ERP 161: How To Soothe 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.
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Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 161, “How to soothe anxiety in relationship.” This topic today is a follow-up from my last podcast episode, 160, “How to deal with anxiety in relationship.”
Before we do that, if you will, join me as I reiterate the intention of the Empowered Relationship Podcast. Now, if it resonates with you, I invite you to share in that intention with me. The goal and the intention of the empowered relationship podcast is to support you in navigating relationship. I wanna support you to feel more aware of what is involved in intimacy, the landscape of long-term relationship, marriage, partnership, knowing that at times we may feel triggered, threatened, feel fear, and at times we may have longing and desire, and both of those may not know how to handle it. You may feel confused about how to reach to your partner, and that when we have tried to reach and it hasn’t gone well, what’s going on there? The conversations here are to look at the interactions, the different layers, so that we can heal, grow and foster a deeper, more secure connection with our beloved.
I am practicing this with you. As I even state the intention, I can feel my own resonance around how important this topic is to me, and I really truly believe too that as we increase the health and the quality of the romantic connection, that we have an impact on other people. If we have children in our family, or our community, extended family, that there is a vibration, and the quality of a relationship that’s secure, happy, healthy, that people benefit from. It’s good modeling, it shows an example of what it looks like, and it gives people a sense of inspiration and hope at times, as well.
If you are interested in today’s show notes, or any other podcast episodes, articles or even programs, please visit DrJessicaHiggins.com. Let’s get started with today’s episode, 161, “How to soothe anxiety in relationship.”
As I mentioned, this is a follow-up from the last episode, that was 160, “How to deal with anxiety in relationship.” Now, that last episode I was trying to address two listeners’ questions, and I believe that I responded more to the first listener’s question than I did the second, so I’m gonna spend a little bit more time addressing the second listener’s question today.
I believe the information that I shared in 160 is super-relevant around what happens in our brain when we experience anxiety, and how to work with it. Today I wanna talk a little bit more about anxiety as it relates to relationship security. If you listened to the last episode, you heard the second listener pose a question about having repetitive fears of her boyfriend cheating on her. And by her report and her sharing, she deems her boyfriend to be very trustworthy, and that he has given her no reason to doubt his fidelity.
She also mentioned that she believes that she would have this experience of having high anxiety, doubt, fear and worry about her boyfriend cheating on her no matter who she was with. We’re gonna pivot the conversation to that experience, of feeling threatened… Feeling threatened about the security of the relationship. Because for most people, if they’re having fears – she wasn’t talking about this as something that she enjoys; it’s highly distressing for her. And for most people, when they imagine their partner, their spouse, their significant other cheating on them, it’s a huge threat. It threatens to break the relationship and cause real injury to the connection and the bond and the agreements.
Last week I had an opportunity to spend the week with Dr. Sue Johnson and Dr. Scott Wooly, in an externship around EFT. That’s the therapeutic model Emotionally-Focused Therapy, that is based in the attachment research. Now, Sue Johnson has written two books — she has written several other books as well, but the two that are highly popular for the layperson, someone that’s not in the field of the therapeutic services, so who’s not a therapist, is “Hold me tight” and “Love sense”, and I’ll put the links to those two books on today’s show notes. Again, that can be found on my website, DrJessicaHiggins.com. Today’s episode, again, is 161.
I studied attachment research in my Ph.D. program, and I have a huge regard for the importance of it and how primal and fundamental it is to our whole experience as it relates to how we bond with another… And we’re talking about the type of bond that is primary. The attachment research has really started in the mother/child relationships, in those first formative years, 0 to 3 or 0 to 4. There have been many researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists that have contributed to the field of attachment research and theory. John Bowlby was the originator, and then several other people have had major, major contributions and been able to apply the attachment theory to adult romantic relationship, and that’s the significant bond between two people who choose to share their love, their connection, their life together.
The working model, meaning the way that a person thinks, feels physiologically, experiences in their nervous system and in their muscles all corresponds with their attachment tendency and their attachment style based on their first formative years of relationships and that attachment.
