Quote:
Originally Posted by lovingone
I have had two sessions with a psychiatrist and I am wondering if I am in the right place.
I am a 39 year old woman and I think I suffer from anxiety/panic. To make a long story short, my mother died in 2011. She was a "helicopter mom" and could be very controlling sometimes and at other times expected me to be independent at the snap of a finger. This left me feeling confused. Also she would brow beat my dad to the point where he couldn't or wouldn't support me when I had a problem presumably because he was made to feel useless by her.
I have tried so many times to get my life together and be productive, but can never get over the next "hump" or setback. And it's time for it to stop. I want to have a career, get married, have a family, stop living with my dad.
So I went to the psychiatrist twice. He had some insight into my problems but I left feeling confused. I wanted him to give me tools to conquer my fears and bolster my self confidence so I can achieve.
He kept saying "you look fine to me". Yet he kept asking me questions about how I got health insurance without a job ( my dad signed me up), how do I pay for stuff as an unemployed student, and could I even pay for his services!
So if he is asking me this, I must not be fine right?
I'm now looking into hiring a life coach. I found one who is a woman (like me) and she can advise me over the phone if I don't want to meet in person. I may even go to both her and the psych.
Has anyone here used a life coach? Has it helped? Am I really an anxiety sufferer or just a victim of bad parenting?
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A little more background on my situation....
I think the turning point in my life was when I was 19 and one of my friends died.
My mother had control of every aspect of my grieving process from the get go. She forbid me from calling my friends parents saying that if they didn't initiate communication with me, that must mean they don't want to talk to me.
My friend was bipolar and in the months before her death her parents had to call me several times to come calm her down because I was the only one she would listen to. So it was my thinking that her parents didn't want to "bother" me anymore because they had called upon a teenager (me) so much to help their daughter.
But my mother wouldn't hear any of my opinions. She just tried to make me feel like I was bothering my friends parents if I tried to contact them after the friends death. The friends mother even told me she like me calling her. But mom my was the supreme authority.
I fought so much with my mom over the right as an adult to grieve for my friend as I saw fit... that all my energy went into that when it should have gone to learning how to be a successful adult!
And this is just one of many road blocks, but that was the situation that changed the course of my life.
So I feel like my anxiety is circumstantial in a way. Like I am not the person I could have been.