Home→Forums→Tough Times→New neighbor anxiety
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Lara.
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March 21, 2019 at 11:06 am #285657
SteveParticipantI’m currently in the process of fixing up and moving into a new house. Yesterday, I had a plumber come out and do some work and he called and said that the neighbor came over and was complaining because the roofers had left some nails in our shared driveway. I had no idea there were nails in the driveway, or I would have cleaned them up.
Anyway, the plumber then tells me that he got into an argument with the neighbor and ended up cursing the neighbor out. This is NOT how I wanted to start a new phase of my life, especially since I’ve been dealing with a lot of anxiety recently about the house and getting moved in.
So I went over and left a note on the neighbor’s door apologizing for the nails and also for the plumber’s behavior, but I can’t shake this weird anxiety that I have now. It’s like life is going okay and then one little bump hits, and I spiral into despair and lose interest in everything. I hate it.
March 21, 2019 at 11:46 am #285681
AnonymousGuestDear Steve:
I understand your distress. This incidence would have distressed me too, happening in context of moving to a new house, a move that involves other distresses.
I think it would be a good idea if you follow up on the note you left the neighbor and visit him in person for a friendly personal introduction.
anita
March 21, 2019 at 12:47 pm #285693SteveParticipantI did that this morning. I stopped over there and knocked on his door. He was on the phone and told me he would call me. I said “I just wanted to apologize again” and he said “We’re cool” and I left, but again, why do I not feel like it’s over?
March 21, 2019 at 2:21 pm #285697AnonymousGuestDear Steve:
My guess is that the reason you do “not feel like it’s over” is because this has been an especially distressing time for you, anxious time, buying a new home, finances, repairs (roof, plumbing, etc.), and all this anxiety is now focused on the plumber-neighbor incident. It is common that when anxiety goes up, it nests in one place, one topic. It is similar to fearful people whose fear nests in spiders. Your fear nesting in the incident is temporary though and once your general level of anxiety goes down, you will be over this incident.
What you need is down time, taking some kind of a vacation from this stressful time, even if it is a day at the beach or by a lake or the like.
Another point- the plumber working for you should not have cursed your neighbor, it is a bad business practice. Maybe you should let the plumber know it is bad practice and/or inform the company the plumber works for, so that the plumber will not repeat this behavior.
anita
March 25, 2019 at 6:23 am #286179SteveParticipantThanks for your responses Anita.
I talked to the neighbor. He said he was fine with me, just not the plumber. I told him I had fired the plumber.
So you’d think everything would be fine and dandy, but for some reason, I’m still have residual effects. I’ve been really stressed with everything recently and I still can’t seem to shake things. I’ve had no appetite for a week and I’ve lost all interest in everything.
Also, I’ve been slowly weaning myself off Pristiq. I started last summer at 100 mg and slowly SLOOOOWLY I’m down to 25 mg a day and I thought I was going to be off them for good until recently. I guess I was fooling myself thinking that the pills weren’t doing me any good. However, I desperately want off the Pristiq because I just don’t trust them. They’re very hard to get off of and the withdrawal symptoms are legendary, which is why I figured I would get off the pills and then figure out if I needed any other pills. So now I have a doctor’s appointment Thursday to talk to my psychiatrist about maybe getting something else to try while I continue weaning off the Pristiq. Not sure what to get on, but something that can help me deal with my anxiety.
March 25, 2019 at 7:45 am #286201AnonymousGuestDear Steve:
I can’t google it right now, so I ask: is Pristiq an anti anxiety drug in the same family as Clonazepam (aka Klonipin)? If so, I would like to share with you my experience of getting off it after over 15 years of being on it.
anita
March 25, 2019 at 11:17 am #286271AnonymousGuestDear Steve:
I just googled Pristiq and it is not in the family of the drug I mentioned. It is an anti depressant.
You wrote: “I guess I was fooling myself thinking that the pills weren’t doing me any good”- the fact that a person experiences withdrawal symptoms when reducing the dosage of a mood altering drug does not mean the drug was helping the person. It means that withdrawing from it feels badly.
The brain adjusts itself to a mood altering drug and then has to re-adjust itself when you take it away. The adjusting and re-adjusting are often unpleasant and sometimes, very unpleasant and even scary.