There is so much to be said about attachment research and theory. If you’re interested in learning more, I really wanna encourage you to check out the two books that I mentioned, “Hold me tight” and “Love sense” by Sue Johnson. Another really great one is “Attached”, and also Stan Tatkin’s “Wired for love.” I’ll put the links to those on today’s show notes.
The thing that I really wanna just reiterate – I’ve mentioned attachment and I’ve talked about the importance of having a secure, solid connection… I still think that I don’t emphasize it enough, in that at the root of it all we are wired up for bonding and connection. We’re social animals, and beyond that we want to feel a solid, safe bond with a few select people. That could be one other person like a spouse/significant other, it could also be a few people, like one or two, that we have such a close, solid connection where we feel confident that that person is there for us; that when we’re hurting, or we’re having some difficulty, that if we turn to them, if we reach to them, that they’re gonna be there for us, they’ll be responsive, emotionally engaged, and that we can access them when we need to. There’s that confidence that we have someone that knows us and has our back.
Sue Johnson talked about we all face dragons in life, and when we’re confronted with a dragon, our first impulse is to reach for the hand of our beloved. That ability to feel connection brings a sense of resilience, strength and ability to face the dragon. And she talked about when we hold the hand of our loved one and we can face the dragon, we’re able to do so with so much more resource, confidence, and that our relationship is stronger because of it. There’s actually research to support this – there is a study that you can probably look up, “The hand-holding study”, and I’ll try to put the link on the show notes for you… People were exposed, and knew that they were gonna be exposed to a small shock. Now, it was gonna be painful, but they could get through it. What they found was that people who were able to hold the hand of their loved one did not have the same receptors in their brain firing. It was almost as if it was neutral, or a little above neutral. It was just okay, they were fine. The people that were really alone had their pain receptors in their brain firing.
Without going into too much detail about the research study, the takeaway here is that when we can feel comfort from our loved one, that we actually don’t experience as much pain. This need for bonding, this need for connection – it’s a part of our whole make-up. We are wired up, meaning that everything in us has a system that supports that need and that desire, so it’s really a human universal, primal need. Sue Johnson talked about it as a basic motivating system, that there’s our hormones, our thinking, our behaviors, our nervous system, our body is all wired up for this connection with another person, this attachment, and that our basic element of health is having a safe haven. And she talks a lot about in Love Sense how our current modern day society goes against this – a sense of independence, a sense of autonomy… And she does a much better job than I’m gonna do here, because I really wanna pivot towards this question, but I really wanna emphasize that she talks about isolation, and the detriment and how damaging, and at times deadly, that isolation can bring to us as human beings. She says the most powerful threat in life is isolation.
Life is threatening as it is, and we can’t deal with all of those threats alone, therefore regulating emotions with another person, that safe person, is the most effective way. And that when we co-regulate together – that means we’re responding to each other, and again, we’re wired up; everything in us is designed for this. This is why if you’ve seen any article about eye-gazing, the exercise of — it could be with a total stranger in fact, that if you spend 3-5 minutes in silence, face-to-face, the proximity of sitting face-to-face with your knees touching, about that distance, maybe a couple feet away from each other, that if you eye-gaze for that 3-5 minutes, what happens inside of us internally, emotionally, we will feel a sense of closeness, depth and richness and intimacy, even with a total stranger. There’s a lot going on there to support that type of connection, even with someone we’ve never met before.
Another example of this is if you imagine your significant other, or someone who’s very dear and near to you, and you look at them, you look at their face, you see their eyes, and they are expressing warmth, kindness and love, you can see it in their eyes; their soft gaze, their softened eyes, kind eyes, and the subtle micro facial expressions that convey their affection, their admiration for you, their fondness of you… And if you could just for a moment breathe into that, and what that feels like in your body. A lot of us will feel a sense of warmth in our muscles, and perhaps we’re breathing a little more easily, and we feel calm, safe, reassured, loved… And hopefully you have someone that you can remember or reference that sensation with.
