Thanks for checking in again. Life has just gotten busy so I have had less time to post. But I really really appreciate you being here.
Overall though between therapy and posting here, I have started to feel a lot better with the relationship  anxiety.  I have been able to really calm down and feel connected with my boyfriend which had been hard for me to do when my brain was doing everything in its power to push me away from him.

Through your help as well as my therapists, I have been able to see and realize that how self sabotaging I am and how over the last few months, I have not been talking to myself, about myself in a nice way. Due to this, all of the brokenness inside me from past family and friend relationships, need to heal.

I have been working on my life timeline and allowing pieces of myself come up, sit with those feelings and really try to come to peace with it and forgive. It has been quite the week, but I think I am on the right path. I would say over the past 4/5 days I haven’t had any intrusive thoughts about my relationship. I still have a lot of physical anxiety, and intrusive thoughts about other things, but it seems to have taken a shift from my relationship and I am now able to focus on me. It’s not perfect, I sometimes need to remind myself that any thoughts that come up are allowed. I have such a fear of the relationship anxiety I do not want to just push it away. My goal is to just let anything and everything come up and figure out what those thoughts are making me believe about myself and sit with that belief. My therapist has been having me focus on this and so far it has been really helpful.

I do wonder why there is such a sudden switch though as to why the intrusive thoughts have just stopped. I don’t fully understand it and it leaves me very fearful for their return. I don’t feel confident yet that I know how to manage them. Also, like I mentioned above, I still get a lot of physical anxiety. My chest feels so tight, my heart is being squeezed, my breathing is harder, my heart is beating faster. It is so uncomfortable, but when this is happening, no racing or intrusive thoughts are happening. And don’t get me wrong, I much prefer this to the racing thoughts but I don’t understand why I am even feeling anxious in the first place. I will sit there feeling this way and go through a list in my head of all things that have made me feel anxious in the past and if one feels stronger than the other, I go with that, but it is so forced. It’s like I have to force these thoughts into my head. Have you ever heard of this before? Any idea how/why you can feel so physically anxious but not have racing thoughts?