Arsip Tag: what is relationship anxiety

Learning How to Cope With Relationship Anxiety

Ditulis pada oleh
Balas

Learning How to Cope With Relationship Anxiety – Relationship anxiety refers to feelings of doubt, insecurity, nonstop worry, and a need for constant reassurance that sometimes occurs during a relationship. Such anxiety may have roots in early childhood attachments and is often a sign of an insecure attachment style.

Picture this: it’s the start of what could be a perfect relationship. The conversation is fantastic, communication is loud and clear both ways, and everything seems set for a happily ever after—except for one or two doubts you can’t seem to shake off.

‘What do they even see in me?’, ‘Will they get bored?’ ‘How long until this one falls apart?’ In some cases, these questions linger on even after ‘I love yous’ have been exchanged in the relationship.

If you’ve ever found yourself asking these questions, there is a chance that you may be familiar with relationship anxiety.

When a person starts to feel anxious about life with a current or prospective partner, it’s an understandable worry—this is a big part of their lives. However, in certain cases, this worry becomes so crippling, it can prevent the relationship from flourishing, or even taking off, to begin with.

We’ll be examining the causes of relationship anxiety, what to look out for, and the appropriate ways to navigate this feeling.

Causes of Relationship Anxiety
When worries start to creep in and become a familiar feature of a budding or current relationship, you might be dealing with relationship anxiety. Let’s take a look at some common causes.

An Anxious Attachment Style
When you find that you are constantly questioning the security of your relationship or the depth of feelings your partner has for you, this can sometimes be traced back to the relationship you shared with your parents or other caregivers when growing up.

In cases where their parents or guardians consistently show a child love and affection, this can form a secure attachment style to these relationships.

However, where the child is shown love and care on some occasions, but cruelty and abandonment on others, they may form an anxious attachment with the people they love and trust.

This can cause the child to cling to these beloved figures for attention. The child may also require the constant assurance of their love—traits that may appear in later years within romantic relationships.

People with anxious attachment styles often question their worth and are typically on guard, watching for the first signs that their partners may be losing interest in them. In addition, this attachment places them in a state of worry over losing their significant others.1

Negative Past Experiences
Imagine a scenario where you get stung by a bee. Hearing a buzzing anytime after that may produce a certain amount of fear that causes you to be wary of getting stung again. The same can sometimes occur with relationships.

If a person has experienced a relationship where their self-worth, value, attractiveness, etc., was called into question, this can trigger anxiety that partnering with another person will produce the same effects.

If this happens, a previously hurt person may remain on edge, constantly questioning the stability of the relationship and the feelings involved in it.

Low Self-Esteem
Living with a poor estimation of your self-worth and value can strongly affect your quality of life.2

In cases where a person struggles with low self-esteem, this can raise constant doubt about the authenticity of a partner’s feelings for them or whether they are deserving of their partner’s love. It may also encourage assumptions of unfaithfulness and other questions that can put the future of the relationship in jeopardy.

Poor Communication
In some cases, experiencing worry about your partner’s affection or the future of your relationship may be tied to the fact that honest conversations about shared feelings, the state of the relationship, or plans together are lacking with your partner.

Failing to speak on these matters can leave a vacuum in the relationship, encouraging feelings of anxiety.

Signs of Relationship Anxiety
Here are some signs that anxiety may be manifesting itself in your relationship:

Wondering if your partner truly has feelings for you
Looking for constant reassurance from your partner
Aiming to please your significant other at any cost, sometimes to your detriment
Acting controlling towards your partner’s movements or interactions
Consistently wanting to be around your partner and being clingy in most situations
Holding doubts about romantic compatibility
Over-analyzing simple words and actions for signs of trouble
Constantly feeling like your partner intends to call off the relationship
Spending more time worrying about the relationship than enjoying it

In other cases, relationship anxiety may take the form of deliberately sabotaging things with your partner. This can be seen where slight issues are blown out of proportion or where traps are laid for your partner to test fidelity.

Read More :  Salvabrani.com

Learning How to Cope With Relationship Anxiety

It may also appear in instances where you purposely stay aloof and guarded with your partner, all to steel yourself against hurt and pre-empt difficulties.

Effects of Relationship Anxiety
Before placing a magnifying glass on the way you act within your relationship, it’s important to note that not every demonstration of worry is a sign of relationship anxiety.

In fact, taking stock of what is working, changes in communication, and feelings shared within the relationship is healthy and encouraged. However, when the energy you expend in keeping tabs on your partner and their attitude within the relationship constantly leaves you feeling on edge, that could be problematic.