If you look at the causes of your anxiety, other than the plumber/neighbor incident that you handled well and the Pristiq, is there anything else that is causing your anxiety, personal relationships perhaps, financial concerns, something else?
anita
March 25, 2019 at 11:49 am #286279SteveParticipantThere have been underlying concerns since December, when I decided to move out of my apartment. The landlord said she was going to evict me if I didn’t stop taking care of a bunch of stray cats that lived out back (the cats I started taking care of because the previous landlord took care of them, and then she just up and left, so I had been taking care of them for three years and then one day in December got a note on my door saying that I would be evicted if I didn’t stop feeding them.) I tried to talk to her but she just said “Just ignore them and they’ll go away” which obviously isn’t the case, so for a few weeks in December I was crushed as I tried to figure out a place to take these cats because I wasn’t going to watch them suffer through the winter. I finally found a woman to take them, so I’ve been trying to trap these cats since December, and I’m down to one cat left. Anyway, that has been a very stressful situation, but I am wondering if I have homebuyer’s remorse with this house and it is taking its toll on me. There’s no rush to get into the house because my lease isn’t up until the end of April, so I have time to get everything situated, but I keep feeling like I might have made a mistake or something and that has made itself snowball into panic and anxiety.
March 25, 2019 at 12:07 pm #286283SteveParticipantAlso I’ve been feeling VERY homesick for my old home in another state recently. I left there three years ago, thinking I would never return, but now all I’m doing is wondering if I could find a job there so I could move back. I haven’t made any friends where I’m at here. I had a girlfriend for two years, but that has been over since last March, and I am so lonely. I usually don’t admit that to myself because I’ve always been a very private person, but I’ve never felt so alone these past few months. I do musical theater, but the theaters I’ve found here aren’t the same level as the one I used to be in, and that’s disappointing too. Maybe I’m just feeling sorry for myself.
March 25, 2019 at 12:08 pm #286285AnonymousGuestDear Steve:
You do take care of what needs to be taken care of:
1. You trapped all but one cat and delivered them to a woman who is taking care of them.
2. Your lease is up April and you already located, purchased and fixing a new house to move to.
3. There was an unpleasant confrontation between your former plumber and your new neighbor and you resolved the problem by firing the plumber and apologizing to your neighbor in a note and in person.
4. You are weaning yourself of a psychiatric drug which will lead to you a better place (as it did for me, being free from psych meds for more than five years at this point!)
– – – I suppose you need a bit of help at this point. What about psychotherapy?
Also, your buyer remorse, a known phenomenon. Is it that you paid more for the house than its market value, or that you underestimated the costs of repairs that need to be done..?
anita
March 25, 2019 at 12:35 pm #286291SteveParticipantI think I’m just not happy with the neighborhood it is in. Another reason for the move was to get out of the “ghetto” as I called it where my apartment was, but this neighborhood, although not apartments but houses, seems rough, too. I have already planned to get a security system and cameras, but I have always had this paranoia about people.
I just want to feel safe for me and my two inside cats, and it seems like this neighborhood wasn’t as researched enough as it should have been. I mean, I’m only about 1 mile away from the priciest neighborhoods in the entire city, very clean and well-maintained, but being on the outskirts of a nice neighborhood still brings its disadvantages.
March 25, 2019 at 1:12 pm #286295AnonymousGuestDear Steve:
Reads to me that your house, being “only about 1 mile away from the priciest neighborhoods” is a very promising investment. Neighborhoods in Manhattan that used to be rough, and rent prices there were cheap in the 80s, are now extremely expensive to live in. I know a person who purchased one apartment in Manhattan’s then poor, rough neighborhood who now makes lots and lots of money renting that apartment.. because it was very close to the rest midtown Manhattan where then and now real estate is extremely expensive.
I know of a person who purchased a house in a poor looking neighborhood in Seattle. Only a few years later, his house is worth a lot of money.. because it was close to more expensive neighborhoods.
A close proximity to an expensive part of a city often means a great increase in real estate value in the future, sometimes the near future, and so, this seeming disadvantage for you, may be tomorrow’s great advantage!
anita
March 25, 2019 at 1:57 pm #286303SteveParticipantThat’s true. Thank you for your kind words. They’ve been helpful. I think I’m just overwhelmed with everything and missing what is “known.” It’s the first time I’ve been home sick in 3 years so that’s a new one.
March 25, 2019 at 2:55 pm #286313AnonymousGuestDear Steve:
You are welcome. Home sick in three years, I suppose it is missing what is known, just like you wrote. What is known to you at home, was it a good experience, overall?
(I will be away from the computer for a while)
anita
April 4, 2019 at 3:52 am #287521
LaraParticipantDear Steve, I think you did everything right with your neighbor. You apologized for your plumber’s behavior in writing and in person, even went so far as to fire him. I hope you can leave this now behind you. Maybe you won’t even see your neighbor much due to different shedules, and when you see him you can just say “Hey how do you do?”
Did you create a nice space for yourself in your house yet where you feel “at home”? E.g. a nice couch?
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