Do you find yourself constantly worrying about your relationship?
you frequently question whether or not your partner loves you or worry
that he might get bored of you and leave you?
are you sometimes hiding how you really feel to avoid causing problems?
If so, you could be suffering from relationship
anxiety and that could spell doom for your relationship.
But don't worry, because in this video I'm going to share four powerful tips that will
help you to overcome your relationship anxiety so that you can finally enjoy
the relationship you deserve. Don't go anywhere because we're starting right now
Hi there. I'm psychologist and relationship coach, Dr. Antonio Borrello.
This channel is all about helping you
build great relationships so you can grow happy together.
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Okay. How to overcome relationship anxiety.
Relationship based anxiety is difficult and can cause problems that ruin your relationship
that's because the anxiety creates a cycle that becomes almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
For example, the cycle begins when an anxious partner is triggered by
something and feels insecure about the relationship, or fearful that it might end.
This insecurity leads to anxious behaviors like constantly seeking reassurance
or neediness or clinginess or jealous behaviors.
And then those behaviors cause the other partner to feel suffocated and
resentful and trapped, which leads to wanting to withdraw.
And then the anxious partner interprets these new behaviors
as confirmations of her original fears, and that just makes things even worse.
Then a new cycle of increased anxiety begins,
and if the cycle isn't caught and broken, it destroys the relationship.
But before that happens, these are the steps that you can take to finally overcome your anxiety.
step one, name it to tame it..
The NAME it to TAME it Technique is a tool taken from cognitive behavioral
therapy that will help you regulate your emotions and reduce your anxiety
by focusing
on identifying and labeling
your anxious experiences
and then gaining more control over and significantly reducing your symptoms.
Here's how it works
when you start to get anxious about something related to your relationship,.
You pause and take a moment to intentionally and specifically
identify and name the emotions you are feeling as you experience them.
And when you pay attention to exactly what you are feeling and label it,
you are activating a different region in the brain than when you
simply experience the feeling of anxiety.
And this has been demonstrated in
several brain imaging studies that have shown that when we label our emotions,
the prefrontal cortex, the cognitive region of the brain becomes activated
while the limbic region and the amygdala,
which is responsible for fear and anxiety becomes deactivated. .
In other words, naming your emotions helps to calm the fear center of the brain,
which reduces your experience of anxiety as well as your body's physiological response.
I know it may sound simple, but I promise there have been
many psychological studies that have shown how effective this is.
So step one, pause and take a few minutes to really identify and label what you are feeling.
One excellent resource to help you do this is called
the Feelings Wheel, and you can download that for free at FeelingsWheel.com
use that wheel to really zero in on and label the specific emotions you are experiencing.
Step two, understand your anxiety cycle.
Before you can overcome and eliminate your relationship anxiety, you
need to understand your
anxiety cycle and the ways that anxiety
shows up in your
thoughts,
in your emotions and in your
behaviors.
That's because these three facets of anxiety work together to create the
dreaded cycle of fear and insecurity. So let's go through how to break that. cycle
Usually relationship based, anxious thoughts are triggered by
some situation or some interaction or lack of between you and your partner.
For example, your anxious thoughts can be triggered
when your partner doesn't text back right away or doesn't initiate a good morning text,
or if he declines a date invitation or forgets something that you of him..
So the cycle begins with how you
interpret the trigger or situation and the meaning you assign to it.
For example, you start saying things to yourself such as,
"He hasn't texted me today!"
" He's avoiding my texts!"
"He's not interested anymore!"
"He doesn't miss me!"
"He's with someone else!"
"He doesn't love me anymore!"
And so on and so on.
These
anxious thoughts then lead to
the second part of the cycle, which is
having anxious feelings and
worrying or feeling apprehensive and afraid.. ,
and then those feelings lead you to
stage three, the anxious behaviors,
which are the things that you do to try to lessen or reduce your anxiety.
For example, you might excessively seek reassurance directly from your
partner by asking him, do you still love me? Do you still care about me? Are
you going to break up with me? Are you sure you want this relationship, etc..
Or you might seek reassurance indirectly
by carefully monitoring and analyzing your
partner's moods and body language to make sure that he's still engaged in the relationship.
Monitoring can even go as far as
digging through his social media accounts or looking through his
call logs and text messages and emails to make sure he's not flirting or cheating.
Of course, these anxious behaviors are toxic and damaging to your relationship. After all,
constantly asking your partner for reassurance feels like clinginess and neediness,
and neediness is the enemy of desire in time too much neediness makes your partner feel smothered
and just like smothering a flame, smothering, your partner puts them out.
And then there's this
snooping behavior and checking his whereabouts,
snooping through his text messages, or getting mad every time he looks at another attractive person.
These are all acts that damage your relationship,
so whenever you've been triggered, you're going to
pause and give yourself a timeout and go through step one and two
so that you label your emotion and recognize the behavior you
typically engage in and how they are destructive, and then go to step 3.
