Dear Anita,

I can see how fear drives behavior in a way that someone else would consider crazy. I’ve experienced it myself and I’ve seen it in other people. The other thing I realize is that I do react fearfully to my thoughts and when I try to express these “crazy” concerns, my girlfriend is often not understanding, but this is exactly how anxiety presents itself. I know for a fact I do have a degree of OCD because my thoughts can be enough to scare me when thinking about scenarios with my girlfriend. I did speak to my mother about increasing my dose of anti-depressants or changing medicines, maybe even getting something for the short term or when anxiety is overwhelming.

My problem is thinking of things that I fear, and believing they have potential to happen. It’s difficult to separate anxious and inaccurate thoughts from normal and realistic thoughts. I do know that I’m going to have a serious conversation with my girlfriend about our behaviors towards each other, in reaction to fear or not meeting expectations, because I’m under a lot of stress as is with my schoolwork and future.

Scott

Anita,

When I say I had to change my emotions, I guess I used to pretend a lot that things were okay when they really weren’t until I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

Also, it’s easy for me to think in black and white because I want to convey a message to my girlfriend that she will respond to but I also don’t want a negative reaction from her, if that makes sense. I want to communicate my needs, but don’t want the criticism of “why do you care about that stuff, why does it matter” and my answer to that being “because were in a relationship and were supposed to communicate and both put effort in”.

Dear Anita,

I can see what you mean as our anxiety in us human beings relates back to a biological drive in nature. We are programmed for fight or flight, some provoked more than others due to our encounters. I would agree that much of the anxiety we obtain comes from the anxiety of our parents and through the altering of our brain chemistry in our childhood experiences. I don’t believe that I was born overly anxious, just that I had the experiences to force my brain to alter itself in a way to protect me from danger. I have discovered this anxiety, as it surfaced a couple of years ago in its worst form, and I had to deal with it. Anxiety never goes away, it just changes shape and form. As of right now, it is latched onto my relationship, and has been before.

In terms of evaluating my emotions, how do I develop a base or set of guidelines for my uncalibrated emotions and perceptions? When is danger, danger? When is happy, really happy? Sometimes I have to think about what I’m feeling and maybe that leads me to confusion of my emotions, because I had to change my emotions as a child to present them in a way my parents would accept.

Scott

Dear Anita,

I think as I child I was more sensitive, particularly to my relationships with others, fearing betrayal or not being accepted. I wanted to be the center of attention, and with my friends, I would be jealous if my best friend was hanging out with another friend or if they were being taken away from me by another person. It was easy for me to feel like people didn’t like me, that I wasn’t enough, and I had my insecurities.

The type of people I watched out for were those that my mother considered “bad” lifestyles or dangerous people. She would claim how those with tattoos, piercings, and that smoked cigarettes or did drugs I should stay away from. This sort of stereotype has made it hard to accept people no matter their circumstances; this sort of guidance has always made me look at certain people with a type of disgust. I know this is all stereotypical, but it’s been engrained in my head. She also spoke about making sure to find the right one, one that will respect you and love you. She mentioned I need to spend a lot of time getting to know someone before spending my life with them. Also talked about getting a job in the future that allows time for my family. I know that my mother didn’t get as much time as she would’ve liked from my biological father because of work and his interests, and that also led to a lack of help taking care of us children.

Scott

Dear Anita,

As I’m asking all of these questions about my relationship, I realize that the reality of it for me is that I feel an uphill and downhill connection with my girlfriend. I’m never able to find a balance; the highs only last so long and the lows are discouraging. I understand life is full of ups and downs, and that relationships exist in this way too, but I don’t feel like my head/mind/brain can make sense of these fluctuations in my relationship. Sometimes I wonder if I force love into this relationship to try to “boost” my girlfriend’s feelings for me thus leading to more attention and intimacy. While I think about this, it would also make sense that I feel down when things aren’t going my way (getting the attention and intimacy I want) because the “extra work” I put in has failed, so to speak.

I hope that through some understanding and making sense of my past, I can take the necessary actions to adjust my behavior and reactions to obstacles in my life, specifically in my relationships. I know this is going to be hard, but coming to the realization that a lot of what I feel currently stems from my past helps me to let go and carefully monitor my emotions.

I also know how I react to certain things within my relationship. I tend to want to distance myself when I “assume” that my girlfriend is coming off as “mean” or “unloving”. This isn’t always the case, nor is it her fault, but this is again where it is hard to draw the line. There are also times where I am super loving, but I sometimes wonder if this is dangerous for me to do and will push her away. It’s difficult to know where to start with reacting in different circumstances.

