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Dear Eric: I am a 63-year-old woman who has been married for 45 years to a wonderful man. We have been blessed with a great relationship, but the past two years I have developed a phobia of driving or driving a car on the highway. I’m fine on city streets and residential roads, but when I get on highways, I start having extreme fear and anxiety to the point of full blown panic attacks.
This angers my husband immensely. He tells me “I’m crazy” and that I need to “pull off my big girl panties”. He also called me some vile names that I cannot repeat here. I know it’s irrational and I can’t understand why it happens. Now he is threatening to sell my car, even though I have no problem driving to the store, doctor’s office, hair salon, etc.
I don’t have insurance that covers mental health issues, and I’ve been looking for counselors, but frankly we can’t afford it since we’re retired and on a very limited budget. My doctor doesn’t want to put me on anxiety meds because he believes they are addictive and suggests I “just breathe” to combat this. I am at a loss as to what to do. Any suggestions?
– Rough road
Dear Strada: It is possible that your husband’s abusive language and behavior is making your anxiety worse.
Anxiety clings to anything it can, so maybe there’s something else you’re struggling with and it shows in the car. Regardless, your husband should be supportive, not name-calling. The National Domestic Violence Hotline, TheHotline.org, can point you to local resources for relief from the way your husband is treating you. Just because you don’t understand what’s happening to you, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. His behavior is what is irrational; you approach this situation with concern and a solution-focused mindset. Don’t let them touch your car keys.
Also, please get a second medical opinion on anxiety medication. Many doctors do not agree with the opinions of your doctor.
As for therapy, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, SAMHSA.gov, is a great resource for finding free or low-cost counseling and support groups. I also recommend the books “Mindfulness” by Mark Williams and Danny Penman and “The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook” by Edmund J. Bourne. It takes some detective work and a lot of hard inner work to get through this. It also takes time and patience. But relief is possible. Anyone who is not long for that trip with you must get out of the car.
Dear Eric: I have nieces and nephews who were deceived by their grandmother – my husband’s mother – to believe in everything that my husband and I will go to them one day.
I told my niece that my pearls go back to my mother’s side of the family, as I have a brother and no children now. She ran away from her grandmother in tears. How dare he disappoint his young teenage hopes, evidently, of pearls from the remote islands of the Pacific.
I have a written will that outlines where my effects should go. We know that children are taught to be greedy by their grandmother and they are just parrots, but it is a real turnoff to be around young adults who beg you before working for things. In my heart, I want to tell the little cusses that I bought my jewelry with the money I made from my career being paid 30 percent less than a man, and I’ll be damned if I hand over a pennyweight to my in-laws . I feel really bad that these children assume that they are the center of the universe and that we heap gifts on them like grandma and daddy!
How do we close the rule by noise of the grandmother while the grandchildren see a splendor of jewels and assume, loudly and openly, that they will all be theirs? Or shall we?
– Sparkling aunt
Dear Glittering: Oh, you should definitely bother. If your impulse is to use glittering language to set your grandchildren straight, do it. Of course, they have no problem robbing graves from the living; how else will they learn that their grandmother’s assumptions don’t ring true for you?
Your mother-in-law sets an unhealthy precedent. I think this is part of a bigger obstacle in the relationship you two have. It might be worth meeting his expectations with her. You could be wrong about where your jewelry comes from, or you could just be wrong about your personal desires. However, you can tell her, politely, to stop clutching your pearls.
As for your grandchildren, they may not like what they hear, but it is the truth. No one has the right to an heir. And if they can’t even remember your autonomy while you’re alive, why bother to remember them in your will?
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or PO Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110.)