Wife triggers my anxiety

[Pappadopoulis]

Don't know what's going on here. It's like the wiring in my brain is wrong. My wife has started triggering my anxiety for no reason. like the other day - I was feeling fine - and i went to visit her in the bath - and suddenly was hit with a wave of anxiety that I can't shake off. This comes at the end of a period of depression for me. I've increased my anti-depressants - and have had other areas of my life return to normal. I can eat again and sleep again. but it's like the 'relationship' switch hasn't been turned back on. Of course - she is amazing - and I have no reason to feel this way. it reminds me of the early days of our relationship - when we would get close - I would break it off - because being in a relationship triggered my anxiety. So we were on-again off-again for a while until we settled down. But - I thought it was behind me - in the past - and I don't know what to do - I just want to leave the relationship because I can't handle the anxiety she is triggering in me - but don't know why that is the case...

Well, it’s your responsibility to manage your anxiety before you sabotage your relationship. It sounds like you need therapy with someone good urgently.

Agree, therapy / sounds like a trauma response to something and hopefully unrelated to your wife. In the meantime don’t project onto her as that’s entirely unfair.

Sounds like you have an anxious attachment style. Have a read up on attachment theory and see if it resonates with your experience. If so, you can start to understand what is happening and how to manage it.

You need to stop talking about your wife triggering your anxiety. It makes it sound like it's something she is doing to you, it's not. Words are important.

What's happening is your brain is deciding to be anxious because it's associating a stimulus with a reaction. That can happen with any stimulus. Leaving or avoiding your wife won't stop this. You'll just move onto another stimulus if you don't seek additional help. Avoidance is the last thing to work.

What kind of reaction do you mean? Like wanting to run away from her/leave the room because she’s irritating to you? Or you get more anxious about bad things happening when she’s around because she has a negative personality? Or anxious for her?

Look up anxious attachment styles. CBT works wonders for this. You can self refer through the IAPT service at your GP. Lots of local charities offer free counselling for 6 months!

Sometimes the feeling of anxiety is just a physiological response.

I would say avoidant attachment style, not anxious attachment style. OP describes how being in a relationship triggered anxiety early on so he would break it off and then get back together etc. Now he’s settled with wife, I.e. intimacy deepened, he’s feeling the same panic about being in a relationship … I may be wrong here, but that’s how I’m interpreting it.

I agree with educating yourself on attachment styles, a good source for avoidantly attached people (and those who want to understand them better, actually) is https://www.freetoattach.com/.

I would also recommend therapy as these things are hard to crack on your own.

All the best.

I would say more avoidant attachment style than anxious – AIUI, an anxious attachment style is characterised by anxiety about separation and a fear of abandonment. Whereas what the OP describes is looking to avoidance – getting away from the relationship – to address the anxiety he feels.

OP doesn’t sound like it’s anything your wife is/isn’t doing. Perhaps the recent bout of depression has made you feel vulnerable and you’ve instinctively gone into self-preservation mode. Just a completely guess tho – agree with other posters could be useful to speak to a therapist and talk through how you’re feeling.

Also the attachment style thing is just a guess too – might be worth looking into, but equally might not apply to your situation at all.

@RingLightLight I read somewhere once you can get a combination of the two. Perhaps it's a mix who knows, I'm not a psychologist.

Anxious/ avoidant attachment style- does it really matter?! Just trying to help the OP.

Well yeah, I’d say it does as they’re completely different – and obviously my comment is with a view to being useful to the OP as well? I thought it might be helpful, really wasn’t intended to undermine your comment

That's OK! I'm 50 hrs off becoming a qualified counsellor and did a psychology degree over 20 yrs ago. I used to be anxious/ avoidment myself but not anymore.
Mumsnet baffles me sometimes lol. I've only been posting for 2 weeks .

Ok 🤷🏻

What don't you understand lol? You undermined me and I said it was fine. My motto us " just be kind" ,you don't know what someone is going through so just be kind/ nice 😊

Rainbow, it’s a public discussion forum, people are allowed to chip in with alternative perspectives and opinions, and it’s totally fine. I don’t think you need to take it personally that someone added a slightly different opinion (while agreeing broadly that your suggestion about attachment styles was useful). It’s not ‘undermining’ you, we’re anonymous posters in a public forum, we’re not co-parenting the OP. I’m sorry you feel offended that I had a slightly differing view, I don’t think you need to be though. I even said above that my own suggestion was just a guess.

The whole point really of MN is that posters can quickly get a range of opinions from different folk, and it’s very normal for discussion to take place in the comments. Someone having a different opinion is not a personal challenge, it’s just totally normal – as in real life. Please don’t take it so personally!

MN has a particularly robust tone. Disagreement is very very typical.

The whole #BeKnd thing isn't necessarily healthy, either IRL or as a counsellor. And certainly not on MN. Clients need firm boundaries and to process hard truths. IME that is.

Thank you everybody for your input.

Absolutely to both parts of this. Disagreement is healthy, if reasonably civil, but I think some people are just not used to being robustly disagreed with.

And yes also to #BeKind being potentially deeply unhealthy — my own (brilliant) therapist is far from always ‘kind’, in that she’s absolutely helping me unpick self-destructive habits and confront fairly traumatic stuff. It’s not some cuddly process.