Anyone have parents with anxiety?

[Anonymous]

OP I agree with tell them less and I might even see them less. With my mother she needs a pacifier. Even when we share less, she then emotes about her own issues, creates drama and emotes about things she thinks could happen or scenarios that appear in her head out of the blue. It's not even about her anxiety being contagious anymore, but it's just about not having the bandwidth to tap dance around it. She just escalates and if you make an excuse to leave anxiety turns to rage.

I used to think my mother was well-intentioned to and her anxiety was love. It is mental illness, not love. The times she gets hysterical enough to treat it and actually goes on medication she is able to have a healthy relationship with us, but as soon as she feels better she goes off.

The way boundaries worked for us is we started off with a few, and now we have rock solid walls and it's because boundaries made her escalate.

[Anonymous]

Did their parents experience trauma in their childhood? Children of trauma survivors frequently end up as worriers and have anxiety.

[Anonymous]

Try not to tell them anything. Need to know basis. Unless they’re throwing money at you to help fix problems or cover the cost of their amazing contractor, they will offer you nothing but a massive headache and waste your time. I stopped telling mine about most of my life challenges and it’s been so much better. As another poster said, they’re bored and if anything like mine, shit stirrers as well.

[Anonymous]

It started when they first retired, were bored with their new routines, and had time to overthink everything you could imagine. Constantly stressing about this that and the other; which was easy enough to ignore by limiting communication or being more intentional with shutting down their “conspiracies” when they would call upset. Their anxiety really ramped up more frequently and more intensely when they were towards the end of life.

[Anonymous]

My mom has it and I inherited it. I did a lot of therapy and am on meds. It wasn't easy, but seeing the way she suffered is what really spurred me to action.

Everything, even good things, can send her into a panic attack. It's such a dramatic existence and so exhausting. Everything is a tragedy of epic proportions.

And then there is the underlying judgment of me getting help and succumbing to anti-depressants which numb people's true feelings(/s). Never mind that fact that she'll pop a Xanax when she actually has to keep her sh*t together for something important.

A lifetime of this has manifested itself in very physical ways to, not just mental. It makes me sad because she probably could have lived to 100 if she had gotten proper treatment.