Relationship anxiety

[bluedabadeedabadoo]

Morning all,

I think I’ve suffered low level with general anxiety for some time but this is generally manageable and I don’t need support for it but when it comes to relationships, my anxiety is absolutely on the roof and it’s unbearable. I definitely had it when my last relationship started 9 years ago but it’s so much worse since that relationship due to this person being so avoidant and leaving me blind sighted after 2 years. Once I’ve met someone IRL, if I like them I start to spiral from there. I get obsessive with communication and text messages, I over analyse every message, every silence, every gap in messages. I’ve also been known to count messages/ characters/ emojis to draw a conclusion as to how they feel about me. When I don’t get the response I need, I spiral predicting rejection. I can then draft messages to end it if I don’t hear back within a certain time frame as I tend to sabotage if there’s any sign of rejection. When I’m in these states I’m crying, panicky, my heart is racing and my stomach is jumping. The only thing that calms me is me taking control and ‘ending it’ or a message which reassures.
it’s absolutely awful and is taking over my life. I want to be with someone but as it stands I don’t think I can cope with how much it consumes me.
I’m seeing someone now and although there have been some slight gaps in communication he hasn’t done anything wrong or bad, but I’m still spiralling as what he does provide isn’t what I need but it should be enough.
Im trying to divert the communication to more phone conversation when it comes to discussing things and planning dates which should help. I’m also currently awaiting interpersonal therapy.

is there anyone here who has struggled with this and if so what have you done? Have you accessed medication? I don’t know if I would qualify when the feelings are specific to one area of my life?

Apologies for the cliched question but what was your childhood like? Behaviours and feelings like this (almost) invariably have their roots in the beliefs you developed in the first 10 years of your life. Can you see any parallels?

Well, it’s good that you’ve arranged to have therapy. Do you know how long you will have to wait? Hopefully you will gel well with the therapist and be able to work hard on unpicking this ingrained behaviour. The only other thing I’d do now in your shoes is acknowledge that I’m not in the right headspace for a relationship and remove that trigger for now.

I’ve really tried to think back to consider this and I’ll have to give it some thought because this will undoubtly come up in therapy. It was ok but my dad shouted a lot and he is a very difficult man to like. I can’t really remember what my relationship with him was like growing up. My mum was quite warmish and always available but I think general life stresses did sometimes impact how she cared for us at times. Nothing massively traumatic but I imagine how I am now is because of how my dad is.

Between December and march.
i have been single for 6 years not even with any dating. I then started to date in the summer thinking I was in a better place. This ended after a few dates, mostly because of my rejecting before I was rejected myself. I realised I needed to stay not date and get help which is when I referred for therapy. In the mean time someone contacted me who I’d matched with in the summer and he was just perfect on paper and lovely hence why I’ve given it a go. Twice over the past 48 hours I’ve nearly thrown the towel in due to my anxiety but then on the other hand I think it’s such a shame as this person could be the right person for me and I wouldn’t want to waste this opportunity. I don’t know what the right thing is to do. I suppose I’m hoping for some ways to help me manage pending counselling (which won’t be an overnight fix).

Very probably. Many people assume that when you talk about adult problems being linked to childhood experiences that there must have been some sort of abuse or trauma but that's (thankfully) not usually the case. It's the underlying tension of a difficult marriage or unreasonable parent/grandparent relationship that impact the understanding of what's normal in the child's mind.