Constantly worrying about the relationship can also affect the quality of love and intimacy you enjoy. In some cases, experiencing persistent feelings of anxiety within the relationship can produce the most feared result—an end to the union.

If you realize that you frequently experience relationship anxiety, this can negatively affect your well-being and the chances of experiencing a future with your partner.

However, you should know that there are steps you can take to improve the quality of your life and your relationship to avoid the harmful effects of anxiety.

Ways to Overcome Relationship Anxiety
Fortunately, if you’re having relationship anxiety, there are ways to help cope with—or even stop—those feelings. Here are a few options to consider.

Communicate Your Feelings
To get ahead of anxiety, it’s important to have honest conversations with your partner about your worries, expectations, or dreams for the future.

Share doubts you may have and talk through challenges. This will always beat making up scenarios where only the worst outcomes are imagined.

By speaking clearly with your partner, uncertainties that can encourage anxiety are avoided, leaving room for a healthy appreciation of the relationship.

Enjoy the Present
When you catch your mind starting to wonder about the fate of your relationship in years to come, it is always advisable to nip that in the bud and enjoy the present moment.

Considering whether or not your partner will even be in your life in five years, or if they’ll still find you desirable in months to come, only takes away from cherishing your current joy. Instead, it saddles you with worry over future events that may not even occur.

To manage your anxieties, treasure your current reality, and savor the happiness of being with a person you have chosen and who has also chosen to be with you at the moment.

Confront Your Anxiety
It may sound counterproductive to embrace your anxieties while attempting to get over them, but this is one of the most effective ways to get your emotions under control.

Are you anxious because of a past failed relationship? Perhaps you worry about not being good enough for love because you struggle with how you view yourself.

Questioning the reasons for your anxiety in relationships can help you recognize these issues and tackle them clearly.

Attend Therapy
In certain situations, getting professional help to manage your anxiety may be the best option for getting it under control.

Through therapy, you can receive the proper guidance to change negative and dysfunctional thoughts about yourself, your self-worth, and your attitude towards your partner.

Therapy can also teach appropriate methods to manage your anxiety to prevent lasting damage to the relationship.

A Word From Verywell
When you care very deeply about something, it’s understandable to worry about it from time to time—relationships are no different.

However, while concerns about your partner and their feelings towards you are valid, this can quickly become unhealthy and injurious to your personal health. This is especially seen where you constantly obsess about who your partner is speaking with, whether the relationship will stand the test of time, and other signs of relationship anxiety.

Thankfully, there are ways to get anxiety in a relationship under control, and one of the most potent forms is simply communicating worries, challenges, hopes, etc., truthfully with your partner.

You may also bravely face the reasons you experience relationship fears. However, if additional help is required to get things under control, therapy can help change negative thinking and ideas of self-worth.

Is Your Relationship Making You Anxious? An Expert Breaks Down Why—And Shows You How To Fix It

Ditulis pada oleh
Balas

Is Your Relationship Making You Anxious? An Expert Breaks Down Why—And Shows You How To Fix It – In long-term relationships, anxiety is more likely to pop up because of a personal experience. “If [one] person is facing their own insecurities and facing self-esteem issues, they [might] project that on their partner,” Sommerfeldt says. Take abandonment issues, for example. One partner might have dealt with absent parents growing up, which has manifested into a fear that their partner will break up with them. Oftentimes, how you treat your partner stems from the example set by loved ones during childhood, says Sommerfeldt. Attachment styles are formed during youth and teach you what to expect from those who love you. If your example of love and how you deserve to be loved is insecure during childhood, then how you expect to be loved as an adult will typically mirror that. When you’re anxious in romance, it’s usually because you didn’t receive stable or consistent affection growing up which manifested into worry that the people who claim to love you will withdraw their affection. What does relationship anxiety look like, exactly? It can manifest in a number of ways. Find the most common below: 1. Overthinking Ahhh—the famous “O” word. Do you find yourself thinking about the worst-case scenario all the time? Wondering things like, “Does my partner love me as much as I do?” is a clear sign of overthinking and looking way too much into your partner’s words and body language. Overthinking the security of your relationship can cause you to act out or even feel jealous of your partner’s relationships with other people. 2. Doubt

No matter how long you’ve been with your partner, anxiety can creep in at any point in the relationship. But don’t worry. Feeling unsure about your relationship is a totally normal thing (usually).

Everyone experiences anxiety during certain points in their dating lives, say experts. And how it impacts your relationship varies, too.

Sometimes, the anxiety is brief. For others, it comes in waves. And in other cases, it sticks around. Even if you find yourself in that last camp, it doesn’t necessarily mean a breakup is around the corner.