Conversely, I’m sure we can all conjure up an opposite experience, where the person that we love, our dear and near person is perhaps upset, frustrated, maybe even angry at us. Again, the micro-facial expressions that convey upset, anger, frustration – the clenching of the jaw, the turned away, not even really looking at you, or perhaps that very stern, harsh look in their eyes, that conveys they’re not happy and they’re angry. It’s scary, right? It doesn’t feel good; there’s a sense of an alarm that goes off internally sometimes for us. So again, just to recognize the physiological response.
Many of us who do subscribe to wanting to feel that sense of autonomy, that independence, the self-sufficiency and the resilience, like “There’s nothing wrong with that!”, that’s a beautiful thing… And at the same time to recognize that we are wired up for connection, and when we don’t have it or there’s a threat of it, we’re gonna feel it… And that it’s important to have it. When we’re not experiencing that safety or that closeness, and we’re possibly feeling anxious, what do we do with that?
I shared in the last episode that I had anxiety and worries when I was beginning to date my now-husband, and I had to really work with that. I’m gonna share a little bit more about that in a moment here, but I wanna also say, as I was reflecting on this topic, I’m like, yeah, right, just even a couple months ago I was having a dream that my husband cheated on me, or that I cheated on him, I can’t even remember, but it was some threat to our bond and our marriage. I was thinking about it and I was like, wow, we’ve been so close and we’ve been feeling so connected in such a tight bond between us, and I think there was something in me that just felt how special and precious that was, and also conversely how I don’t wanna lose that. It is a threat to think about losing something that matters so much to us.
As I have mentioned in previous podcast episodes, I have known loss; I have known death, trauma and grief as it relates to attachment figures, and hence I think that that has had an impact on my nervous system and my working model of security and attachment. And again, when we’ve had these injuries, we’ve had these traumas, we might have an insecure tendency as it relates to bond and connection with another, and through interactions that are secure and do provide a sense of safety, where they’re accessible, emotionally responsive and engaged, that we then begin to rework that model. We earn a secure attachment.
As I mentioned in my last podcast episode, the brain actually learns. When we have a new experience, especially when we have several iterations of that, learning takes place, and new neural pathways start to fire together, and we have a new response and a new experience, and that is a positive feedback loop. It can be incredibly hard to soothe the anxiety as an adult, to self-soothe, when we don’t feel a bond with another, so feeling isolated. This listener is in relationship, and she has anxiety about his fidelity, about him cheating on her, and I wonder if what’s underneath this is fear of losing him, or how much her boyfriend matters to her, and how scary it feels to think about him leaving her, or some loss there, some threat to that security or that bond, and maybe not knowing fully if he’s there for her. So I can’t fully identify that because she’s not here, and we are not doing that work, but we can speculate that there’s something underneath that anxiety that relates to her confidence about her boyfriend being available, being accessible, being responsive to her, or the security of that.
What happens when we do not have an internalized sense of a secure figure? What I mean by that is when we’ve been fortunate enough to have a consistent, loving, secure base growing up, that our parents or caregivers were available, responsive, engaged, supportive, understanding, emotionally-attuned, all of these things – that we learned that the world is a safe place, our needs matter, people are there for us, we trust the people we are connected to in our inner circle, and we have an internal confidence about that. Our nervous system is relaxed, our emotional state is trusting, and you name it, we feel secure. So what happens when we don’t have figures or even a figure to remember, a resource? This internalized sense of an attachment figure is someone who we remember that was there for us, so we have that internal sensation – a grandparent, someone who always was that safe, loving, available place for us to turn. These images and memories help regulate our distress. So when we’re feeling that anxiety, or the threat of isolation, disconnection, that we remember those moments, those relationships that offered that comfort and that safe haven.
It reminds me of a developmental research project called The Assets. This looked at youth in particular, and looked at resiliency, and all the factors that affect their ability to grow and function successfully. They were trying to target what aspects, what factors help promote resilience in a young one who perhaps has disadvantaged or difficult circumstances, what lends to being able to overcome the hardship? And one of the most profound outcomes of that research is that having one positive, caring figure that’s consistent and loving and supportive has a profound impact on their level of resiliency. It’s like having a coach that’s taken a vested interest, or a grandparent or an auntie or someone who expresses support and love and shows up and is there, especially when that child or that young person knows that they can rely on that figure.
