How Anxiety Can Strain and Strengthen Relationships

Anxiety can negatively impact many aspects of your life, including your relationships. Not only can anxiety affect how you function in your daily life, but it can also interfere with your ability to communicate and connect with other people.

Having an anxiety disorder can impact relationships in different ways. Understanding the different ways feelings of anxiety might interfere with your relationships can help you find ways to cope.

Signs of Anxiety in Relationships

There are a number of behaviors that people might engage in when they are experiencing anxiety in relationships. Some of these signs include:

• Worrying that the other person is lying

• Fearing that the other person likes other people better

• Worrying about the other person cheating

• Worrying that their anxiety will negatively affect the relationship

• Overthinking every conversation, phone call, or text

• Pushing people away first in order to avoid rejection

• Feeling you need to control how your partner spends their time and who they talk to

• Feeling jealous when your partner spends time with others or wants some time alone

• Avoiding relationships altogether

People won't necessarily experience or exhibit all of these symptoms to the same degree. The way that each person experiences anxiety in a relationship depends on the nature and severity of their anxiety condition. 

People who have anxiety disorders are more likely to be single and have higher rates of divorce.1

How Anxiety Affects Relationships

There are a few major ways that anxiety can impact a relationship. When you are experiencing feelings of anxiety, you may respond by being either too dependent or too avoidant. Both responses can take a toll on how you interact and communicate with others.

Dependence

Some people with anxiety have an intense desire for closeness to their partners (or friends), depending on them constantly for support and reassurance.

Along with being overly dependent, people with anxiety may find themselves prone to:2

• Overthinking

• Planning for all worst-case scenarios

• Being indecisive

• Fearing rejection

• Seeking out constant communication (and getting anxious if a partner or friend does not respond quickly)

People with anxiety and overly dependent relationships may also struggle with anger toward those they feel dependent on, acting out in ways that are destructive to their relationships.

Controlling Behaviors

People who have anxiety need to control every detail of their environment to manage stress and find peace. Below are a few signs that you are engaged in controlling behaviors in your relationships and daily routines to minimize your anxiety:

• Attempting to control the feelings or behaviors of your partner, friends, or family members

• Being critical or judgemental of others

• Inability to delegate tasks

• Micro-managing other's time and activities

• Over-planning

• Excessively upset when things do not go as planned

• Perfectionism

• People-pleasing

Avoidance

On the other end of the spectrum, some people avoid relationships as a way of dealing with their anxiety. They may avoid negative emotions (for example, disappointment or frustration) by not revealing their feelings, opening up, or being vulnerable.

A person who avoids close relationships may be perceived as cold, emotionally unavailable, lacking empathy, or even standoffish, even though they may long for closeness.  

One study found that people with social anxiety disorder were less likely to receive support from their romantic partners and that less support and more severe anxiety symptoms increased the likelihood of breaking up.

Treatment for Anxiety in Relationships

If anxiety is hurting your relationships, it is important to talk to a healthcare practitioner or mental health professional. Some treatments can help you manage your anxiety, improve your communication, and develop healthier interpersonal relationships.

How To Overcome Relationship Anxiety

Using a variety of therapeutic techniques CBT, and NLP with the integrative of hypnotherapy psychotherapy render it a successful way to identify and understand behavioural traits that might be causing and maintaining the client's negative thought process. Cognitive Hypnotherapy gets to the root cause of the negative attitude problem and changes the perception patterns. CBT and LP empower the client to feel calm in control and manage negative emotions.