ERP 160: How To Deal With Anxiety In Relationship
Welcome to The Empowered Relationship Podcast, helping you turn relationship challenges into opportunities and setting you up for relationship success. Your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, is a licensed psychologist and relationship coach who shares valuable tips, tools and resources for you to dramatically improve your relationship.
This podcast is 100% ad-free. To support this show, please subscribe and write a review today. Here is your host.
* * *
Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 160, “How to deal with anxiety in relationship.” Today’s topic is in response to two listeners’ questions.
Before we get started, I wanna invite you to just center with me in the intention of the Empowered Relationship Podcast, and that is to improve the quality of our connection in relationship, knowing that as we do that, we grow ourselves, sometimes through the hardship that will ask us to dig deep, to look at things that perhaps are painful, or challenging, and also to be present with our partner, who may struggle at times as well. And that together, there’s this sense of kinship, partnership, that we are on this path together in relationship and partnership; that we’re human and fallible and we’re growing and healing as we do so… All in the interest of evolving and expanding our capacity for more joy, more love and more happiness.
A little personal share – I have been delayed in getting an episode to you, and I appreciate your patience if you are a consistent listener. The holidays, and then I had a VA that was working with me and that ended up not working out, so I let her go, and that’s just added a whole extra host of responsibilities for me… And then my practice is beyond, beyond full, and I am super-excited that I’ve been working on a Shifting Criticism course that’s gonna be going live on January 15th… So that’s brand new curriculum for people who have enrolled in that, and that’s been taking my attention as well.
In 2019, my goal is to just continue to provide you extremely valuable content and support, to basically support the larger goal, as I just mentioned, of the Empowered Relationship Podcast. I have a lot of great interviews coming up, and I intend to get some support for myself, so that I can be more available to be consistent with these episodes… So again, I appreciate your patience.
If you are interested in today’s show notes and any links or resources that I might mention, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com. If you are interested in getting support in the way of shifting critical and defensive patterns in your relationship, feel free to e-mail me directly and I can give you lots of resource about how to shift criticism, and I can also give you access to the course, if you’re interested in being involved in that. My e-mail is [email protected].
Let’s get started with today’s episode, 160, “How to deal with anxiety in relationship.” Again, this comes from two listeners’ questions. I’ll read their questions and then I’ll offer information and resource in response.
The first listener posed a couple of questions, so I’m gonna read an excerpt from her question:
“How to not let your anxiety disorder become a third person in your relationship and the hardest part of how to let your partner in on it and help them understand the anxiety attacks aren’t because of him?”
That was the first listener. The second listener writes:
“I recently came across your podcast and I was really intrigued by your words and style of work. I was hoping you would possibly be able to help me out with a relationship issue of my own. I would really appreciate your advice.
I’ve been dating my boyfriend for about two years now. I really do love him so much and we have a great relationship. I have a lot of anxiety in general and I’m just always expecting for “the other shoe to drop”.
I have a paranoid fear of being cheated on. For absolutely zero reason. He’s never done anything to make me believe he would do that to me, or that he is even capable of doing it. However, for some reason it plays in my mind over and over, that it COULD happen.
I do everything I can to get these thoughts out of my head but they seem to come, basically daily. It’s starting to drive me a little crazy because all I want is to fully enjoy my relationship with him. He’s a wonderful man and I know he loves me too.
What do you suggest I do to stop these intrusive thoughts of being hurt? It seems to be a huge fear of mine that I almost expect to happen in any relationship.”
First of all, I wanna just appreciate both of you for reaching out and being patient in my reply, and just trusting my guidance in this regard. The first thought that I have is to not cover up and hide. It’s enough to deal with these painful feelings, whether or not it’s just the physiological anxiety symptoms, or whether or not it’s these very fearful, intrusive thoughts, that are sometimes debilitating and extremely uncomfortable. So not only are you dealing with that, but then to try to cover up and hide and protect your partner, essentially, I don’t know that that actually helps you or helps your relationship.
This almost requires some level of acceptance of having anxiety symptoms. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety affects an estimation of 40 million people a year. Now, that’s anxiety disorders. Many, many more people experience anxiety in general, just symptoms, but don’t necessarily have a disorder. So it’s likely that most of us have had the experience of anxiety in some form or another.
Not covering up also involves not blaming yourself. This is key, because anxiety disorders are caused by a combination of things. Likely, there is some genetic component, and also some environmental component. And when I say environmental component, that’s having experienced some level of trauma, or stress, maybe early on, or just even in personal relationship… It could be stress related to finances, or a natural disaster, or a job, or any type of really great challenge, that that lends to a sense of fear activation or stress response or overwhelm.
