties. For the larger scale social activities they can actually bed her. For the smaller ones she feels nauseous, get headaches, has aches and pains and so on and so forth.
The amazing thing to me is not that she has anxieties but the fact that she can’t put the two together but even more important and even higher on the wow scale is that her husband is an enabler. He constantly says that she is always felling bad. He says this just about every time that we see him. In social situations she is very mean to him and treats him like a kid – scolding and being very demeaning to him. Yet if you ask him he is total denial too. This comes from her manipulation. It becomes easier for him to go along with her and agree to her excuses than to call her out. Therefore he begins to become an enabler to her anxiety. Now she is rolling full force down a hill to a place that will ultimately cost her very much. But she becomes very manipulative not only to her husband but to those around her and the result is that all the nieghbors begin to pull away.
If this is you I would strongly advise you to get professional help to end this downward spiral.