Dear Scott:

You wrote: “Inam able to recognize these thoughts, I need help with what I should do or how I can break this painful cycle”-

insight into the origin of this relationship anxiety will be helpful as well as recognizing and observing your thoughts and feelings, which you are already doing. This relationship anxiety started, most likely, in your first, most powerful relationship, the one with a parent or parents.

When a child feels unsafe in relationship with a parent, that fear remains as one becomes an adult. It doesn’t go away with age. It needs to be seen and healed, over time and work. The work starts with the recognizing and observing your thoughts and feelings, and then there is more work).

Would you like to share about the origin of this anxiety?

anita

Dear Scott:

I believe you shared about your childhood in a previous thread, correct? Yes, the origin of your relationship anxiety is in your childhood, not surprising to me. Fear is a very powerful emotion and there is no fast and easy way to calm it, resolve it. It is possible to do a lot of resolving over time, with work done.

You wrote about your stepmother (I am changing the order of your words):

“We felt threatened by her, so we… (did) what would make her happy. I felt like we had to please her.”

Fast forward, with your girlfriend, you are: “always trying to pick up on her emotions. For example, if I feel that she is being “short” or “distant”, I begin to worry… my anxious mind makes me feel insecure and tries to convince me I’m not doing everything I need to do for her in order to keep her. I’m always afraid of losing her even when there is no real problem.”

The real problem still, is that you were afraid to lose the approval of your stepmother, so you are looking for signs that you are losing it for the purpose of doing something to gain it back. You try to pick on her emotions (is she disapproving of me now? Do I need to do something now?), you check her social media (she didn’t respond to me immediately, is it that she is disapproving of me now? Do I need to do something now?) and so on. It is the same dynamic.

Reads like your father was passive, busy with the computer while his wife was the dominant party in that household, therefore she was the strong influence on you there.

We don’t grow out of the past as we age because, unlike shedding our skin throughout life, we do not shed our brain cells. The connections made in our brains during childhood are still the same.

To change those connections, to “update” our brain so to evaluate current situations based on the present, and so, update our thinking, feeling and behavior accordingly, does take time and work. Of the three: thinking, feeling and behaving, it is behavior most accessible to changing. Not checking on her via social media would be changing a behavior which can help in changing, over time, the thinking and feeling.

But it is very hard to  do. Quality psychotherapy may be necessary, if you are stuck and do not know how to proceed. There you can process the childhood experiences with your stepmother. Once you get in touch more with how you felt then, once you get that emotional experience, you will still have work to do. It will take paying more attention (more mindfulness), more honest communication, skills and tools to manage anxiety. It is a process.

anita

Dear Scott:

It is a good thing that you don’t react to your fear of losing your girlfriend by making”some crazy decision or act(ing) out too irrationally”- good thing, as people do impulsively react to fear in very harmful ways, sometimes deadly. Checking social media is not so bad in comparison, but yet it clouds your thinking, taking clarity away, and you need clarity.

A way out of this cycle, on your own (without psychotherapy)… you mentioned OCD. Are you engaged in OCD compulsions in your daily life,  and do you think that repeatedly checking your phone/ social media for activity from her is an OCD compulsion?

anita

Dear Scott:

You asked: “In terms of behavior, what can I change that will lead to different thinking and therefore feelings?” My answer: limit checking your phone to once an hour, or once every two hours (you decide on how often) and then stick to your decision. No matter how strong the drive to check, tolerate the intensity of the drive to check and resist it. The more success you have resisting it, the weaker the drive will be, over time and the weaker the anxiety will be.

Feeling anxious and then checking for activity is reinforcing the activity and keeps the anxiety going. By changing the behavior, you change the feeling, over time (takes persistence and being okay with progress being made imperfectly).

Regarding putting her on a pedestal some times and focusing on her negative attributes at other times, the way I understand it is that the aim of putting her on a pedestal is to feel safe in the relationship, as in pretending the person you are emotionally attached to is a great, strong, reliable person to be attached to. When you focus on her negative attributes, the aim is to prepare yourself for “the fall”- for when you will be disappointed. It is a dance of anxiety: trying to feel safe by either holding on to a perfect image of the other or preparing for danger.

Healing/ managing anxiety is the key in your relationship and life in general. It is a doable project, although not easy. But doable. And you are already managing. There is just.. more work to be done, more tools to be used, more skills to practice, patiently.

anita

Dear Scott:

You wrote: “There is nothing I want more than to find peace and clarity and a sense of calm” and I do wish you this. It is an achievable goal but a long term project. The practice of Mindfulness is necessary in achieving this goal, I strongly believe. On an ongoing basis, notice your anxious thinking, the intrusive thoughts and re-direct your thinking, don’t ruminate. Of course, you will fail, again and again, the intrusive thoughts being back, and you will find yourself lost in negative thinking about her or worrying otherwise. When you find yourself lost there, bring yourself back again and again.

I call the patience required in this process of bringing yourself back again and again, “excruciating patience”- because so much of it is required over such a long period of time as progress is so very slow and often one feels like it is undoable and give up. But don’t give up, persist.

Create a peaceful place in your brain, a certain sanctuary in your brain where there is that”peace and clarity and a sense of calm” that you need and want so badly. Whenever you find yourself in the places in your brain where there is distress, go back to the other place, the calm place and spend time there.

anita

* I want to acknowledge the valuable input by the responding members Cloud (we are communicating on your thread), Ramone Joseph, and Fortunate1 (I would like it if you started your own thread where I can communicate with you. If you would like to do so, please do: click Forums, choose a Category, click your chosen category, scroll down the page).

Dear Scott:

I am too tired to focus now, so I will be back to your thread in the morning, about ten hours from now. Before I am back, if you want to elaborate on your last post: Do you know what causes or precedes her annoyance/ what are the situations that she is responding to with annoyance? What are her thoughts when annoyed?

Also, how is it expressed in the relationship, you being a “parent figure” and she being a “baby”?

anita