There are other things that definitely impact the experience of anxiety… That could be medication, it could be withdrawal from an illicit substance, it could be being at high elevation, but what is more common is the genetic predisposition. That means that one of your family members has had some level of anxiety or even has had an anxiety disorder, and then the environmental stressors and trauma.
What’s also really important to note is that stressful or traumatic experiences can alter brain structure and functioning, so that an individual may react more significantly or vigorously to a trigger. I’m gonna talk a little bit more about the science of this, but just to kind of note that people who have experiences these types of things are a little bit more sensitive or a little bit more susceptible to being overwhelmed, or having that threat response given previous experiences.
Again, number one is be careful to not hide and cover up. This is appearing that everything’s fine when things are really not fine… And this is particularly important as it relates to relationship, because if you’re experiencing anxiety and you’re in the fight or flight or freeze response, you’re gonna behave, you’re gonna feel and act very differently than you would if you were in your normal state of functioning. Now, if your partner doesn’t know that you’re in that fear-reactive state, they’re gonna be confused and perhaps taken off guard or alarmed themselves, or not really understand where you’re coming from, and it’s really hard to be of help and be of support, or even have understanding, if there’s not that awareness that “Oh, wow, you’re having a hard time. You’re hurting, or you’re feeling scared”, and then they can pivot towards helping, rather than just reacting to your fear… Because what typically happens in that regard is there’s a vicious negative cycle where the person who is anxious and feeling fear will convey in some unskillful way, either through attack, or criticism, or perhaps even lying, and then their partner will feel that and be defensive, or shut down, or avoid, or attack in response, and then the continual back and forth, and a negative cycle ensues.
A couple client examples… I have a client who has historically felt threatened and anxious in his marriage, and he has approached his wife and really tried to address her behavior to feel better, which is extremely common; we all do this. “If you would change XYZ, aka minimize the threat, I would feel better.” Well, on the reverse, his wife, over the course of a couple of years, has attempted to meet his requests, whether or not it was reduce the amount of hours, or whether or not it was to do this, or to do that… She modified continually. And did it alleviate the anxiety? No. Because at that moment in time he was not able to raise his hand and let her know what was going on internally; that he was feeling scared, or he was feeling anxious, and how to address that directly. So they’re in a great pattern of disconnect.
I’m not gonna go into too much more detail, but I’ll share another client story that illuminates just this very vicious cycle. This couple has been married for 20 years, and love each other dearly, and he has a pattern of feeling great anxiety and fear when he feels like he’s letting his wife down. And if they’re in a circumstance where she is feeling disappointed, she’ll express her hurt and he goes into total fear and anxiety response. Then in response to that, he tries desperate attempts to please her, and to make amends, and promises the world to her, but things that he can’t actually do. So it’s this negative setup that he’s promising things that he can’t actually fulfill, and then basically she doesn’t know what to trust.
When we try to hide and cover up, not only is the hurt and anxiety happening, but then the relational challenge and distress happens on top of that, and as you can see, it can have great, great costs.
The second tip that I have is to gain education on what people typically experience with anxiety. Now, if you know these things, then if you’re asking about how to negotiate relationship, I would educate your partner on what people typically experience with anxiety. A lot of people who experience anxiety are prone to overwhelm, or great worry; they’re constantly anticipating future events, and also feel uncertain about how they’re gonna address those events. We don’t worry about putting on our shoes if we feel really comfortable tying our shoelaces; I’ve used this example before, but there was probably a time where a little one, who’s learning how to tie their shoes — I can remember it was hard, and maybe I felt some level of anxiety learning how to do that… So that’s also a note – when we’re in new territory and we don’t feel fully confident, we’re much more prone to feeling some level of anxiety.
The other thing that’s really important here is that when people experience anxiety – and I’m gonna talk about the brain part here, that’s extremely important – we’re feeling some level of fear… And this fear response affects our whole body and mind. It impacts our nervous system, our hormones, our cortisol levels, and essentially the part of our brain, the amygdala, triggers the fight, flight or freeze response… And many of you are probably familiar with this response, but if you’d like to know more, I encourage you to just google the fight, flight or freeze response; you can learn a lot about what happens in the body… But just to note a few things – all of our blood rushes to our muscles, so that we’re ready to fight or we’re ready to run; our digesting slows down, our heartbeat gets faster, and we are in that aroused state to basically meet any type of threat or difficulty. And the amygdala is so powerful that it can override your whole body and your whole nervous system and your mind.