But, it is important to deal with it. Letting the anxiety fester can break down the relationship or even drive you to the point of sabotaging it, says Shelley Sommerfeldt, PhD, clinical psychologist and relationship coach.

Anxiety is often rooted in things that happened to you while you were growing up. “There are different ways in which [people] attach [to the people they love] in childhood, such as to [their] parental figures,” says Sommerfeldt. And though you’ve grown up, how you relate to and trust other people (i.e. romantic partners) is still shaped by those experiences.

If your household was an unstable one, for example, you might have grown up feeling unsure in your relationships, worried your partner will abandon, reject or hurt you, says Sommerfeldt.

But childhood fears aren’t the only reason you might be feeling unsettled. Even in long-term romantic relationships, Sommerfeld explains, anxiety can stem from your personal life and then spill into your partnership. Take low self-esteem, for instance, or job insecurity, or fear of being first-time parents. Those emotions can have a ripple effect on your experiences with your partner.

Even though relationship anxiety looks different for everyone, that doesn’t mean there aren’t common factors that contribute to this feeling. Ahead, discover the root causes of relationship anxiety and how to cope with it.

What is relationship anxiety, anyway?

“It’s when someone experiences doubts, worries, and second-guesses their relationship or partner,” says Sommerfeldt. You might catch yourself stewing over whether your partner is still in love with you, whether they’ll find someone they love more than you, or insecure about whether they still find you attractive.

And even when your partner reassures you, you might still have a hard time believing them. Doubting your partner can ultimately lead to your sabotaging the relationship: You might pressure them to reassure you about their faithfulness, pick fights, or test them by, say, mentioning how attractive the server at dinner was, to see how they’ll react.

When and why does it happen?

At the start of a relationship, you might suffer from anxiety about whether you even want to commit to someone, whether you’re a good match, or wonder what your loved ones will think of them. This is all standard and healthy, says Sommerfeldt.

And throughout the relationship, regularly checking in with yourself about the person you’re partnered with is all good, too, she adds.

However, things get trickier “if anxiety [is] hindering the relationship or impacting [your] mental or emotional health, and impacting [your] partner. That’s when it gets problematic,” she adds. There’s more reason for concern when the anxiety leads to doubt and stress.

Read More : Salvabrani.com

Is Your Relationship Making You Anxious? An Expert Breaks Down Why—And Shows You How To Fix It

What does relationship anxiety look like, exactly?

It can manifest in a number of ways. Find the most common below:

1. Overthinking

Ahhh—the famous “O” word. Do you find yourself thinking about the worst-case scenario all the time? Wondering things like, “Does my partner love me as much as I do?” is a clear sign of overthinking and looking way too much into your partner’s words and body language. Overthinking the security of your relationship can cause you to act out or even feel jealous of your partner’s relationships with other people.

2. Doubt

Doubting is a classic symptom of anxiety and it can quickly put a strain on your relationship, says Sommerfeldt.

Doubt may lead to your checking up on your partner more than you have normally would have, snooping through their things, and distrusting them even when they haven’t given you a reason to do so. Once your partner catches on to your suspicion, they’ll likely grow resentful or frustrated at having to prove themselves again and again.

3. A Need For Validation

Anxiety comes about when someone “constantly needs their partner to validate their love,” says Sommerfeldt, and that’s a heavy burden to put on someone else. Constantly seeking reassurance from your partner is a sign of feeling insecure with yourself or with your partner.

4. Withdrawal

Not everyone is expressive about their anxiety, however. “People can shut down due to fear and that kills a relationship,” she says. Shutting down is not only unhealthy, but it gives mixed signals to your partner because not communicating your feelings forces them to draw conclusions on their own.

5. Worry

Anxiety often looks like worrying about the health of your relationship. That worry can grow into harmful stress as you imagine all the ways your relationship can fall apart, says Sommerfeldt, that keep you from being present.

6. Insecurity

In anxious relationships, one partner might project their insecurities onto their partner even if that insecurity isn’t a direct result of the relationship. So, if you think negatively about yourself, you’re likely to think your partner will too even if that’s not the case.

7. Loss Of Identity

“People lose their identity because they hang out [so often] with their significant other and they blend into one person,” says Sommerfeldt. “This usually happens in earlier stages of the relationship.” To keep your partner interested, you’ll mirror their thoughts and actions. And rather than maintaining your own self-worth, you’ll rely on them to bolster it for you.

Thing is, if you’re the type to feel anxious in a relationship, once you’ve melded with your partner, you’ll have a harder time pinpointing the anxiety. It’ll be harder to determine from which partner the anxiety is coming and how it started.