When I talk about my experience of soothing anxiety as it relates to relationship and connection, I’m remembering that yes, I’ve had trauma, I’ve had attachment injury and losses as it relates to attachment in my life growing up, for sure, and I had resource. My mom has always been a person that I have felt loved by. There were some challenges in our relationship and there was definitely places where I would get scared and freaked out, but I never questioned her love, ever. I always knew she loved me, and that’s a tremendous resource. My grandparents, my mother’s parents, were always – and I’ve spent a significant amount of time with them early in my life, and every summer I would spend at least a month, sometimes six weeks, and just the stability and the consistency and the availability and accessibility of them, and their engagement with me felt like such a strength of resource.
Also in my adolescent years periodically I would go to this youth group camp, and the location was called Camp Cascade, in Oregon… And I had such a profound feeling of acceptance and belonging and feeling loved, and it was really facilitated for that intention, to create a safe space for kids of all different groups… If you have so-called athletic people, you have people that are a little more alternative, or you have the kids that are a little more heady, or they would maybe identify as being nerdy, and then you have the more popular – whatever, you have all these different groups, and people feel really divided, and then within this safe space you create such a sense of unpacking and getting beneath all of those layers, and walls, and really a sense of connection and safety and love and bond and play, and all of the yummy stuff that really felt so healthy at that age.
I went to them throughout my adolescence and I think it had a really profound impact, not only on me and my development and my health and my well-being, a real touchstone for feeling okay, feeling loved, despite some of the chaos I had in my life… And I also think it really helped me have a huge love for the healing profession, the capacity of healing through help, whether or not it’s in a group format, or one-to-one, that there’s a real transformational process that can occur in the therapeutic realm; even though these camps weren’t intended to be therapy, it was extremely therapeutic.
I wanna extract three things that happen in this safe, secure connection and bonding, that if we look at what are the characteristics that provide that sense of bond and safety in the connection. Sue Johnson talks about ARE, an acronym which stands for Accessible, Responsive and Engaged. When someone can relate to you and be accessible if you nudge them or reach to them, that they’re available, you can find them, and that they’re emotionally responsive; you say something to them and they respond, or you share emotion and they respond. And engaged – that they’re interested, they’re curious, they’re engaged, they’re connected. They’re not distracted, preoccupied and distant.
Those are the three things that bear out of the research that she’s done. I wanna add three more characteristics around what is usually helpful in the way of creating this attuned bond. The first one is a sense of mirroring, reflecting, feeling heard and understood. “Am I getting it right?” When someone can really listen deeply, and understand your experience emotionally, what’s going on on deeper levels, stay with you, not just be with the content of the story, but what really matters on a deeper, level, there’s a tremendous amount of attunement, that like “Yes, you get it! You understand!” That in and of itself is huge.
I’m gonna share something with you guys that’s personal, and I’m a little embarrassed, I feel a little silly sharing it with you, but it really fits the point, so I’m gonna share. Growing up, really little, I would say 5-6, all the way up until I would say my senior year at least in high school, and my mom would tease me about this – she thought it was cute, she thought it was good, but she would also recognize that it wasn’t something that many people would do, or that she had ever seen… And what it was that I would do is I would be in front of the mirror both when I was crying and sad. I would get right up close — I had this full-length mirror and I would sit and cry if I was sad… Not all the time, but I would do this on occasion, where I would look into my eyes, looking into the mirror, and I would cry about whatever I was sad about…
And I would look into my eyes and it was almost as if seeing my face and seeing my eyes, it would almost evoke more emotion, but it was also this reflective (literally) mirroring of my experience, that I didn’t feel like I had someone to turn to. I would look in the mirror — and it wasn’t even a conscious process; I don’t even remember thinking about it, it was just something that would naturally happen… And my mom would catch me doing it and she was like, “What are you doing…?” But I would do this, and I would sit in front, and again, cry and look at myself in the mirror, and it would just be this attunement; it was a very accurate attunement, because it was actually my real experience… And again, those micro-facial expressions and the look in my eye, and the emotion that I was feeling was being reflected back to me, and it allowed me to process; I could feel it, I could be seen, I could deepen in it, evoke it more…
And then at some point I would feel relief. I would feel a sense of peace, and processed, like I had some level of resolve… And emotions will do this; it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and if we allow ourselves to feel, and sometimes there is a learning and there is a message in what our emotions are conveying, but if we’re with them and we feel them, there’s a process.