Now, the cortex part of the brain is the higher levels of functioning – reason, clear thinking, ability to have thought processes that are really rational – and the amygdala is responsible for that very primal protection. One of the mechanisms of this protection is it has kept record and memory of anything that’s been traumatic, hurtful, painful in the past, so anything that seems similar is gonna feel like an alarm goes off. The amygdala is essentially that alarm system that lets us know there’s a threat, so we can protect ourselves.
It’s important to note that this happens automatically. It’s not like the alarm bell goes off and we make a choice of “Do I wanna respond to this threat or not?” It happens automatically, and it happens within milliseconds.
A couple more points here around how the brain functions with threat, and actually how the brain can create the anxiety. As I mentioned, the amygdala can actually override the cortex. Again, the cortex is responsible for clear thinking, logic, it has a great sense of awareness, and details, and nuances, it can discern things well, and make decisions more clearly… So the amygdala can basically override that, so the cortex is no longer functioning… And can control and have influence on thought process an focus. The amygdala can basically determine what we focus on and what our thought process is.
Again, if we’re recognizing this is very protective and fear-based, and very crude, it doesn’t have the level of sophistication, of details and nuance – all it cares about is protection – we can see how in relationship that can be problematic, especially because we are prone to misinterpreting, misunderstanding and misperceiving in relationship. You have two individuals that have two different outlooks or worldviews or meaning-making based on their experience in life and culture, and often times when you’re in relationship, we don’t think we have to fully explicitly unpack things, or spell it out so transparently and clearly, so we often are operating on misperception. Then when we feel threatened and our amygdala kicks into gear and we are in that fear response, our partner actually can’t logically, rationally talk with us. We’re not in an accessible place where we can enter into thought processes that are really aware and detailed and regulated. Our goal at that point would be to calm down and soothe.
The main point I wanna make about anxiety here is that the cortex — again, that’s the thinking, the logic, the awareness, the details… If it’s prone to anxiety thought, like worry or perfectionism or catastrophizing, the cortex can be in those thought process and then triggers the amygdala to take over, and that fear response. So it’s this vicious, vicious cycle, and this is being activated by the brain. So again, if we’re thinking and worrying, then we can work ourselves up into a pretty anxious state.
I wanna share a little more about anxiety thoughts. Now, Catherine Pittman, who wrote “Rewire your anxious brain: How to use the neuroscience of fear to end anxiety, panic and worry”, she recently provided a checklist of how to identify anxiety-igniting thoughts. I found it very helpful, and I wanna put a link on my website so you can have direct access to that… But I wanna share some of what she is categorizing, as I feel it is so helpful to just illuminate some of these cortex-based tendencies, which she is calling the anxiety-igniting thoughts, because they have the potential to activate the amygdala, which can be the primary source of your anxiety.
- a) Pessimism. One of the simplest ways that you can see the influence of your cortex is to consider in general the way you view yourself, the world, or the future. When the cortex helps us to interpret our experiences and make predictions about what is likely to happen in the future, our general perspective can have a strong impact. Some people tend to be optimistic and expect the best, while others are more pessimistic and expect the worst.
Optimism is a more common approach, and it also tends to result in less anxiety. If you tend to be pessimistic, you are likely to have increased anxiety. Furthermore, a pessimistic attitude can reduce your willingness to try to change your anxiety, since you don’t expect success, even though changes may prove helpful.
- b) Worry is a source of anxiety for many people, and the central difficulty for those with general anxiety disorder. Worry can involve images or thoughts. It’s focused on problem-solving, designed to plan responses to expected future difficulties. You may be a worrier if you have a habit of frequently thinking about possible negative events that could occur.
- c) Perfectionism. Placing unrealistically high standards on yourself or others is a sure way to increase your anxiety, because none of us are capable of perfection. High standards have an effect on setting ourselves up for failure. When you’re learned perfectionistic expectations from your parents, or whether you see them as a part of your own personality, these expectations are anxiety-igniting thoughts.
- d) Guilt and shame are emotions that come from the frontal and temporal lobes, where guilt involves a feeling that one has behaved in a way that one finds unacceptable. Shame is related to feeling that other people will perceive you in a negative way. Both emotions are very anxiety-provoking.
Dr. Catherine Pittman offers more categories if you’re interested in exploring this more. Under each category she’s got several examples to check off, and you can use it as a checklist to see if it’s something you do and participate in, and if so, would be best served by perhaps practicing in some of the techniques to reduce anxiety.
Again, you can find the links on today’s show notes. Today’s episode, again, is 160, “How to deal with anxiety in relationship.” You can find the link to this checklist download – and again, it’s called “Identifying anxiety-igniting thoughts, by Catherine Pittman PhD. And just a note, she wrote a book titled “Rewire your anxious brain: How to use the neuroscience of fear to end anxiety, panic and worry.”