Step three, do not act out no
matter how anxious you feel.
It's important that you choose not to engage in anxious behaviors.
Now, despite the fact that insecurity and fear are very powerful motivators,
when you are able to identify and recognize your feelings.
You can choose how you react. And engaging in destructive, jealous,
or possessive behaviors will always hurt your partner and your relationship.
That's why you must stop yourself from acting on those feelings. No matter how difficult it may be.
In the end, you'll feel much stronger and more trustworthy,
and those are two qualities that are essential for a healthy relationship.
So next time you start to feel anxious,
pause and understand your situation and decide not to act out in ways that are destructive.
And instead, use this opportunity to strengthen your relationship by doing Step four.
Step four, communicate authentically and no more self silencing.
People with relationship anxiety also engage in avoidance strategies
to avert and prevent feeling insecure or anxious about their relationship.
And one common but unhelpful avoidance strategy is called
self silencing.
Self silencing is choosing not to speak up about your wants or needs
or concerns in order to avoid conflict or potentially upsetting your partner.
So you might do this by suppressing your true feelings or hiding your authentic self
or putting on a persona that you think will be more pleasing to your partner.
Again, self silencing stems from
insecurity and
fear of rejection or
fear that you are not good enough or smart enough, or pretty enough or successful enough.
The fear is that if your partner really knew you,
they would realize that you are not worthy of their love and attention,
and as a result, you stay quiet hoping that by doing so you can keep the relationship going..
Of course, self silencing may be effective temporarily,
but it always results in more anxiety and relationship problems.
That's because self silencing leads to
feeling that your partner doesn't really know or understand you.
It also eventually leads to feeling resentment towards
him when your needs are not being fulfilled.
The worst part,
self silencing leads to a relationship built on conflict avoidance and anxiety.
And when you finally have had enough of self silencing
there is a big blowout conflict that will be difficult to recover from.
Again, it's just not sustainable in the long run.
So how do you stop yourself from self silencing when you're insecure and afraid of rejection?
Well,
you choose to communicate authentically with your partner.
Here's an example of what to do
when your anxiety has been triggered,
and you have that familiar but dreaded feeling where you are flooded with negative emotions.
You're going to take a time out and start with
step one, identifying and naming your experience and what you're feeling..
Then step two is to
understand what you would normally do in this situation to reduce your anxiety,
so you're going to recognize what those protests or acting out behaviors would've been.
For example, perhaps you have the urge to text or call him like crazy or
become convinced and accuse him of, of cheating.
When you recognize and understand your prior behavior,
you choose instead to not act out. Remember,
this is your anxiety being triggered, but that doesn't mean that you have to act on it.
So take some time to calm yourself so that you can choose a healthy response.
And that healthy response is that you are going to effectively
communicate your experience, feelings and needs in a genuine and honest way
without resorting to attack or defensiveness.
So for example, you might say something like this,
" I need to feel confident and connected in this relationship.
And when you don't call and check on me, I miss you a lot, and feel insecure."
So you're going to express your needs in an assertive and non apologetic way.
You're going to a assertively state what your needs are without apologizing for having them.
They are your feelings and they are valid.
And when you communicate your experience and feelings authentically and effectively
you then step back and see what your partner does.
And this is the most important point and key to recovering from relationship anxiety. You see,
when you effectively communicate your needs
and feelings to your partner in a genuine and honest way,
you're giving him the opportunity to show you how much he cares.
Effectively communicating your feelings and experiences
allows you to immediately judge how important your wellbeing is to him .
So as you're communicating a need with him, ask yourself these questions.
Does he try to understand your concerns? Does he take your concerns seriously,
or does he try to invalidate your feelings?
Or does he belittle you or make you feel stupid for having those feelings?
Is he acting defensive or is he really trying to find ways to behelpful? .
If he's responsive and genuinely concerned about your happiness and helping to reassure you,
it's likely you're in a relationship with a man with a secure attachment style.
And that's a great thing because you will feel
so relieved by knowing how strongly he feels about you.
And this conversation will also strengthen the trust and bond between you.
In fact, being in a relationship with a securely attached person will raise
your level of security.. And by strengthening your relationship,
you weaken anxieties, grasp, and then you both win.
On the other hand, if you express your feelings and your needs and your man tries
to evade them or acts defensively, or makes you feel foolish or needy,
then you should see this as a huge red flag of problems to come.
It may be time to reevaluate the relationship
and also in extreme cases, your partner may even intentionally distort or deny what happened
to make you feel like what you're seeing or feeling isn't real or didn't happen that way.
Now, if that sounds familiar,
your partner may be gaslighting you,
which is a type
of narcissistic abuse
that is super important to catch early. To learn more about that, you can click here or
click here to watch the video that YouTube thinks that you'll love. I'll see in the next video.