I love my boyfriend…but will his anxiety swallow my own life?

I'm a 16 year old girl, and my boyfriend is 17. Our relationship is great; I've been with him for nearly half a year, we get on with each other's families and we see each other around twice a week. But just recently I've been noticing how increasingly dependent he is becoming on me...

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My boyfriend suffers from extreme anxiety and panic attacks, and has also just recovered from mild depression. After having come from a serious broken home and experiencing previous relationship problems he became suicidal around last year, and has also self harmed. He has suffered from all these issues for about 3-4 years now, although I have only recently witnessed his first extreme panic attack which quite frankly really frightened me.

I’ve seen him having panic attacks before and know how to help him, but this time it was different. It happened whilst at a party. He began having a relatively “normal” panic attack after getting seriously dehydrated (water is a big thing in his life, and he constantly carries around 2ltr bottles with him) which I helped him through, but within seconds of this, he fell to the floor and began convulsing, shaking and hyperventilating.

Luckily, some older guys that were there calmed him down and relatively controlled him but soon after, they left and it was just me and my boyfriend. I also managed to calm him down, but when we were walking home he has another attack, and this time completely collapsed in the middle of the road. Luckily some people saw us and helped me get him water, sit him up, get him to talk and walk and all the rest of it. When we finally did get home, he completely broke down; sobbing, hanging onto me like I was the only thing keeping him alive and explaining how sorry he was. All he kept saying was “you’re going to leave me, I’m so sorry, please don’t leave me, I need you”.

I totally understand the state he was in, and don’t get me wrong, I love him to pieces, but this constant fear of me leaving him is becoming more and more frequent. His anxiety is taking over my life because I’m either constantly having to look after him or I’m worrying about him. I know people say love clouds judgment and that, in my young age, I am naïve to issues like these, but up until recently I have been coping well with such pressure.

I do love him, and we get on really well but recently I’ve noticed that my grades have been dropping (this is especially important to me as I am in my GCSE year) and I find myself becoming more and more limited in terms of my own social life because I can’t bring him with me to a lot of the gatherings/parties that I love to go to.

Also, he lives with his mum yet he has never told her about any of his mental health issues, and has only just started getting counselling for anxiety at his college. I really want to get him to start speaking up about his problems, so he can face them and I can help him through them…but I don’t want my life to become dedicated to this. I don’t want to break up with him, I’m just scared that if I bring up how his problems are negatively affecting my life, then his anxiety and depression will grow.I just want him to know how difficult I’m also finding it.

I know that there has been no solution to this story, but I felt like opening up so that other young people with issues like these know that they’re not alone. I know I certainly could have benefitted from knowing that there are people out there that are having similar problems.

This post was written by ThatOtherGirl27 and originally appeared on The Mix’s sister website Madly In Love.

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