How can I stop the anxiety in my relationship?

Imagine being able to relax and enjoy yourself with your partner without fear of offending or upsetting them. How would it be for you if you could tell your partner what you need without being worried about being dismissed or put down?

When do you feel the most anxiety in your relationship? Does it come up when you have a decision to make or something you want to ask for? Or is it when you’re afraid of being criticised or worse still, being hit with recriminations for something you did last year or even in the last decade?

Some of us experience a lot of anxiety in our closest relationships and it can make things really difficult. If you have challenges in your relationship, there is only one person you can change and that is yourself. Your anxiety may be the best place to start!

Can I tell you a story?

Get yourself a coffee and get comfortable.

In the late 1990s I started training as an osteopath. At that time, my husband and I were living in Brussels, we had a seven month old baby and a two-year old. Yep, I agree, I must have been mad. My husband wasn’t at all happy about the arrangement and made that very clear. But the family trait which we affectionately refer to as bloody-mindedness meant that I would not withdraw from the course. If I had been more compassionate towards my husband, I probably would have.

I think it would be fair to say we both made things worse. The sense that I had betrayed him by continuing with my training to the bitter end persisted right through until we got divorced 20 years later. He was almost perpetually angry with me and I lived in a state of resentment about his anger and I was constantly on edge as I never knew when he would lash out at me. There was no physical abuse; it was just the endless recriminations.

Times of intense stress often bring out the worst in people. We revert to behaviour patterns which we developed as children. Unfortunately these behaviour patterns – or ‘survival programmes’ – do not serve us well as adults. We lose touch with our ability to be compassionate, empathic, vulnerable and loving.

Back then I didn’t know any of this stuff. I didn’t know that my bloody-mindedness was an aspect of an old childhood survival programme, and that I could choose to do something different. And I didn’t realise that my husband’s rather punishing behaviour was part of his childhood programme.

Another aspect of my childhood survival programme was anxiety. I never realised just how anxious I was – it was simply the water I was swimming in. Of course living with someone who is prone to unpredictable outbursts of anger serves to intensify the anxiety.

Where does anxiety come from?

You would be forgiven for thinking that the anxiety you experience is a direct result of your partner’s behaviour. You may tell yourself that you’re anxious because he’s a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde and you never know when he will flip. Or that you’re anxious because she’s hypercritical and shouts at you if you forget to empty the dishwasher.

But notice this. What’s the difference between the feelings you have when your partner is actually shouting at you, and the feelings you have when you are anticipating the shouting, or wondering what he’ll do next time he gets angry?

Even when you’re in the thick of an argument, there is a sort of black box between your partner’s shouting and your anxiety or fear. That black box is the thoughts that pass through your mind, perhaps almost out of consciousness. It’s as if we don’t have time to catch those thoughts as they slip into the background. But they’re still there.

What thoughts run through your head when there’s conflict between you? It’s really important to distinguish between the facts of the situation and the meaning you are making of it. For instance if he called you selfish when you forgot to pick up his beer at the supermarket, are you making that mean that he thinks you’re always selfish? Or could it be that he snapped because he was tired and depleted?

When you’re feeling anxious about what might happen this evening when you’re both at home, there’s a lot more time to engage in all that thinking. Or maybe you lie awake at night worrying about what to do, because the situation has become unsustainable. With your mind running free there’s ample opportunity to inject all kinds of meanings into the memory of what happened earlier.

That’s when we start catastrophising. It’s the catastrophising that creates the anxiety we feel.

What’s your current approach to the things you find challenging about your partner? Do you:

• plead with him not to shout
• tell him that all the arguing is bad for the children
• blame him for making you feel so upset
• look for ways to appease her so that she’ll be nice to you
• retreat to another room to get away from her

Very often the way we respond to relationship challenges is determined by the anxiety we feel. If this looks like your current response and it’s not working, maybe it’s time to try something new!

When you recognise that your anxiety is not a direct result of your partner’s behaviour, but arises from your thinking, you are in a much more powerful position. You may be unable to change your partner’s behaviour by either persuasion or force, but you can change it by changing your own behaviour.

This is because together you and your partner form a system. If you change the behaviour on your side of the system, the other side has to change too. Recognising that your anxiety is simply a product of your own thinking is a good first step to changing your behaviour and transforming the system that is your relationship.

Is anxiety running your relationship?

