But some of my patients suffer from it. Relationship anxiety can affect your mental health and make you struggle to form healthy connections. However, it can be alleviated through therapy, emotional work, and constructive support from your partner.
excessive fear of rejection
Relationship anxiety is a persistent, pervasive, and excessive fear of rejection or unexpected abandonment in a relationship, even when the relationship has historically been stable and loving. the study by psychologist Rainer Romero Cañas and geraldine downey.
Ironically, this anxiety can cause problems that jeopardize relationships. This is a classic case of “creating what you fear.”
So why do some people feel insecure in relationships while others feel secure in partnerships?
One explanation has to do with the style of attachment. Separation from our primary caregiver during a critical period in our lives when we develop attachments, the first two years, has a negative impact on our emotional and social development and causes attachment and anxiety problems. There is a possibility. john bowlby’s Work showed.
Many researchers have studied this theory to understand what this anxiety looks like in relationships. Mary Ainsworth noticed patterns related to children’s “attachment styles.”
A secure attachment style is the healthiest and results from having a predictable, warm, and consistent primary caregiver who takes care of the child’s physical and emotional needs.
However, another attachment style is known as anxious-ambivalent attachment. Children with this attachment style have inconsistent primary caregivers, oscillate between warmth and distance, and exhibit unpredictable behavior. Children are anxious and often have difficulty determining when and how to receive love and warmth from their caregivers.
Many children with insecure ambivalent attachment grow up to be needy or clingy adults with fears of rejection and abandonment, and low self-confidence and self-esteem. They tend to project their childhood experiences onto their partners and demand that their partners meet needs that were not met by their primary caregivers.
Signs of relationship anxiety
The following are signs of relationship anxiety.
- Desperate efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment: People who suffer from relationship anxiety are so worried about being left that they try not to disagree, disagree, or cause tension in their relationships. For example, one of my patients stated that she performed unwanted sexual acts at her partner’s request in order to remain “satisfied enough to stay.”
- Recurring and consistent need for reassurance: They have an insatiable need for security and often require constant verbal confirmation that they are loved and that the relationship won’t end anytime soon. For example, you might ask your partner, “Will you still love me if I get fat?”
- Emotions explode over every small conflict: When difficult problems arise in a relationship (no matter how small), intense emotional reactions occur that are disproportionate to the situation.
- Difficulty making decisions: People who are anxious about their relationships lack confidence, not motivation. They have ideas and plans, but they often need to be carried out by a partner so that they are not rejected if they go ahead with them.
- Fear of being left behind: They usually ruminate about how they will live without their partner and what they will do if their relationship ends. Getting caught up in this can cause your thoughts to spike, which is a cognitive symptom of anxiety.
- Misinterpreting feedback as rejection: They tend to view most feedback, even positive comments, as rejection or evidence that their partner is not happy with the relationship. For example, if your partner says, “I like your shirt today,” you might respond, “Does that mean you don’t like what I usually wear?”
Relationship anxiety can be deadly
It’s normal to feel anxious during high-stress situations in relationships, such as when one partner wants to move to a town three hours away from family and friends.
But when you’re insecure in a relationship, the primary stressor is the fear of abandonment, even when there’s no immediate evidence that the relationship is headed for splitsville.
Relationship anxiety and the underlying fear of abandonment can be devastating. People who suffer from this condition seek intimacy, but the condition tends to push others away, who see them as needy and depleted. They often have insight into their own behavior. They can usually admit, “I know there’s a lot” or “I know you’re tired of being so poor.”
But they seem to have little ability to stop their actions. The longer they go without a sense of security, the more they seek certainty.
How to heal relationship anxiety
Healing relationship anxiety is difficult, but it can be recovered with effort. Here are some steps to explore:
Stop venting to your friends. Venting may feel cathartic, but it won’t help you because we tend to vent to like-minded people. Also, you may end up venting your feelings to someone who has similar concerns, which may cause anxiety to spread between the two of you.
Educate yourself: When is your anxiety the strongest? Right after an argument? While your partner is traveling for work? When they are working late? Once you understand the pattern, you can use coping strategies to control your anxiety.
Don’t let your partner be your therapist. They do not have an objective view of you, and their past relationship with you leaves them vulnerable to biases that an objective party would not have. Even if your partner is a professional therapist, they are not your therapist.
Please receive professional treatment. The fear of abandonment and the anxiety it creates has been with you since childhood. A trusted professional can help you explore your trauma, process your childhood experiences, and learn anxiety coping skills.
Consider pausing the relationship. There is only one formula for a healthy relationship. So 1 healthy person + 1 healthy person. It’s much better to pause the relationship, get the help you need, and start building it again.
Being the partner of someone who has relationship anxiety can be exhausting. Constantly demanding reassurance from your partner can be daunting and suffocating. Crying and angry outbursts may be associated with the fear of being abandoned by your partner.
Many well-meaning people believe that if they stop satisfying their partner’s need for security, their partner will stop asking for security as well. It’s the opposite. It lowers the other person’s initially low self-confidence and is often perceived as mean and inconsiderate. You will also be taking on the role of an unpredictable caregiver.
Support your partner to seek therapy and try other ways to manage their fear and anxiety of abandonment. Although it may feel uncomfortable at first, this is the healthiest thing to do.
Dr. La Keita D. Carter is a clinical psychologist and Institute for Healing Located in the Baltimore area. She specializes in relationships, intimacy, sexual health and wellness, trauma, and women’s issues.She is also the author of inner intimacya blog about sexual health and relationships.
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