Relationship Anxiety is Driving Me Crazy
I usually feel at least a little bit anxious. I'm pretty used to that, it's my "normal." But over the past month or so, my anxiety has gone way, way up. I'm not sure exactly what caused it, but it happened. And when my anxiety gets this high, it tends to focus on one thing. The first time, it was my health. I ended up with pretty bad hypochondria and had daily/nightly panic attacks because I thought that I was dying. It got so bad that I was afraid to go to sleep because I thought that I was going to die in my sleep.
This time, however, my anxiety has attached itself to my relationship. I think I would prefer the death anxiety, to be honest. I feel needy, clingy, and terrified. I keep feeling like my boyfriend doesn't love me anymore, like he's going to leave me. I've talked to him about this and he has reassured me several times that he loves me and that he is not going to leave me. My anxious brain just won't let me believe him. This is probably because my past relationships have not ended well. So my brain is like "oh, well, this is just going to end up like last time."
I'm tired of asking him to make me feel better about this. I know that if I were on his side, it would get annoying and frustrating, and I don't want to be the kind of girlfriend who needs constant reassurance.
I don't know what to do at this point. It doesn't feel like it's getting better.
@sporkchop
Thank you for sharing your story with us. Im sorry to hear that you are going through this. Sometimes talking about the anxiety can be helpful. I think its a really great thing that you took the initiative to communicate your concerns with your boyfriend and that you chose to share this with us! It seems like your mind automatically jumps to the idea of things possibly going awry because they have in the past and you feel unsettled by it. I think that you might find this self-help guide from the 7 cups site helpful. It talks a little bit about anxiety in general, automatic thoughts, etc, and it also has some great exercises that can give you some insight into your concern, and how to try to help manage it. Also, if you ever want to talk to someone about these concerns, feel free to message me!
@sporkchop
My apologies, I forgot to link it! https://www.7cups.com/anxiety-help/
@SimpleOwl Thanks, I'll go check that out now. I think that if I could get the physical symptoms to calm down, the anxious thoughts would too. I've been waking up feeling anxious and then my brain is like "oh, yeah, this is why you feel this way" and the cycle starts all over.
@sporkchop
I feel for you and what you are going through. The one thing that I do best is Pray. So I will say a prayer for you that your anxiety and worry turns to peace and calm.
God Bless
@sal202 Thank you, I appreciate your kindness. =)
Hi sporkchop,
I've just found your post and suffer from a very similar problem. I am really obsessed with my boyfriend (or myself) being attcted or developing feelings for another person. I feel sick about the idea and am very easily triggered by anyone we know cheating/watching films with infidelty in etc. I think (not diagnosed) that I might have a mild form of OCD, where I pay a lot of attention to make anxious thoughts/feelings and then seek to calm them down by asking for reassurance/googling/checking back over events in my head/checking etc. All the advice I have read says that the best thing to do when an anxious OCD type thought pops in your head is to label it is as 'just ocd' and to try and distract yourself from it - I find reading helps me the best as I can easily pretend to watch TV while secretly going over things in my mind, where as I need to concentrate to read. Honestly I am no-where near sorted with this - just last night I had a freak out over a trigger ( a friend of ours having a relationship with a girl already in a relationship) which brought on a horrible anxiety attack. But on a whole, it has got a lot better - you have to perservere and not ask for that reassurance you really want!
hope this helps!
@twinkltoes12 Thank you so much for your response. I think I might have some ocd as well. Sometimes I have to repeat actions or double check things and I definitely get unwanted thoughts. I've been trying not to ask for reassurance as much and to handle my anxious thoughts on my own more. I shouldn't treat these thoughts as something that needs to be addressed, because they're just a manifestation of my anxiety. Giving them attention just makes it worse.
Hey @sporkchop and @twinkltoes12
Wow I didn't think there would be other people who have the same problem I did but I guess I'm not alone. My relationship anxiety started out okay, but it turned from bad to really absolutely terrible in the span of a couple of months. I had really bad panic attacks, which became more and more frequent. I don't know what it was, because my boyfriend sure loved me a lot, but my mind kept harping on these tiny tiny signs that he was falling out of love with me, that our relationship was failing. It didn't help that he was very stubborn and refused to reassure me most of the time, and some of his actions were downright stupid and added severely to my anxiety. I broke up with him two days ago. I regret it so much because barring this anxiety and the panic attacks we had an amazing relationship. But I've been telling myself that this is me putting my health first and getting rid of a trigger. And what is funny is that when I asked to break up and he agreed, I was so calm, even though it was the one thing that I was so scared about. Though it was just in that moment because in the hours after, and now still, I'm a mess and I swing between utterly regretting my decision, hysterical crying, and this strange calm acceptance.
