Thanks very much to each of you for your responses. They have definitely helped and I appreciate the support and kind words. I am seeing a therapist at the moment and discussed this with him in my most recent session. He was quite upfront in saying that there's no easy way out of this and that I just have to be gentle with her when I do it. At the same time, he said it's very important for me to get my life back and take control of it again.

I will post back when I've had the discussion with her to let you know how we're both getting on.