I don't want to change myself? Anxiety and therapy related.

[OddSocksAndHollyhocks]

OK, odd one.

DH and I have been having marriage counselling, mostly to address our poor communication. Our relationship isn't terrible, in many ways it's good. But we have very different communication styles and both feel unvalidated and argue a lot.

Anyway. Therapist seems to have struggled to find a solution for us or to "solve" us as a couple. He's tried all the standards - finding shared passions, looking at our childhood and saying we're repeating parental patterns, suggesting mindfulness. In the last session, he seems to have settled on my anxiety and is now saying it's the cause of everything. He wanted me to name my anxiety and give it a colour and see it as separate to me...presumably so I could banish it.

The thing is, I've lived with my anxiety forever. I'm a very high functioning anxious person. I'm anxious about pretty much everything, have constant voices in my head BUT it doesn't stop me. I have a great career, friends. If I want to do something, i do it. It just often takes me a lot of self reasoning or finding a way I feel more comfortable with to achieve the same result. Its only when DH is in the equation that it gets more complicated as he thinks he's protecting me by just saying we won't do things that could make me anxious. When in reality, that's making me feel like I'm in a cage where I never get to actually live.

I don't feel like I need to get rid of my anxiety. But therapist has pinned it as the cause of all our problems. I feel like that's just an easy cop out. Not sure what to do next...

You talk a lot about how you feel about your anxiety - what about your husband? Is it that he finds it impossible to live with and is therefore trying to avoid situations that trigger it?

I think you should tell the therapist at your next session pretty much exactly what you've written in paragraphs 3 and 4. See where it goes from there. No decent therapist should be pinning it all on one thing anyway.

Not impossible, but probably very difficult. He is a person who naturally dislikes any kind of confrontation or stress so avoids it at all costs. He also doesn't like discussing anything in detail so my coping mechanism of talking over things multiple times until I'm comfortable with it drives him crazy.

I actually feel I manage and control my anxiety really well in that it doesn't hold me back and I'm very self aware of triggers and how to deal with them. But DH, simply due to his personality, can't accommodate the ways that work best for me of dealing with it - e.g. not avoiding doing things, but accepting I may need some time in advance to adjust and prepare and that I may stress about things but I will do them. And that i don't need him to "fix" that, just to be there.

Therapist said that essentially we are so different, we have to just accept each other. Only it feels like what he's actually saying is I have to accept my husband whilst changing myself entirely. But this is being justified under the guise of "your anxiety isn't you, so it's changing you not your anxiety".

Sorry, changing your anxiety not you I meant

I actually feel I manage and control my anxiety really well in that it doesn't hold me back and I'm very self aware of triggers and how to deal with them. But DH, simply due to his personality, can't accommodate the ways that work best for me of dealing with it

Well that's it in a nutshell isn't it?

I can kind of see why your therapist would recommend that you work on your anxiety, rather than expect your DH to change his personality. He can't cope with the way you manage your anxiety, if you lessen the anxiety (which would be a fairly usual thing to want to achieve) then you lessen the impact on your relationship as a result.

“He also doesn't like discussing anything in detail so my coping mechanism of talking over things multiple times until I'm comfortable with it drives him crazy.”

I’m not surprised, it would drive me crazy too! Seems you’re expecting your husband to change who he is, to avoid confronting how much the anxiety controls your life

But it doesn't bother me, it's just part of who I am. I've always been this way, it's not like I've changed over the time he's been with me...

This doesn't sound like anxiety to me. I've never met anyone who is comfortable with their anxiety. Sounds more like just a different way of dealing with things and communicating from your DH's way. Anxiety is absolutely debilitating. So who labelled it that?

Also, I would be very wary of any male couples counsellor who located the problem as being within the woman.

You sound a little like my mum, who also won't deal with her anxiety.

So we have to listen to her talk over and over and over a situation, until she's talked it to death but there's never a respite because once her anxiety has eased over one issue another one pops up to take its place.

You can't fix it for her because solution's don't work because she will just find another aspect to focus on. It's so draining. And if you complain you are told its not her fault its because she has (untreated) anxiety so that means we all have to sit and listen.

I feel for your DH thb

@JamJarJane A number of different therapists over the years. High functioning Generalised Anxiety with Obsessive Worry.

It isn't debilitating, at least not in my opinion. But it is constant and just something I work around. I basically live permanently with a million voices in my head about a million different subjects and lots of things cause me high levels of stress - but personally I don't think any amount of looking at my past, deep breathing, or positive affirmations is going to fix this. It never has in the past. Giving it a name and a colour sure as hell won't. And I absolutely refuse to be medicated to change myself for someone else when it isn't something that I, on my own, would change about myself.