Anxiety has a way of taking over. It ought to be our servant. I appreciate my anxiety when it keeps me safe walking home alone late at night, because it ensures that I’m alert to possible dangers. But I do not want it running the show!

Are you letting your anxiety run the show in your relationship? If you’re deciding what to do or say based on what your anxious thinking is telling you, then you are. If you’re avoiding conflict because you’re afraid there will be a big blow-out, then you are. If you make decisions based on what you fear rather than what you want, then you are.

How would it be if you could come from trust instead of from anxiety when you’re with your partner? It’s not an easy transition to make, but it is possible. As long as you know that your partner is mostly trustworthy.

I’m going to tell you another story. This one is a happier story (phew!) and it’s kind of funny.

When I met Mark, my current partner, early in 2020, I discovered just how anxious I was. I told myself all sorts of stories. They included:

• This is my last chance. If this doesn’t work out I’ll be single for the rest of my life.
• Am I making a huge mistake? What if he turns out to be a narcissist?
• What if my daughters don’t like him?
• What if he doesn’t like my daughters?

But the really big one was whether he would hang around for a few months and then get bored and push off. Somehow he picked up on this anxiety, because he decided to do something about it. He wanted to prove that he wasn’t going to get bored and push off. So he proposed to me (I think this was about a month or two after we’d started the relationship).

I was a bit taken aback and responded with a very definite ‘No’. Which was a big relief to Mark!

What I’m saying is that our anxious thinking can really take us over. How lovely would it have been if I could have said to myself (as I tried to do), “We’ll see where this goes and I will be fine if it fizzles out.” Instead I spend several months flipping between the euphoria of being in love and catastrophising about what would happen to me if it all went wrong.

It takes a while to break the habit of coming from anxiety. Even with Mark who is kind, loving and generous, I felt compelled to tread carefully. This was not because he was the kind of man to suddenly flip from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde, but because my habit of anxiety was so engrained after so many years.

It’s not just previous relationships which can leave us with an over-exercised ‘anxiety muscle’. In fact for most of us it has its origins in childhood. As I said earlier, as adults we continue to run ‘old survival programmes’ from our childhood, until we realise what we’re doing. Anxiety is one of those old programmes. And like any survival pattern from childhood, it’s possible to change it.

How do I stop my anxiety running my relationship?

The secret to stopping our anxiety taking the upper hand in our relationships is to get its sticky hands off the steering wheel and put it firmly in the back seat of the car. You can't get rid of it altogether and it's necessary for survival - but as your servant, not your master.

Here are seven steps you can take to get its hands off the steering wheel:

1. If you’ve realised that you’re letting anxiety make decisions for you, then you’ve taken the first step.
2. Take some time to get familiar with what you’re doing as a result of your anxiety. Make a list of all your anxiety-driven behaviours.
3. Do some journaling about the anxious thinking you’re having. What are the ‘What-if’ questions you ask yourself? What are you making your partner’s behaviour mean?
4. Don’t dwell on the past, but be curious about what childhood experiences led you to create this habit of anxiety. Was it the behaviour of a volatile parent for instance?
5. Be compassionate to that little child who felt so compelled to be anxious. All that anxiety-driven behaviour made sense in the context of your childhood circumstances; it was intelligent; it was your own innate wisdom at work.
6. Be alert for when anxious thinking shows up in your relationship and ask yourself whether your thoughts are true. Or are they things you’re making up about your partner?
7. Take baby steps towards trust. If you never test it, you’ll never know whether you can trust yourself or your partner. But don’t jump in at the deep end!

Trust is a bit like a muscle. The more we use it, the stronger it becomes. When I first realised that I had difficulty trusting, I noticed that I was trying really hard to trust – to trust myself, to trust Mark, to trust the Universe. It seemed like the harder I tried, the harder it became to trust. So one day listening to meditation teacher, Craig Hamilton, I decided that trying would never work. It was as if I had realised that the trust was already there. All I had to do was to lean back into it, like leaning back into a big comfy chair.

Try it yourself. In fact I was wrong to say trust is like a muscle. Because it is more of a relaxation response, a letting go. But it is true that the more you practise leaning back into that comfy chair, the easier it becomes to let go and simply trust.

For a little support with your journey from anxiety to trust, download my e-book, The Survival Kit Workbook. It will help you refashion those old childhood programmes and it’s on the house!