Hello!

I’m a 30 year old male living with my wife on a 3rd world country. We have no help from our families and we’ve been through some very difficult times, but we managed to get by. My wife had a severe case of depression and even tried to take her own life at a point.

Now things got a little better, even though we are in a tight financial situation. We both feel a lot better and we even managed to get off our meds (it’s nice to be able to save the money and get rid of the side-effects).

But, there is something weird that came as a consequence of all those bad times. Whenever I receive a text message from my wife, my heart races and my anxiety goes through the roof. It’s an irrational fear that the message will be bad news.

I don’t really know if there is such a thing as “text phobia”, but that’s how it feels (english is not my main language, so it’s kinda hard to explain). I alread mentioned this to my wife and I think it made her feel bad because she thinks it’s her fault. Of course I said it’s not her fault, but now I’m kinda afraid to bring this up again with her. We both are trying so hard to be strong for each other.

I wonder if anyone else had a similar problem and I would be very grateful if someone could give me some tips on how to work on this problem.

Thanks a lot and I hope you have a great day.

  • @ChootchMcGoochEnglish
    5•1 year ago

    As someone who’s lost their partner recently, this is exactly right. My favorite shows used to be medical ones and I cannot even see a commercial in a medical setting without getting pulled back to that day instantly. I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD because of the experience.

    Sounds like OP has PTSD also. Meds and therapy for him and her, especially couples therapy, would be what’s needed. Don’t know what that looks like in a 3rd world country though.