[jk2833]

Hi I need some help I'm so anxious about this. My good friends in hospital and I've been visiting taking essentials etc whilst her partners away now her partners back and he had a chat with me yesterday basically criticising her. I didn't say a word as he twists things and I'm not going to bad mouth her. However since I saw him she's not responding to my texts or calls, I haven't done anything, I purposely made sure I never said anything so nothing could be twisted.
Please help I feel like I'm suffocating with anxiety. I'm also dealing with grief at this time.
Any help would be appreciated.
Many thanks
J

[Little Lulu]

Your friend not responding to your attempts to contact her may have nothing to do with your interaction with her partner ... maybe she isn't feeling well, sleepy, etc. It is an assumption on your part that you are to blame. If your interaction is the reason she isn't responding and you did nothing wrong, maybe she isn't a friend after all.

This too, shall pass.

[jk2833]

Yes you are correct, she did contact me. Turns out she's been sleeping a lot and spending time with her partner.
I know this may seem trivial to some people.
This is a prime example of my daily anxiousness, I worry about everything and its taking control of my life.
Any advice on this sort of anxiety would be great.
Thank you for responding, it's much appreciated.
Take care
J

[Little Lulu]

I've done what you did plenty of times ... worry and take something personally when it wasn't; it was my own anxiety and shaky ego (low self esteem) causing the issue. Example - other people must like me and approve of me or I won't be OK, blah, blah, blah ... totally exhausting trying to keep the outer environment (other people, work, you name it) happy so I will be OK. I finally went to CoDependents Anonymous where I learned that I am OK no matter what is going on around me (this took a while and I am not perfect at but I am much better).

[jk2833]

Hi many thanks for the replies, I've never heard of this 'co dependents anonymous' I will have a look into that.
I see its not only me then who suffers from this type of thing.
Take care and many thanks
J

[Perna]

For me, often my anxiety/worry will start with something logical, my husband is not home from the airport after a trip when I reasonably expect him; but then my imagination gets in there and, before I know it, there's been a plane crash and he's lying in the hospital between seriously injured and dead :-) or the taxi bringing him home has been in an accident and (repeat ending).

I start helping myself by backing up to what I know for sure. His plane was supposed to land at X time, I assumed/decided it would take Y time to get his luggage, a cab, and ride home so he should arrive around Z o'clock.

Notice how the italicized words allow for a lot of work. One first checks to see if the plane landed on time or not. If it did, then one can decide to add more time to getting through the airport or can check on traffic, see if there's been a slow-up on his normal route home for some reason, or just add time there too, in case there's a problem.

As a fail safe, I think of bizarre scenarios that I know have actually happened; for example, the reason he was late in this particular situation I'm thinking of was the plane route got bizarre and he had to go from Raleigh, North Carolina to Boston before coming in at Baltimore. When I visited the former Soviet Union in 1968 we did that too; we left Leningrad and went to Moscow, which is southeast of Leningrad, before going west to Poland. Just this February I flew from Miami to a Caribbean island a couple hours away but we got halfway there and had to return to Miami and sit all day for a fix to our plane; the Caribbean island didn't have the means to fix the problem and, though we could have gotten to the island fine, by law the plane would not have been allowed to take off again without being fixed so it would have been stuck on the Caribbean island and the people there wanting to come back to Miami wouldn't have had any way to get there.

So, when I get anxious, I try to laugh, realizing that sometimes reality is even more fantastic than anything I can imagine; how mundane and obvious is an "accident?" Anyone could imagine that! Your imagination is much better though, you're a worrier! Make it a better problem Make the plane captain a wingman to another plane's crew that has problems and the plane has to fly to another airport, talking the crew in like in Top Gun :-) Get out all your worst, ridiculous-sounding fears and parade them; my husband probably fell in love with the woman sitting next to him and has gone off with her for a weekend of wild sex and will call any minute to tell me he had to stay and work at the original location (maybe he did fall in love with her but he's 150 pounds overweight, will be 70 in August, and is bald; I think he'd remain mine if the, at-first-sight rule, was applied to people falling in love with him, never mind about the weekend of wild sex at his age and weight :-)

[avlady]

I'm OK no matter what is going on around me-boy you just inspired me with that little sentence!!!!