RSPH

Today has been a particularly stressful day in the Royal Society of Paranoid Husbands. I have had to deal with a number of incidents of paranoia from my husband.

Dealing with paranoia as a carer is very difficult. Patience is wearing thin. I am not a professional, so my tact in dealing with situations is not always the best and is becoming less and less reassuring to him as time passes. Where do you draw the line and say that the paranoia is a real, noteworthy medical concern? I find the stress levels rising on a daily basis and are beginning to affect our soon to be teenage daughter. I already suffer from high blood pressure, so this is not helping, although I know it’s not behaviour which he is choosing, so that makes it harder.

I am certain that the media and access to the internet exacerbates the paranoia. Constantly, he seeks affirmation of his concerns online from Google and it’s not always reassuring. He has a fear of spiders and lately we have noticed at least 30 false widow spiders in our back garden, on our fences. He has also found some cobwebs indoors so immediately assumes that these spiders are in our houses and will bite him so that he will die.

As you can imagine, last year, his entire fears circled around Covid 19. He still talks about it every day but he will now go back into public places again, although still finding it stressful. He obsesses over the statistics of the number of positive cases and the number of people dying.

Health concerns underpin the majority of his paranoia. He thinks he will die at an early age- he recently was convinced that he would catch Covid 19 again, even though he has already had it and has been double vaccinated.

His diabetes and fluctuating sugar levels can cause some irrational behaviour but not to the extent of paranoia. He was recently told that his eye sight was deteriorating. Of course, for several weeks he was convinced that he would soon go blind.

Another paranoid attribute of his is thinking that people are talking about him. If he entered a room and someone laughed at precisely that moment, he would immediately assume they were laughing at him and get annoyed- it would cause him not to like them anymore and feel threatened by them. Telephone conversations that are had whilst he is not in the room that he is not privy to make him anxious. He wants to know every detail of the conversation and is concerned people are bad mouthing him or don’t like him.

All of these behaviour traits reveal to me a complete lack of confidence in himself. When I first met him, he came across as being hugely confident, almost to the point of being cocky and irritating. It must have been a front to cover all of these anxieties that he displays within.

If I am honest, I am really struggling day in and day out with the paranoia and anxiety that he has been exhibiting. I want to be able to help him, but I am not sure how. People say that to be a carer you need to look after yourself, which is easier said than done. If anyone resonates with any of the situations above or has advice then I would be interested to hear from you.