Maybe I'm just meant to be alone.

Yes I suppose I'm like this. Although I never say anything's not my fault because of my anxiety - I take accountability for that and I personally don't think the way I talk over things is hideously annoying but maybe it is.

Honestly, I just think he was trying to latch on to any theme to then start working with. Because he'd tried pinning it on our parents (we both rejected this). Then tried suggesting meditating (I already do this daily). Then finding (highly tenuous) commonality between our hobbies. Then turned to this.

It just particularly irked me that it came directly after saying we just needed to accept each other. Except clearly not for me. So basically, woman must accept man As Is but not vice versa.

It does sound like you are absolutely draining to live with, tbh.

I don't know what anyone can say to you. If you'd rather be obsessively anxious than have a better marriage, that's your choice.

By saying you don’t think you should have to change, you’re also saying that you think your DH should be the one who has to take on all the changes. He will have to change his entire personality to be able to accommodate your anxiety, rather than you dealing with the anxiety.
It sounds like neither of you actually think you’re in the wrong or want to make any changes, so I’m not sure why you’re in therapy? There’s no point if you’re not willing to make any changes off the back of it.

You do also seem weirdly convinced that a) anxiety is absolutely central to you and b) that as long as you cope, it doesn't matter what your coping strategies cost other people.

I read the compromise as: you reduce your anxious behaviour which will never go away and may spike here and there, and your husband's compromise is him accepting a lesser anxious wife but who will always have obsessive worry hence compromise from both rather than pinning it all on the woman vs innocent man.

Not impossible, but probably very difficult. He is a person who naturally dislikes any kind of confrontation or stress so avoids it at all costs. He also doesn't like discussing anything in detail so my coping mechanism of talking over things multiple times until I'm comfortable with it drives him crazy.

How on earth did you make it all the way to marriage despite this? Did your anxiety just not crop up before you got married? Did he pretend he was OK at handling it?

I am mildly comfortable with my anxiety as it’s a learned coping mechanism from childhood trauma. It’s a comfort blanket I put on. Same with anger, I see it as transformative, it engages me and forces me in to action. I use it very positively.

that said it doesn’t interfere with my daily relationships. I think anything that does IS an issue to be dealt with.

This video might help you understand your anxiety and work with it, rather than around it;

Yes! This is what I hoped for. I want us to find better ways, as a partnership, to communicate so that he understands how to deal with me in a way that doesn't inflame situations or conversely cage me in. And I in turn then feel safer and more loved so flare up less and will also on my part make a concerted effort to manage my anxiety in ways that have less impact on him...although I suspect it may be very lonely if it means not talking to him about anything that worries me etc

I don’t think your counsellor sounds helpful,

I have anxiety (at times it’s been classed as severe). Me and DH had couples counselling for similar reasons to you - we struggled to communicate. The counsellor helped DH understand my anxiety and so helped him realise it wasn’t a response to him but a subconscious response to a trigger. She explained the state of the brain and how some of the behaviours weren’t a choice. I had individual counselling to learn how to manage it. Now my DH can separate and recognise my anxious behaviours he knows how to approach it. Which has helped us enormously. He’s learnt how I need communication and I’ve learnt how he needs me to communicate to him. It’s a two way compromise. The counsellor also challenged my expectations of DH’s communication with me - I.e I won’t get the validation and feedback from him as I do my friends.

Meet halfway?

You do stuff to work on the anxiety.

He does stuff to accept that is who you are/accept you as you are.

That would sound like a fair compromise. That's how it works in this house. I'd actually give hypnotherapy a try if I were you. Worked miracles for an issue I had.

It has always been there. In fact, I think I'm better than I used to be. Once upon a time I didn't drive, or go on an aeroplane, or go into London, because all those things were too terrifying. But now I do all of those things and far more. To people who don't know me I present as very normal and highly capable. I've got excellent at faking it, and rationalising with myself over the years. We've been married a long time. DH himself actually says it's not a huge deal breaker for him and seemed sad that the therapist raised it. I guess in the beginning, new love and the fact I was younger and prettier back then probably counteracted the anxiety a bit more though!

I'm the same. And the reason why I don't think it's an issue to be dealt with is that I feel the therapist has made it into one, rather than it being the actual root of our communication problems. Had DH ever turned to me and said "I love you, but your anxiety is destroying us" I would be answering this entirely differently.