I know this isn’t a professional space and I am seeing a therapist (for many things, this included) but I know you’ve helped me in the past so I might as well shoot again.
I am so plagued with anxiety about my partner, she’s done nothing wrong really but is getting impatient because of my seeming lack of trust and attachment and its very distressing for both of us.
I’ve kicked hard drug addiction and heavy suicidality but this attachment seriously won’t go away. I exercise, meditate, drink water and have started taking my meds again. It can help but I still find myself genuinely tweaking any time there’s anything that doesn’t add up 1000% yk?
Worse I’m going to Texas for a week soon and she cannot come so we’re going to be separated. I am very scared for my reaction. Might be a self-fulfilling prophecy but I just fear where the anxious mind can go.
I’ve identified that I have a anxious attachment style and that this is insecurity but just cannot beat it. It’s weird too because it’s not like I don’t have other connections or things I’m passionate about in my life, I’m a fucking organized communist. Even if she left me I am an in shape intelligent activist like I’m not going to die but even knowing that I’m still absolutely geeking. Does anyone get this or understand and how do you fix it
These types of attachments are usually rooted in early childhood traumas. I don’t know what kind of therapy you’re doing, but for this specifically I think you should do EMDR or CBT. It seems strange your therapist hasn’t mentioned this.
He absolutely has brought up attachment styles and my childhood experiences, and it definitely is rooted from there. I’ve been in therapy for years and have experience with CBT and DBT. Never heard of EMDR tho.
I’ve never done CBT, but EMDR tries to use methods related to sleep (like eye movement) to heal the traumas. You’re probably getting stressed and triggered, due to catastrophic thoughts that pop up in your mind. EMDR can be used to desensitize these inadequate thoughts from the past, and replace them with adequate thoughts from the present. It won’t make them disappear in one go, but over time and with exposition they will go away.
I know you’re not polyamorous (or you haven’t said you are) but you should read Polysecure. It’s a book basically exactly about this. It’s written through the lens of polyamory but it’s equally applicable to monogamy.
I was gonna recommend this as well! Lol
Really the book doesn’t have that much poly content. Important read for Mono couples as well. Most of it is breaking down your personal attachment anxieties. Highly encourage anyone with relationship issues – romantic or not – to read this.
I will check it out for sure. I can imagine the messages it gives and it being helpful.
I understand the fuck out of what you’re talking about. I don’t know if anything I can say might help but I absolutely want to acknowledge one thing.
You demonstrate remarkable awareness of your anxiety and its nature as not-founded-in-reality. That’s fantastic.
In my experience this is not a solution by which I am made comfortable, rather I’m enabled to recognize the “enemy” that is the source of my distress as not the people around me. Knowing that the intense discomfort is not something someone else has done to me (is not the fault of someone else) but is instead my own brain being a dick and trying to hurt me and the other person because brains are dicks. I want to say that again in different words… It’s easier for me to resist reacting to my anxiety in a way that would exacerbate the situation if I frame the problem as my own mind trying to hurt the people I care about.
Critical Note: I’m not encouraging you to blame yourself for how your anxiety could cause problems for other people. Blame your brain. (unnecessary extra information no one asked for) As an ex-christian, I like to blame God. He, with his omniscient awareness of all the situations my life would ever include, decided to create my brain with the specific chemistry that would present as depressive anxiety and his plan further that in such-and-such specific cases my broken brain cause me extreme distress encouraging me to make terrible decisions. It is God’s choice that I fight the enemy that is my brain my entire miserable life. My brain is only the weapon, God is the rotten dick hole who wields it.
I like this, thank you. That does help, framing it as the enemy of my past experiences and just brain chemistry.
I went to the gym a few hours ago and just got back. It’s a little better now. I kind of annoyed my partner again because of the state I was in before I went and she was getting ready for work. Gotta talk to her tonight.
I’m getting increasingly sour about this whole situation though, I fear. She isn’t being the most understanding (which I guess I get but still, I’m asking her to have patience while I work on it and she still calls me dramatic) and so I find myself sometimes questioning our relationship entirely. I know that’s not what I actually want but y’know. I also just am looking at it from my entire life standpoint, it’s been over a decade of this shit. Shit being mental health crises. Heavy anxiety to be replaced with extreme MDD and suicidality, to be replaced with hard drug addiction, and now that I got the two lethal beasts dealt with (MDD and addiction) I’m back to this fucking constant distress. It’s not fair lmao
