My W believes there is some magic pill that will cure this, especially for her panic attacks,
Damn, I hate this part. My wife comes from a background of "take a pill, and it'll be ok". I'm totally the opposite, and we can go round and round about this one. I think that most pills can be ok for a temporary band-aid, but the side-effects can be devastating, and they usually tend to only mask the real problems. In the process of her search for the "magic pill", my wife got pretty addicted to some of the stuff she was taking. I've grown to really hate doctors that freely write prescriptions for all of our ailments.
I'm a very firm believer in the "mind/body, body/mind" connection. I've noticed the patterns of when anyone one in our home gets to feeling bad physically, their mental and emotional state follows suit. Also, when their mental and emotional states become askew, they begin having physical problems. This shows up heavily in both my wife's depression problems, and my son's epileptic seizure problems. I would suspect that the same is probably true with your wife's diabetic problems.
I think that your idea about the vitamins is great. I often have to ask my wife if she's been taking her's lately when I see the mood shift! Now that we're talking about it, I think that the most productive action I could take would be to become more involved with making sure that we have a more nutritional diet in our house. This makes it more of a win/win situation!
What exactly is the "shock treatment" you've done for those quality of life boundries you mentioned?
I've noticed that a LOT of my wife's episodes come from "life" situations that occur. One of her biggest depression triggers come from the trouble we are having with my step-daughter. We have allowed her actions to devastate our family. It often works for me to just listen to my wife talk about her feelings of guilt, sadness, anger, etc. Then there are times when the cycle of emotions just overwhelm her, begin cycling in her head too much, and I have to put a stop to it.
I have to remind her that our daughter is making choices for herself, and that I WILL NOT allow her choices to effect the quality of MY life, or of OUR life as a family. That when she allows our D's actions take control over her life, that it effects ALL of our lives, and that I won't allow that to happen to US again. That I can either be her husband or her counselor, but I can't be both. The choice is hers.
Then, it's time for me to just step away from it, and let the pieces fall into place as they may.
Usually, there's a short aftermath of silence and sadness from her to deal with, but she eventually starts to turn things around in her head.
Our situations are different, KAW, so this "technique" might not work for you. It's usually a last resort for me, but I've found that, in my situation, it's much better for me to do this than to keep building up anger and resentment over the situation. If I were to let that happen, I would begin to distance myself too much, which in turn seems to push my wife deeper into her funk.
I DEFINITELY know that the "walking on eggshells" thing doesn't work for either of us. In fact, she has told me more than once that it just makes things worse for her.
By nature, I am a better "provider" than I am a "caretaker". Although I can do both, TOO much caretaking for TOO long of a period, especially without seeing any progress, affects me adversely, which in turn affects our relationship.
The more I've been "talking" here, the more that I realize that I need to take care of things better on the "front end". I've been doing this fairly well when it comes to the general mood of our home, but it may pay for me to concentrate on the physical aspect a little more!
At least until THAT stops working, then I'll have to "do something different"!
JJ
Read about Divorce Busting® Telephone Coaching here!
