I have overwhelming anxiety when my husband’s at work.

Ashli

My husband is a firefighter. He works 24 hour shifts, and I’m finishing my degree right now so I’m not working. Money has been a little tight with only one income, so he’s been picking up a lot of overtime shifts. This means that he is gone anywhere from 24-96 hours straight. He is honestly the man of my dreams. I was blessed with a man who fits me perfectly, and I don’t ever want to lose him. Recently, I’ve developed anxiety about him dying. I’ve never had issues with anxiety before. I have this constant fear that he’s not going to come back home, and it overwhelms me. Sometimes, I will just break down out of nowhere. His job is very demanding and often, he will be on a call and won’t answer his phone or return a text for a while which in turn amps my anxiety up because then all I think about is that something happened to him. I just honestly don’t know what to do. I’ve never had to deal with this type of anxiety before, and I don’t know how to handle it. He is more than understanding of it, and even if he’s on a call, he will try to shoot back a short text just so I know he’s okay so I don’t work myself up. I don’t know if I should see a doctor about it, or if it’s just coming from stress from school and finances. In addition, going days without seeing him is breaking me. I try not to say too much to him about it because I don’t want him constantly worried about me when he needs to focus on his job. At this point, I’m just struggling.