How do people not let their emotions dictate their lives?

[wtfisthisplease]

Hi all, bit of a long time coming ramble so hope this makes sense. My emotions dictate everything in my life. If my partner makes a small comment, my mind churns it over for hours and hours and makes it something it isn’t, which can then send me into a spiral for days. For example, this week I said we hadn’t spent much time together, he said ‘I know it’s selfish but you’ve got a cold and I just don’t want to get poorly for the weekend’ and I find it so hard not to immediately go into panic ‘ok so you don’t love me anymore’ mode! I’m always searching for the worst in everything and I’m tired of not being able to rationalise my emotions, it’s starting to affect my relationship now and I don’t know where to start to make it better. Would therapy help? I have some abandonment issues from childhood, and got divorced last year (not due to these behaviours!) but they seem to have gotten so much worse the last few months and I really need to sort it out. Any advice welcome.

Emotions cannot dictate life, you know this.

It sounds like you’re struggling with anxiety, OP. Therapy may help. Talk to your GP for proper advice and be kind to yourself in the meantime.

Yes, therapy might help. It sounds like some of your thought patterns are unhelpful.

Have you thought about antidepressants? It might sound drastic, but my partner suffered with such bad anxiety and thoughts similar to yours, and started on ADs and it has literally been life changing.

My DH was prescribed beta blockers as a temporary measure for anxiety bought on by a particular situation. It's now resolved but he says the beta blockers have been amazing and realised how much anxiety was running his life. Worth a chat to the GP?

Do you live together? If not, I can understand keeping a distance if you are unwell. If you live together, it's pretty pointless to avoid the inevitable sharing of viruses.
Keep your worries to yourself until you feel better, should only be a few days or so. Does he have something specific for the weekend that he doesn't want to miss? If he's still reducing contact when you are well, then it was an excuse after all. Many people have the same kind of worries, but would in the same moment wonder, then put it on the back-burner. Your diffulty is once acknowledging there could be something, you don't seem able to sit back and see how life plays out. Maybe a sign of too much thinking time? Not filling your life with other activities and friends while he's busy maybe? Don't put all your eggs in one basket and make him the centre of your world, make sure you keep contact with other people too.

I would go to the GP as PPs have suggested.

Therapy is very good with helping to rationalise emotions and something that sounds like it may help, is looking at ‘self’ and ‘other.’

So instead of self: he doesn’t love me, doesn’t care about me, if he did he’d do this, this and this.

Think of the other: he is looking after his health, he doesn’t want to be ill. No one would intentionally make them self ill - who would want to intentionally and knowingly risk not having a good weekend?
Feeling like poop, all groggy with a banging headache, sore throat and blocked nose. Does he have plans that would fall through if he was ill? Perhaps he doesn’t do very well with being poorly - some people are troopers and carry on, others would be laid up all weekend feeling terrible. Would he pass this onto other family members who are perhaps more vulnerable?

This example is a tad easier to work through the ‘other’ than most, as he’s already given an answer, in black and white terms, as to why he’s not seeing you as much at the moment. So in a way, you already have the ‘other’ available to you. Much harder in other situations when the ‘other’ isn’t specified as explicitly. Still can be done though, and this practise really helps me.

Journalling, therapy, getting outdoors, having interests/hobbies, exercise and meditation all help too. Best of luck.

Therapy would totally help. There’s something called Dialectal Behavioural Therapy (DBT) which can help with patterns like this. Try this before ADs would be my advice. It completely changed my life. It made me much more in control of my responses to emotions. It doesn’t stop you feeling the emotions but it transforms the way you handle them. You can rationalise them and then change how you respond. Your thoughts drive emotions and your thoughts are generated in response to triggers which have roots in past experiences. Therapy can unpick all of this. I’m much more in control of my thoughts so for example if someone blanked me in the street I used to immediately think ‘what have I done to upset them?’ And it would send me into a tailspin. Now I think ‘maybe they didn’t see me’ or ‘maybe they’re having a bad day’ or ‘maybe they’re just rude’. It’s so helpful.