Stopped therapy

[Imnothere]

Starting mid-February, I'm taking a long break from work. After lengthy discussions with my therapist and wife, I finally confessed to my boss about how lupus is adversely affecting my performance, and that my doc has suggested I need a break. I fully expected to get laid off, but my boss was surprisingly compassionate. He gave me a 3 months leave, plus a bonus as he knew I was the breadwinner. Sounded great, but didn't work as expected. When I was still working, all I needed to do was take a half day off to go to therapy and my wife wouldn't know unless I told her. Now that I stay at home most of the time, my wife becomes fully aware when I'm going to the hospital or my therapist. And she's not happy.

Turns our my wife thinks I'm implicitly accusing her of being not good enough by getting sick. For her my going to the hospital/therapy is a reminder of how she could have been a better wife (I still have zero idea what she meant when she said so). I've suggested couples counseling but she outright refused. Somehow she does not believe in doctors and therapists, I'm guessing it's because she's been healthy all her life. She can literally count the few times she's ever had a common cold. Flu or anything worse? Never had one.

In simple words: my wife seems to think I'm deliberately getting sick to upset her. She understands that lupus can kill me, so I don't have to skip revisits to my immunologist, but depression is another thing. I've called my therapist's office to cancel the appointments. Don't know how long I can keep feigning happiness after I run out of antidepressant and sleeping pills.

[mamamoon26]

I'm sorry you're going through this without your wife's support. You need to keep seeing a therapist to get your anti-depressants. Just stopping is very bad to do. I know you want to keep her as happy as possible but your mental health is also important. Think of like this, if you could. You're an airplane and your medicine is your engines. If your "engines" are working you don't want them to stop when you're in the air. You want to keep your "airplane" in the sky. When your engine stops (meds run out), the plane will stay in the air but only until it crashes. I hope that wasn't to obscure, and I hope you get the point of what I'm saying.
Your wife should be much more supportive of you. You can't control that you have lupus and need to go to the doctor for that alone. But you add depression to that and it's that much more difficult. I know I'm just someone on the internet and what I say may not carry weight with you but you should keep getting your medicines if they're helping. Sometimes you need to do what's best for you and not be concerned with what the other person thinks.
I am married and my husband didn't want me getting anti-depressants for a long time. For him, it was because he's had family with bad experiences with them, not he was mad. I decided to not get them, at the time, but eventually my depression got worse and worse to the point I needed to get something done. I didn't know how I would be able to go on because I just wasn't able to be happy. I was constantly unhappy and more often than not, I would just burst into tears for no reason. There were times where I just wanted to end everything. I did get the help I needed. So hearing what you've said about your wife, it lets me know she's being extremely uncompassionate, inconsiderate, and insensitive to you and your needs. I know it's hard to just think about yourself when you have depression but in this case you need to. Your wife needs to grow up and realize you don't want all of this. But you have all of this and you deal with it daily. She doesn't and she doesn't know or understand how important it is for you to take care of you. Best of luck to you.

[LookUp1430]

Boy that really stinks. Maybe you can get your doctor to write a note to your wife telling her that your therapy is part of a holistic approach to helping with your Lupus treatment. In the meantime, if your wife doesn't believe in a medical based couples counseling, perhaps she might be more willing to do some sort of counseling through your church?

[Imnothere]

Dear mamamoon26, thank you for sharing your experience. Also the airplane simile is awesome. I will try again to explain to my wife why I need therapy, and if that still doesn't work, I'm thinking maybe I will try to arrange therapy on the same day of revisit to my immunologist. Wish you well.

Dear LookUp1430, thank you for the advice. Will ask my doc to do that. Actually I might ask my wife to accompany me for my next revisit to the immunologist, if possible. As for counseling through the church, we're not church goers so that's not likely, but still, thanks for the option.

I'm thinking, after some kind reminder, that I need to be more compassionate to my wife. She quit her job to be a stay at home mom, our kid is still young, and BAM the breadwinner, husband and father fell ill. Things don't look brighter from her side.

Thanks to all who took the time to read my rant, and who further wrote a reply. Sometimes simply knowing I'm not alone in this is enough to help me carry on.