In my looking into the mirror, looking into my eyes, I was being present with the emotion. Now, again, this isn’t something I learned somewhere, I just naturally did it; I didn’t think about it, I was just kind of doing it in the privacy of my own bedroom.
Well, the other thing that I did as it relates to the mirror – when I was in a happy mood, I would dance in front of the mirror, and I would smile… [laughs] So silly. But I would basically be expressing my positive, happy emotion in the mirror, and I would see my face, I would see my body language… By the way, when I was crying I don’t think I really looked at my body; I was really sitting and I was more looking at my eyes. But when I was happy, I was looking at all parts of my expression, and it was usually listening to music and dancing, and just felt a sense of joy. That was really also very therapeutic for me, to feel that joy reflected back.
Later in life I learned that there’s an actual therapeutic technique to look into the mirror, look into your eyes and convey some type of statement or emotion; I don’t know that technique well from a theory base or a scientific base, but I remember coming across that and going, “Oh, I actually did that when I was little…” So there could be something to that; I don’t actually know the basis of it, but… Again, I just am really identifying the importance of feeling the sensation of being seen and understood.
The second characteristic that I think is helpful in this attunement, this presencing, this connection, is a sense of warmth, compassion, care and empathy. And this is again where we feel somebody being available to us, but with that care, that consideration, perhaps those kind eyes, those concerned eyes, that wanna help, that wanna be supportive.
There’s a client that I may have mentioned in previous podcasts; I’ve worked with him for a while, and one of the things that he says repeatedly as of the last (I’d say) year is how he likes himself now. And this is huge. Growing up in an alcoholic family where his parents had high, high conflict, and he often felt at a loss around how to deal with that conflict, deal with that chaos… And often times, the little ones that grow up in this type of environment, they’re left with a choice around “I’m so at a loss, I’m so distressed, I’m so hurt, scared, angry… I don’t know what to do with this.” And a little one depends on their parents, so it’s actually not a viable option to be mad at the parents. So what then ends up happening is that anger gets internalized… And this was true for him. He felt mad at himself, he felt fundamentally flawed that something was wrong with him, that he was not okay.
Through his work, with the support of myself, and at times the group Al-Anon, and meditation, he has cultivated an experience of compassion, love, and kindness for himself. And I do think a good therapeutic person can offer that regard, that unconditionally loving regard, that safe, supportive, caring space, that then can be internalized… As I was saying a moment ago, when we have that experience, we begin to internalize that.
The third characteristic is a sense of validation. It makes sense, absolutely. What you’re feeling is normal, it’s okay, you’re not alone. You’re valued, you matter, you belong, and I’m with you. With that validation, again, it reinforces that sense of “You have a hand to hold when you face a dragon.”
Coming back to the listener’s question around how to handle the anxiety and the repetitive thoughts about her boyfriend cheating on here, there is an insecurity about “Will he be there? Am I safe with you?” So when a person is faced with that experience, that emotional threat or that insecurity, people typically do one of two things – they usually blame, go into attack mode or suspicion mode, detective model, however subtle or overt… Asking questions, and really trying to check for safety, and pursue the person… Or subtly, possibly, just listening and feeling anxious, but trying to track and maybe even snoop around looking at the phone, or peeking at it, or really trying to put two and two together and see “Is it safe?” There’s a subtle pursuing “Is this safe?”
The second approach is more shutdown. Feeling alone, feeling scared and trying to suppress the feelings, trying to manage them internally and in isolation. And from the attachment perspective, that is very difficult.
Another option would be to work with the EFT principles, be it getting a EFT therapist, going to a Hold Me Tight workshop, or – Sue Johnson now has an online version of the Hold Me Tight, and I’m gonna be able to offer that to you guys, and I will give you more details about that very soon… Or read her book, the Hold Me Tight book, that again, I’ll put the link on the show notes.