Now that we’ve talked about 1) not hiding, and 2) how to understand what’s going on when someone’s experiencing anxiety, I wanna 3) encourage you to talk to your significant other about what you know about yourself as it relates to anxiety. Now, we talked generally about anxiety and what happens when people experience symptoms of anxiety, but there’s also specificity for you; what’s been painful for you in the past, what’s been traumatic for you in the past, and what has provoked fear, and possibly certain triggers. Being able to look at that and talk about that with your significant other would be helpful… And also, helping your partner know what your experience has been like in the past, and what does anxiety look like for you; what do you do when you get into that anxiety state or that fear state.
Some people have very specific experiences, so to be able to describe that will help your partner know, so that if you do get anxious and you don’t have the wherewithal to say “I’m triggered” or “I’m activated”, your partner can wonder with you, “Are you possibly feeling afraid?” That will help shift and pivot towards that hurt or that fear, rather than reacting and going into that negative cycle. Possibly even talking about specifically what’s been helpful for you in the past in the way of calming your anxiety.
People are gonna respond differently. Some people use music, some people use exercise, some people call a dear friend, some people just wanna be held, some people need to just breathe, and there’s lots of techniques… But if your partner can have some indication around what’s been helpful to you in the past, that could be good information.
And similarly, what has been not helpful. Some people are like, “Oh, don’t react. There’s nothing to be afraid of”, or perhaps do something that doesn’t feel helpful, and that could be a good thing for your partner to know as well.
The other thing that I would encourage is having an understanding of your attachment style, as it relates to your unique experience. Do you know your attachment style? Possibly you may be anxiously-attached, so that when you feel some distance or separation or uncertainty with your partner, you might be more prone to feeling anxious, and all of the things that come with that. I’ll post a link to an episode that I published about attachment styles. I’ll also encourage you to read the book Attached, or Sue Johnson’s “Hold me tight” or “Love sense.” Sue Johnson is one of the foremost leaders in the attachment therapy, emotionally-focused therapy, and also just addressing attachment issues in relationship, in adult romantic relationship.
On a side note, I’m actually gonna be in a training with her all next week. I’m very, very excited. I’ve done training with her in the past, but I’m very excited about deepening in my understanding. Knowing your attachment style and your partner’s attachment style can really help you guys navigate what the pitfalls are, and also how to develop more secure attachment.
Number four, how to deal with anxiety or anxious symptoms. It’ll be really important to work with thought processes. Now, if you can use the handout that I mentioned by Catherine Pittman, that can help identify possible anxiety-igniting thoughts that you participate in… But how to shift out of that – it’s important to either work with someone that is a counselor, or someone who is trained to help restructure thought processes.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is a really great one. Some of the tools that might be used are learning how to “name it to tame it.” To recognize “Oh, I’m afraid”, and then to be able to pivot towards recognizing “What was I just thinking?” and possibly learning how to thought-stopping, and really focusing on how to restructure and re-pattern your thinking. There’s lots of tools… If you’re also interested in some self-help or self-guidance tools, I would highly recommend the Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns. I’d also recommend the “Rewire your anxious brain” that I mentioned, by Catherine Pittman. There’s also “The anxiety and phobia workbook”, and it could be even helpful to check out “The highly sensitive person”, because sometimes when we are feeling levels of overwhelm or anxiety, our nervous system might be more sensitive than we’ve given it credit for… And highly sensitive people occur 20% of the time, so one in five. It’s not highly common, but it’s not at all uncommon.
So it’s really important to build awareness around that this might be some of what someone’s working with. Now, being highly sensitive is not a disorder, there’s nothing wrong, and I’ll also put a link to a woman that I interviewed about being highly sensitive. It’s just something to be mindful of, in that our nervous system is absorbing and perceiving so much more than the average person… And to be able to process all of that, people who are highly sensitive are prone to ore overwhelm, and possibly even feeling anxious if they’re not taking care of themselves really well.
With the recommendation of cognitive restructuring work – again, that’s with some of the books that I’ve mentioned, or working with a cognitive behavioral specialist to identify some of the thoughts or beliefs that are repetitive, and perhaps destructive or distorted. Again, Catherine Pittman helps with identifying some of those anxiety-igniting thoughts. This really helps with restructuring the brain, and the thought processes, which allow for new thoughts, and basically changing the brain. The brain has the capacity to restructure, as I’m saying, and that is incredibly powerful when we look at changing our experience as it relates to anxiety.
