I don't know how to deal with the relationships in my life right now, not only because I'm dealing with depression/anxiety, but because the two most important relationships in my life are completely unhealthy for me. How do I deal with a Mother and a husband that are just completely unsupportive and mentally unstable? I try to be supportive when dealing with them, and I listen and give advice, and most of the time I try to keep my issues and feelings to myself because whenever how I feel comes up, it's always dismissed in one way or another.
With my husbad I feel that I am carrying all of his weight. He is suffering from major depression/anxiety disorder and has difficulty even functioning on a daily basis. His refusal to work for nearly 3 months has left us in debt and struggling, not to mention while he wasn't working he lied to me about it and borrowed money from all of my credit cards without my permission, which has basically ruined my credit and forced me into credit consolidation.
It's so devastating to have my own Mother belittle me and constantly compare her life and hardships to my own. No matter what I'm going through, even if I just need her to listen she has to remind me she's been through so much worse and that however I feel she's felt so much worse. Most of the time she makes me feel that I shouldn't even be discussing my problems, because I really have nothing to complain about when compared to her. It's gotten to the point where I don't even feel like I want to talk to her about anything other than the weather. She loves to give me guilt trips about things I have no control over or have had no part in, I've spent so much of my life protecting, defending, helping, excusing my Mother that I don't even know what it would be like to have a parent that was just there for me caring about my happiness or success. In addition to that my Mother suffers from self defeating personality disorder and she also feels a tremendous need to compete with me. She is 20 years older than me, and has tried over the years to manipulate my friendships, and involve herself intimately with potential love interests of mine. She's broken into my chatting and email accounts and started relationships under an alias without my knowledge and when I found out expected me to continue the lie for her without ever apologizing for her actions.
I love my Mother, she's the only one I have, but I don't know how to have any kind of successful relationship with her because of everything that has happened and everything she continues to do. Sometimes it's like all I need/want is someone to tell me I have the right to feel the way I do and a reasonable expectation to discuss it and not be told how ungrateful or lucky I am.