I Need Help on How to Help

Hello everyone,

My boyfriend has GAD and I am reaching out to ask for help on how to help him.
We have been together for a year and a half and live together. Recently, our relationship has begun falling apart as his condition worsens.

I have always supported him, but I feel like my support is no longer enough. I have booked him psychologist appointments, of which he attended twice. I have recently quit my job as I was on shift work doing the graveyard hours (my last shift is next Friday), and he told me I needed to take care of him and I wasn't able to do that working that job and asked me to resign and work part-time instead.

He wants to treat his anxiety naturally and refuses to take medication. I know this is not my decision, and I support him with this. He is saying that someone needs to "steer the ship" and that he needs me to make sure he eats healthy meals five times a day, and that he drinks lots of water and exercises regularly. I struggled to do this for him because of the hours I was working, and he became very disappointed saying "I thought you could help me but obviously you can't". I am hoping to be more actively attentive once I start my part-time position at normal hours.

Currently he is becoming very anxious over windows being open. I have forgotten twice to close a window, it was an honest mistake both times I'm usually rushing out of the house half asleep to get to work at night. However, this triggers him to believe that the food in our house is poison. What I mean by this, is he believes that if a window is left open when we are not home the food has somehow become poisoned. If someone that he does not like touches his food, this is also deemed poison, and refuses to eat and will throw the food away immediately. Today I threw out all the food in our house because he can't eat it... But that also made him anxious.

I'm struggling to help because I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders trying to help him, and I keep failing and it's making him lose faith that he will ever get better. I'm running out of ways to help him. I have to tread very carefully, and there is a thin line I must walk as one step offside will cause an eruption and set him back. He has told me that if I keep failing to help him he will have to leave and live with his grandparents for a while.

Any advice would be most appreciated as I'm feeling a bit helpless and I'm not sure where to turn to ask for help.

Thank you in advance.

By the sounds of it he really needs to talk to a professional. Anxiety can be a really selfish condition as hes completely identified with his condition and Im guessing hes having trouble seeing himself past the anxiety. Despite that I think he is being unfair and also it will hurt his recovery if he blames anyone for his condition, in this case you. He really needs to take responsibility and do what he can to solve it, you can help to a certain extent but unless he really, really wants to get better it wont happen.

I always recommend meditation and would not really say medication is the best way unless there is a real chemical imbalance or something, most of the time thats not the case.

Hes right in that food, exercise etc will help, but in this case i think the best thing would be something like cbt, so one way or another i think he needs to get involved with that, especially if hes getting worse