The other important way of dealing with anxiety is through attachment. Again, I mentioned Sue Johnson’s work, and if you read her books of Love Sense or Hold Me Tight, it’s recognizing when we are feeling scared or we are feeling threatened, and being able to show our partner, reveal to our partner, so that they can turn towards us… Because what the neuroscience says is that we need to actually activate the fear or the threat to generate a new connection. And attachment research shows that if we are in a relationship that is safe and secure, over time we can actually go from an insecure attachment style to a secure attachment style. So we can earn a secure attachment style, essentially through interactions.
When a person is feeling anxious and they feel their partner turn towards them, be available, be responsive, be engaged, and be able to feel connection, that a new experience is created in the brain, a new connection… So we don’t associate the threat with that anxiety response; we actually experience what was a threat, and we basically create a new experience, which is to feel secure.
For the listener that posed her question about having great, great fear about her significant other cheating on her, I would really recommend doing some of the thought restructuring and really being aware of where that fear comes from, if there’s any trauma or any previous history. Now, I’ll personally share that I had to do some of this work with my husband, and that I had some very early losses in my life and had a fear of abandonment, and had felt at times just an irrational fear of him leaving me, or doing something that would basically dissolve our relationship… And I had to learn how to manage and self-soothe, as well as to reveal and share with him, as well as to work on my thoughts… So it was a multi-pronged approach, and I don’t feel that I actually have an anxiety disorder, but there was this part of my amygdala that would get threatened or feel scared, and have a fear response to some degree, and I really had to work with that.
Other tools that are extremely helpful is recognizing how to calm the nervous system. Some people, like I said, might take a hot bath, might listen to soothing music… There’s an app that people really like that’s called Calm, and it’s guided meditations to address how to get better sleep, how to deal with anxiety, and there’s a few different categories, so that can be a helpful tool. But really, there’s so much in the way of guided relaxation or guided meditations, in the way of mindfulness. I did a series on mindfulness, I’ll also post the link for that as well… Because mindfulness is extremely effective.
Being able to focus the mind, focus the brain and the attention to the present moment. There’s different techniques around how to do that, but essentially, when we are in the moment, we can recognize we are okay, we are managing, we are functioning, and that a lot of our pain is from the anticipation of a painful event, or a ruminating or a reflecting on something that happened in the past that we wish didn’t happen… And all of that is essentially constructed pain, because we have a choice of what we focus our attention in our mind on. So if we can deliberately be mindful, that can alleviate a lot of that distress and anxiety.
One other thing I’ll share about my experience too, that as I earned a secure attachment with my husband, as we developed a secure attachment, I did all the work that I was telling you about, I also built confidence that if for some reason he left me or something happened where we were no longer together, I truly believe that I am fine, and I’m good, and I will get through that… That part of the worry and the fear is like “I don’t know if I’d be okay. I don’t know that I could handle it.”
In addition to using mindfulness to get into the present moment, also boosting and bolstering our sense of self and self-esteem, then we can build confidence that whatever happens, we trust that we’ll be able to manage it; or if we can’t do it on our own, that we’ll get support, but it’ll be okay.
A couple other techniques… In addition to relaxation techniques, some people like to exercise, stretch, use the body and movement as a source to get out of that fear state, and dispel some of that distress. I have mentioned this on previous podcast episodes, but I worked with a psychiatrist in my pre-doc internship at San Jose State, and I remember him lamenting at one point and saying — you know, he prescribes medication, but he also was lamenting about the fact that exercise is more immediate, more powerful and more effective than any psychotropic medication… Which is interesting coming from a psychiatrist.
Another tool is to use distraction. Shift your focus. Now, I would encourage long-term to practice the discipline and building the muscles around mindfulness, and being able to focus the brain on the moment, but a distraction can be a great tool to just get out of the anxious fear state.
To recap, number one, don’t hide or try to cover up. Number two, educate. Talk to your partner around what anxiety is like, what happens, and just what it entails in general. Number three, talk to your significant other about you, specifically and uniquely – what your experience is, and what you’ve known helps and doesn’t help, as well as your attachment style. Number four, learn how to deal with the anxiety; I gave you lots of tips around how to do that, and lots of resources in the way of books and tools, and that handout… So I hope you find it helpful.
Again, you can find today’s show notes on my website. That’s DrJessicaHiggins.com. Today’s episode is 160, “How to deal with anxiety in relationship.” Until next time, I hope you take great care.
* * *
You’ve been listening to Empowered Relationship, your relationship guide. Remember to take a moment to write a review and subscribe today. You can also get your free relationship gift by visiting DrJessicaHiggins.com.
0 Comments