Scott

Dear Anita,

I think it is interesting how I have aligned my desire for attention and intimacy from my mother with my girlfriend. It’s not something I ever really thought about, but I have had thoughts about how I should try to make my current relationship more like a relationship with a friend or my family members. What I mean by this is being content with my situation and not being affected by subtle things such as short responses, responses with the unwanted enthusiasm/attitude, etc. I can tell that with my girlfriend I’m always looking for clues of denial, betrayal, non-responsiveness, negative emotions or anything that could mean I’m doing something “wrong” so to speak.

I believe I have struggled so much with dating girls because of the various pressures, internally and externally. On the inside, I’m wanting intimacy and attention; I want their all. On the outside, I have to take into account their emotions to check on whether I’m handling situations right or not, something you mentioned in a previous post where women expect men to read minds, fix their emotions, etc. These pressures take turns making my relationships difficult because it takes in depth thinking to separate out what’s a real problem and what is not; similar to my expectations of reality and how congruent I am/am not with reality.

I would like to take your advice with getting quality psychotherapy, as I have in the past with a great counselor, but with summer coming to an end I can’t guarantee I will be able to get to her. However, I do feel a lot of relief talking about my emotions and getting to understand myself better through here, with you Anita. I appreciate your ability to help and acknowledge my troubles, our troubles here on the site.

If I may ask… what would be some good ways to go about getting realigned with reality so that I can become congruent with the present and my current relationship. This relationship that I’m in I value a lot, despite what I have talked about previously with my girlfriend and her negative emotions. I think it’s just a greater struggle with triggers coming from different areas? I need to be able to handle my girlfriend when she gives me different responses, emotions, etc.

Scott

Dear Anita,

Thank you for taking the time to think my responses through. I have been thinking throughout the day about some of the behaviors I exhibit currently as well as those from the past. I have also thought about how I used to feel.. I felt like I had to protect my mother and that for her to receive sex from another man (I guess besides my own father) seemed wrong, threatening, and painful to me. It made me feel a lot of emotional pain, especially when I was away from my mother at my father’s house or elsewhere. I can remember crying often because of these thoughts, but I also remember having a serious fear of something happening to her which I think ties into the way I lived at my father’s house with the somewhat crazy stepmother. I know I say that I felt emotional pain towards my mother and involving sex, but I was not sexually attracted to her, I just wanted attention and intimacy I assume.

I think back to some of the relationships I’ve had. I can see where I would get upset about the smallest of things, even as little as a girlfriend saying another guy was cute or attractive. I can remember thinking of being cheated on or that she would hang out with another guy or something completely absurd, but it got to me. I just felt a lot of emotional pain and it sort of scarred me.

Dear Anita,

If I allow myself to use my thinking for a good cause, it is very powerful and that is how I make these solid and accurate connections.

As of right now, I don’t feel that I’m in competition with my step dad, but maybe my underlying unconscious brain believes this is so. I’m consciously securely attached/bonded to my mother and step father as of now, but there is the possibility that my unconscious brain is projecting my unresolved issues into my relationship with my girlfriend.

I can definitely understand the “control” factor in my everyday life. I realize now that those I’ve been closest to, including my best friend, I have wanted some sort of control because I wanted complete intimacy – to be their number one so to speak. This has occurred with my parents, my best friend, a previous girlfriend and now my current girlfriend; those I value most.

The thing about my mother is that she makes a really caring, helpful mother, but maybe at the time of discovering who I was and developing my independence/sexuality, I struggled to get the right intimacy I needed along with the troubles of my parents being divorced, lack of attention from my dad, cruel stepmother, etc.

What I find to be odd is that sometimes I crave this emotional intimacy from my girlfriend, and once I get it I feel reassured and satisfied – able to continue on with my day/week/etc. However, there are times where I don’t crave the emotional intimacy, and I feel independent and fine on my own. It’s almost as if the “child” synapses in my brain fire every now and then causing me to become emotionally unstable, looking for sexual ties to my girlfriend and being triggered easily. This strong desire to problem solve arises which leads to excessive thinking and results in a cycle of thinking which can be hard to get out of and with all the built up stress, leaves me weakened and emotionally crazy.

These different factors make sense for why I’m carrying out these odd reactions to perfectly normal situations in life. Whenever I’m emotionally unstable – craving intimacy, confused, worried about my girlfriend – I feel threatened and betrayed by thinking about my girlfriend’s sexual past, seeing her mentally as doing things in spite of me. I also look for clues as to what she has done in the past, with who, why she did it, etc. It’s truly a never ending cycle, but as you said, involves no “true” solution or destination.

Scott