Dear Leanne:

One’s early relationship with one’s parents is very powerful. It literally creates connections in the brain between nerve cells, connections that keep firing into adulthood.

Has your boyfriend called you names? Yelled at you? Abused you in any other way? Some other person before your bf or otherwise?

If not, when you were a child and your father called you names and your mother yelled at you, repeatedly enough, as a child you did not feel safe, you were scared to be called names and yelled at. You didn’t know when that will happen so you were anxious. When you were yelled at or called names you probably tried to not be there, that is you spaced out, detach yourself. These emotions imprinted in your brain via neural connections get activated when you are together with your bf.

In that case, insight, understanding, skills, therapy perhaps… can help with your current “always feeling off” with your boyfriend.
anita