For people with anxiety

[Anonymous]

I hope this isn't a weird question. I'm trying to get a handle on my anxiety with meditation and therapy and exercise. I'd like to avoid meds, however, and just come up with practical solutions to uncomfortable stress-inducing situations.

If you know there is something coming up that will really stress you out, how do you handle it? Do you just avoid it ?

The specifics are that DH and his brother are in a feud. There's been a lot of mean and nasty things said to each other over the last few years. Both are at fault, but if I'm going to be honest, more of the fault lies with my own DH.
Now, DH's mother likes to act like everything is normal, all the time. No one outside our immediate family even knows anything is wrong. My SIL (DH's brother's wife) is pregnant with her first child - I try to keep a good relationship (though very surface level and dancing around the elephant in the room) with her. They live 90 mins away, and we were invited to the (co-ed) baby shower, where other relatives will be present. For the last few years, we've been more or less avoiding each other, and while perhaps cowardly, I'm thinking if two siblings can't get along, maybe its best if they minimize interactions so everyone has a bit of calm.

Anyway, I get seriously stressed out around the anger unleashed by the two brothers at each other, and I'd like to just avoid the whole thing. Its not good my kids to see, its not good for SIL's unborn child, and its not good for me. But if we don't go, it will probably set off WW III with DH's mom, who is sort of the whole reason why relationships are so bad to begin with. She treated them really unequally growing up and now there's just a ton of resentment. If we don't attend, we will hear about it for the next 10 years. And THAT will stress me out.

As you can see, its not really the event at all, its just the stress of being around dysfunctional family members. But as someone on this forum said, my DH/BIL/MIL can't make me feel stressed - I do that to myself.

What say you? Any advice on doing the right thing and also dealing with my anxiety around this?

[Anonymous]

I say that folks like that will always find something to criticize. Life is short. Whether you are prone to anxiety or not, it is not worth investing time with people who are toxic.

[Anonymous]

I agree with PP, but the fact is you are part of this family by marriage and sometimes that means doing stuff that is stressful to keep the peace on your end. Go, but try to get there late and leave early. I have a similar situation in that my DH seems to be feuding with his mother, yet secretly I think they love each other deep down, and I catch hell if I don't want to be around the dysfunction. So I let all the planning fall on DH to see his own mother. I don't do anything to speed up the frequency of visits.

[Anonymous]

We've dealt with similar things and honestly not showing up would have caused more anxiety. I just recognize that I can't control others, just myself, and choose not to worry about who is calling me fake or whatever.

[Anonymous]

If *you* are a kind and loving person, no one will hate you, OP. So show up, smile, be caring towards SIL, say positive things about everyone in a sincere way. Ignore your husband and his brother if they exchange barbed comments - it's not your fight.

My IL situation is nowhere as bad, but my husband can certainly pressure his family into doing things they don't want to do, and sometimes I don't agree with his opinions or his methods. I speak up in front of all of them, and tell him he's wrong, but I don't let myself be dragged into arguments, I let him discuss it with his brothers. They are all capable of fending for themselves. That way his family sees that I am my own person. I love them all, and I believe they love me back.

[Anonymous]

Could you go to the baby shower without DH since he is the one who is hostile?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
If *you* are a kind and loving person, no one will hate you, OP. So show up, smile, be caring towards SIL, say positive things about everyone in a sincere way. Ignore your husband and his brother if they exchange barbed comments - it's not your fight.

My IL situation is nowhere as bad, but my husband can certainly pressure his family into doing things they don't want to do, and sometimes I don't agree with his opinions or his methods. I speak up in front of all of them, and tell him he's wrong, but I don't let myself be dragged into arguments, I let him discuss it with his brothers. They are all capable of fending for themselves. That way his family sees that I am my own person. I love them all, and I believe they love me back.

And let me add that I am a very anxious person in general, but maybe less so around my ILs. They are rational and intelligent folk, even if the things they discuss are sometimes fraught with hurt feelings and unfair inheritances.

[Anonymous]

OP, if there are enough others present at this baby shower, they can act as a buffer. I'm not suggesting you ask them to do anything, just saying that the mere presence of a group larger than just you, DH, BIL and SIL could help prevent the brothers from getting into any real conversation.

I'd go, and before going I'd discuss with DH what he will do there--In other words, if you go alone and DH pleads work or whatever, fine, but if DH also goes to the shower, he should go planning to occupy himself speaking to other relatives and fetching you some punch - whatever it takes so he goes in there with a conscious decision that he will not engage with BIL. DH can say a cordial hello to BIL, should immediately turn his (DH's) attention to a very nice greeting for SIL, and then occupy himself with others. If BIL tries to speak with him, DH can plan what he'll say that's light and "on the surface" as you put it, and should then redirect himself and BIL by involving a third person like another relative in the conversation. Thinking about this stuff in advance can help, if DH is willing to do so.

Have an exit plan, too. Mention to SIL/MIL before the shower that you'll need to leave around X o'clock since you need to get home for (insert vital child-related event here, or whatever). No open-ended lingering; I hope the event has an ending time on the invitations--? Stick to the exit plan even if things are going OK and DH and BIL are not getting at each other. Better to leave on a good note than stay a bit too long and have things start to unravel.

All that sounds pretty controlled and controlling, yes, but if it means that your SIL gets a pleasant, feud-free shower, and that you are not driven into worse anxiety, then it's worth thinking through how to handle things before the event.

OP, I hope it goes OK. With anxiety, it can become easy to just avoid anything that might increase the anxiety, but that can end up meaning the anxious person starts to avoid a lot of life situations.

Have you talked with your therapist about strategies for handling this event, OP? And does your husband really understand about your anxiety and how his behaviors exacerbate it at times? Maybe he needs to talk to your therapist, if that's the done thing, to start learning how his actions affect you--?

[Anonymous]

I would not go. You tell your husband that you find his relationship with his brother very stress inducing, and you won't go. You send regrets to whoever is organizing the shower. "So sorry, sounds like a lot of fun, but I can't make it that day." No more details.

There may well indeed be fall out from your MIL, but you aren't there. Not your circus, not your monkeys.

You separately contact SIL, tell her you were sorry you couldn't go, could you take her out for coffee/lunch? And bring her a gift and wish her well.