Everything changed when my spouse suddenly became paranoid of me. The love went away and was replaced with yelling, rage attacks, and depression. I’ve continued to help and support him, but it’s been about a year now and there’s only slight improvement (along with a new psychiatrist and new med regimen). What can I do to help heal the rift between us? Is he always going to be paranoid of me?
Hi @magrah , welcome to the forum. I know how distressing paranoia can be, my son is highly paranoid of his father/my husband. Here’s a short answer. Paranoid delusions, like all delusions can become quite long lasting and some never go away entirely. The longer the delusion is in place the better it’s chances of “survival” even on medication.
I’m am sorry. I hope it’s not that way for your husband’s delusion.
Hello @magrah and welcome to the forum. You can find some good advice and comfort here when things are really rough.
Have you read the book “I’m not Sick, I Don’t Need Help” by Dr. Amador. It has a communication process in it that I found helpful called the LEAP method. Perhaps you can use it to help get your husband to speak to you more kindly. My daughter’s delusions/paranoia were so awful when they were bad. I understand your problem and wish there was an easy solution. Unfortunately, schizophrenia is a lifelong problem (battle, war) to be managed.
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Thank you for responding, I hope so too.
Thank you for the reading recommendation. I’ve adapted my communication a lot (I’m a registered nurse but had never dealt with someone in full paranoid psychosis), so I still make mistakes sometimes. I understand this will never go away and, with a nine year old son, I wonder sometimes what’s best for everybody and am I doing the right thing?
Oh @magrah the situation you find yourself in is very very hard to navigate and only you can make the decisions needed along the way. There are many people’s posts on this forum who tried to care for spouses who became ill. Some stayed with the spouse, some didn’t, and those with children have a double duty in caregiving. Of course you are wondering sometimes what is best. You will continue to wonder as you make decisions along this long hard path. Try to read what others have done for your own moral support.
I was very lucky that my daughter ended up on a med that changed things dramatically for the better, and has stayed on that med. But I was so frazzled and worn out by the time her psychosis settled down, I was near to losing all hope. Your situation is very different than mine, so your choices will be very different.
Don’t worry about making mistakes, all of us on this site have made mistakes in our caregiving. You must arrange and re-arrange your life the best you can. It will be the hardest thing you have ever done. But keeping your own safety and that of your son in mind as top priority is just as important as trying to help stabilize your husband. He may never stabilize, he may get tremendously better, and there are a world of possibilities in between those two extremes. I wish you the best.
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