What this will do is it will help support the deeper, more vulnerable conversation. And this does take work, emotional risking, but that’s why having some support will help assist creating safety for these types of conversations… Because it could look like for this listener to talk to her boyfriend and share her pain, share her vulnerability in a clear, emotionally balanced way. Perhaps “I’m not sure if I told you, but I wanna let you know that you mean so much to me, and sometimes I notice I get scared that I’m gonna lose you, and with that my mind goes to dark places. I think about you cheating on me, and it is so painful.” That’s a really vulnerable, risky thing to do, and that’s why having some safety and some support in how to have those conversations… But that’s the type of thing that allows someone to lean in and turn towards those deeper, softer, vulnerable feelings. Somebody usually is much more able to respond in a caring, supportive way.
In addition to using memories and images of people that have been there for you growing up, secure relationships, or getting support in the EFT principles, there are a few other things that people do to feel this sense of holding and presencing from other aspects. One source is with higher power, for people that believe in God, or a higher power, or a spirit, or Universe, that there’s a way in which they feel comfort, reassurance, support, love, compassion, forgiveness, grace… That that offers a sense of bond and connection.
A dear friend or a family member that shows up, that when you’re feeling vulnerable or having a hard time, that they’re there. Again, the accessibility, responsiveness and engagement. Music can also be a wonderful source of emotional attunement. A lot of people who go through different phases in their life – if they’re angry, they might choose particular songs that evoke that experience of feeling angry, perhaps through rap, or heavy metal… There’s this description in the lyrics, and the rhythm, and the music also just envelops and encaptures that sense of emotion that they feel, a sense of attunement… Like, “Yes, I’m having this embodied experience that this is real, and someone else is experiencing this, and this makes sense.” Again, that mirroring, that sense of comfort and validation.
Or some people will listen to a sad song when they feel emotional. It evokes that emotion, it helps them feel, again, that they’re not alone… These heartbreak songs when somebody’s encountering a loss of a relationship; I don’t know that music offers as much, but it can offer something.
Nature is another place, and some would even argue that nature is very similar to higher power… That there’s an energy, an intelligence, that when we can be in nature, that we are connected, and that can offer a sense of holding, a sense of attunement and presencing. Meditation is another place that people feel a sense of peace and resource. It reminds me of that movie “What’s love got to do with it”, about Tina Turner’s life… That she turned to meditation and mantra. In such a trying, difficult, horrendously traumatizing experience with her husband and the abuse that was happening, that she found refuge and peace and solace and courage and healing in meditation.
The last thing I’ll mention, which I’ve already mentioned, is just the therapeutic support of a good therapist, or a good therapeutic group. Again, I do think that we can experience these qualities that allow us to have some sense, if we can’t cultivate in the present moment a secure bond with our loved one, that there might be ways that we can access soothing this anxiety, feeling some comfort, feeling some of that… Again, I’m gonna list the three things I mentioned – that mirroring, that reflection, that feeling understood and feeling held. Number two, that warmth, that compassion, that care, that empathy. Number three, the validation. “It makes sense, you’re okay. You’re not alone, you’re valued.”
These are suggestions to help in getting some emotional balance, feeling regulated, and really trying to feel those qualities when we’re not experiencing that in our primary relationship… But ideally, we wanna start doing that work, cultivating that safe connection in relationship, because as we do that and we have that secure bond, our whole being responds. We feel it in our nervous system that we feel relaxed, our brain can focus on other things that are creative and exploratory, and we can grow more easily, rather than being hyper-vigilant and managing the threats. We get to be more curious, more playful.
I will also put on today’s show notes the link to where to find an EFT therapist, if you are interested in that, and also I’ll put all the links that I’ve mentioned about Sue Johnson’s books. And again, stay tuned for the Hold me Tight online workshop by Sue Johnson, that I would highly recommend.
I just wanna encourage that this is such an important, important endeavor. This is so primary to our functioning and our overall well-being… And again, I don’t know that I emphasized it enough, so I wanted to take a little more time today to just give this a little more priority, as we talk about anxiety in relationship.
Thank you so much, and until next time, I hope you take great care.
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