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Crippling Relationship Anxiety – Please Help

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  • October 10, 2022 at 7:12 am #408266
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Nala1234:

    In your recent post you shared that for a year, you were part of a friend group of 9 people. One of your 8 friends was your best girlfriend (I’ll refer to her as B), and another friend was a guy (Ill refer to him as G). By the end of the year, you started dating G. B suggested directly to you that the relationship was unhealthy, and she spread that idea within the group. She “began to make up stories and lies” about G, painting him as “a really bad guy“. As a result the others in the group treated G poorly, they “put him down and really bullied him into feeling bad about himself“, negatively affecting his mental health.  Every time you and G “attempted to address these issues .. with specific examples… they all just denied any of it happening, telling us that we were overreacting and crazy“, and that their lives did not revolve around yours.

    “When we started dating, it rubbed a lot of people in the group the wrong way…  they felt that anytime just the two of us would do something, it was wrong“- at one point, it seems that the 7 friends did  not want you and G to spend any time away from the group. They wanted you and G to spend all your time as part of the group. Does this mean that  for the whole year of the group friendship (before the dating),  they thought that G is a good guy (the idea that he was a bad guy never came up), and that’s why they wanted him within the group, being possessive of him… and only after the dating, the idea and lie that G is a bad guy was told for the very first time?

    * Was there any romantic attraction or relationship history between B and G?

    anita

    October 17, 2022 at 10:19 am #408609
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Naia1234:

    You submitted posts on Oct 6, 7 and 8 and you were very pleased with the replies you received, but following telling the story about the friend group on Oct 9 and receiving the replies to it, you did not post in the last 8 days. I am guessing that what you shared in your last post and/ or the replies to it increased your relationship anxiety so you withdrew from your thread.

    You shared in that last post: “My best girl friend at my the time began to make up stories and lies about my boyfriend and about our relationship…  She painted my boyfriend out to be a really bad guy… I think about all of the awful things they said about my boyfriend when I am feeling anxious. This makes me really sad because I know they are pure lies but anxiety makes things feel so real“-

    – There is a saying: “even a broken clock is right twice a day“, so I am guessing that a part of the negative things that your ex-best girl friend said about your boyfriend and the relationship was true at the time. But it doesn’t mean that everything that she said was true, nor does it mean that your boyfriend was or is a bad guy, or that the relationship is bad. Your 3rd sentence in your original post is: “We are not perfect, but we are strong“- everyone is imperfect, never to achieve a perfect being. But we can aim at getting better and better every day.

    How are you, Naia1234? I wish I could read from you again!?

    anita

    October 18, 2022 at 3:01 pm #408676
    Nala1234
    Participant

    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?

    October 18, 2022 at 4:27 pm #408678
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Naia1234:

    Good to read back from you! I am glad you got a break from intrusive thoughts about your relationship, and I hope that this break lasts indefinitely.

    “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…Have you ever heard of this before? Any idea how/why you can feel so physically anxious but not have racing thoughts?“- I understand that panic attacks, unlike the experience of anxiety otherwise, happen without experiencing worries or intrusive thoughts before the attacks: they happen unexpectedly.

    I re-read your posts and it seems to me, based on my personal experience with anxiety,  that the following may be the main source of your anxiety (with or without intrusive thoughts): “My mom… has so much unresolved trauma… My brother and I were always affected by this” – like I wrote to you before, young children absorb their mothers’ expressed childhood/ early life trauma like sponges, so her trauma becomes her children’s trauma by absorption. This is what happened in my case: my mother expressed her unresolved trauma in my presence many, many times and it affected me terribly, it was as if what happened to  her.. happened to me.

    If this makes any sense to you, would you like to share about her/your trauma?

    anita

    October 24, 2022 at 12:00 pm #408989
    Anonymous
    Guest

    I hope you are okay, Naia1234! How are you?

    anita

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