Losing yourself can cause stress and confusion in your relationship, says Sommerfeldt.

What is relationship anxiety?

Ditulis pada oleh
Balas

What is relationship anxiety? – Relationship anxiety is when a person experiences persistent doubt, fear, or worry in a relationship. They may need constant reassurance or ignore their own needs and wishes to please a partner.

Doctors call this relationship anxiety, or relationship-based anxiety.

This article will explore the signs and causes of relationship anxiety, as well as some treatment and management options for couples.

What is it?

Relationship anxiety involves feelings of intense worry about a romantic or friendly relationship. Although health professionals are aware of this type of anxiety, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) does not include it.

Unlike other forms of anxiety, such as generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder, doctors do not have specific guidelines to diagnose or treat relationship anxiety.

Relationship anxiety encompasses some features of social anxiety disorder. More specifically, both conditions can cause a person to experience significant discomfort about rejection.

Although many people may worry about acceptance and reciprocal feelings in a relationship, anxiety tends to develop when a person experiences excessive fear or worry.

For example, anxiety can lead a person to worry about the future of a relationship. People with relationship anxiety may end their relationships out of fear, or they may endure the relationship but with great anxiety.

The effects of this anxiety may hinder a person’s ability to function in the relationship.

Signs and symptoms

Researchers describe three common symptomsTrusted Source of relationship anxiety:

  • excessive reassurance-seeking
  • self-silencing
  • partner accommodation

The sections below will discuss each of these in more detail.

Excessive reassurance-seeking

Excessive reassurance-seeking is also common in social anxiety disorder and depression.

Some researchers suggest that excessive reassurance-seeking is related to interpersonal dependency. Interpersonal dependency refers to a person’s reliance on others for constant evaluation and acceptance.

People who exhibit excessive reassurance-seeking behavior may fear receiving a poor evaluation or not being accepted.

Self-silencing

Self-silencing is another symptom shared across many mental health conditions. One study published in the Journal of Experimental and Social PsychologyTrusted Source showed that women who are sensitive to rejection may be likely to engage in self-silencing to please their partner.

People who self-silence may not express their tastes, opinions, or feelings to their partner — especially when these thoughts are different to those of their partner.

Read More : Salvabrani.com

What is relationship anxiety?

People tend to engage in self-silencing behavior to appear similar to those whose acceptance they seek, and in an attempt to prevent rejection.

Over time, a person may silence themselves and make sacrifices to preserve the relationship. However, this has the potential to lower relationship satisfaction.

Partner accommodation

Partner accommodation is a response from the other partner toward the anxious partner. This is a common effectTrusted Source observed in relationships where one or more people have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

Treatment and management

Some experts suggest couples therapy, such as couples-based psychoeducational sessions, to help treat and manage relationship anxiety.

In a study published in the journal Family ProcessTrusted Source, researchers tested the effectiveness of a single psychoeducational session. The session focused on addressing the patterns of behavior associated with relationship anxiety, including self-silencing, partner accommodation, and excessive reassurance-seeking.

The researchers found that after one session, partners with relationship anxiety had decreased levels of reassurance-seeking and self-silencing. The non-anxious partner also demonstrated lower levels of accommodation for the partner with anxiety.

Different typesTrusted Source of couples therapy include:

  • behavioral couples therapy
  • cognitive behavioral conjoint therapy
  • cognitive existential couples therapy
  • psychodynamic psychotherapy

Since relationship anxiety shares similar symptoms with other anxiety disorders, some doctors may suggest working only with the partner with anxiety.

Others might recommend treatments that are effective for anxiety disorder, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness.

Some studies have demonstrated a wide range of results following individual CBT. Researchers suggest that this response range may be associated with the level of hostility and criticism observed during some couple interactions before treatment.

Doctors may still ask the non-anxious partner to be part of the treatment plan. The role of the partner is typically co-therapist.

Some people may require medication. Drugs for anxiety include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and selective noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors.

Doctors do not yet have guidelines for treating relationship anxiety. Further investigations into this type of anxiety are necessary to better diagnose and treat it.

Summary

Relationship anxiety is a form of anxiety that health professionals may find challenging to diagnose and treat. However, many of the symptoms reported by people with relationship anxiety are common in other forms of anxiety.

Symptoms of relationship anxiety may include self-silencing and excessive reassurance-seeking. People with relationship anxiety may also crave acceptance from their partner and fear rejection. These symptoms can negatively impact the relationship over time.

Couples therapy and psychoeducation are different strategies that doctors may offer to people with relationship anxiety. In severe situations, some doctors may need to prescribe medication.