What is Anxiety? Pt. 2
While much of the experience of anxiety is the internal chaos that no one else sees, it’s also expressed relationally, especially in our closest relationships with the people who know how to read our “worry face,” or our “my social battery ran out an hour ago, let’s vanish from this social gathering” face. Because anxiety’s top priority is to stay invisible while keeping us functioning at 120%, often people who grew up with anxiety become so practiced at handling it alone that they don’t even recognize it as anxiety until it’s brought out of hiding in their relationships with others. As we see every day in our west Ottawa therapy centre - experiencing anxiety and reflecting on it are two distinctly different experiences.
Anxiety in Relationships
If part one of this post outlines how anxiety doesn’t always feel like straightforward fear, it can feel more like responsibility, part two centres on how anxiety impacts our relationships (with self and others). In relationships, that can mean feeling responsible for preventing and resolving conflicts, or feeling personally responsible for your partner’s negative emotions, whether that be torturing yourself with guilt or scrambling to fix it. Often this becomes a self-perpetuating cycle where conflict seems scarier and scarier the more you successfully avoid it. Here are some examples of how this can play out in the moment:
Being hypervigilant for slight shifts in your partner’s mood, facial expressions and tone of voice, (the classic, “are you mad at me?”)
Avoiding asking for help, and apologizing when you do
Not letting your partner do their share of domestic labour because you feel anxious if it’s not done your way… then resenting that you do more than your share … then feeling guilty for feeling resentment
Overexplaining yourself so you’re less likely to be misunderstood
Worrying that any small disagreement will endanger your relationship
A key feature in this landscape is often the tense silence that happens when one partner is overwhelmed and keeping feelings bottled up to protect the other, and the other can feel that there’s something wrong and may be keen to help, but they can’t respond to a need that hasn’t been voiced. Some partners withdraw to themselves, others will try to solve the problem immediately. Some will pretend everything is fine in the hopes that the tension will pass. It can be really confusing to be either partner in this situation, when neither of you feel like you chose it or control it. Your therapist can help you sift through what’s “yours” and what’s shared work in your relationship.
The ways that anxiety shows up in relationships are often the same ways it shows up in the therapy office. The difference is that an anxiety therapist is trained to become curious about those moments rather than trying to make them disappear. At our West Ottawa psychotherapy centre, anxiety counselling often begins by helping you understand that these patterns developed for a reason.
Anxiety in Therapy
An anxiety therapist doesn’t just listen for patterns in clients’ stories or self-reflections, they can see it in how the client approaches counselling. These are some of the clues that therapists often take note of:
Apologizing for crying
Asking questions like, “does that make sense?” for fear of being misunderstood by the therapist
Minimizing/making light of their experience
Expressing guilt for talking about themselves
Asking for reassurance that their needs/emotions are normal and okay
These moments aren’t signs that someone is ‘bad at therapy,’ they’re exposing the patterns that brought them there in the first place. (Pro tip: there are no grades in therapy!) To someone who has never struggled with or sought treatment for anxiety, these behaviours may seem backwards. Your therapist is there to listen to you and help you unpack your experience to help make sense of it. But people who live with anxiety can be so unused to voicing their own needs that it seems like an imposition, even in therapy.
Where a partner or friend may provide reassurance or say the apology is unnecessary, an anxiety therapist uses these moments to gather information or to gently encourage reflection. A large portion of anxiety therapy is about understanding when and why those feelings arise. In these moments, an anxiety therapist may ask questions like:
Why do you feel the need to apologize?
What do you imagine the other person will think when you set a boundary?
When and where did you learn that your needs cause problems?
These reflections are often the first step toward understanding what your anxiety has been trying to protect you from.
If you notice any of these patterns and crave a deeper understanding, therapy for anxiety may be the place to find it. Feel free to explore our resources or reach out to book a free consultation. You don’t have to keep carrying everything by yourself.