Welcome to Relationships Turned On. I'm your host, Laura Press, marriage and Relationship Counselor. I believe relationships can be fixed and you deserve to have a connected and living relationship. I give you the tools, strategies, and insights so you can have a world-class relationship.
Welcome to Relationships Turned on. This episode is all about is anxiety killing your relationship? Now, this is something that I've been, people have been talking to me about a lot. I've had confidence on social media about it, and I really wanna address it because I. Relationship anxiety is defined as the present worry and nervousness one feels in romantic relationships.
So it's actually very common. It can cause a lot of stress and strain on the relationship, and it can be yes in the early phases, but the anxiety can be prevalent at any phase during a relationship. Quick disclaimer, this is for entertainment and educational purposes only, and should not be considered advice of any kind.
Okay. Now, what on earth do you do when you are feeling that anxiety or one of you are feeling that anxiety in your relationship? So firstly, we need to identify what it is. So it is anxiety. If you understand what it is and you know what's triggering it, then you can make it. Better decisions and work with it as opposed to against it or work to decrease it.
It's important to identify what it is and have that awareness so you can actually create the change that you're looking for. But I also wanna talk to you about relationship anxiety and how it can snowball. What might start as a little stress or worry or concern, then start stacking upon each other and it gets a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger.
And then our thoughts really take hold. We start thinking they don't care about us. Maybe they don't love us, they don't want us, or they're not doing stuff for us. They're just connecting with us. Like we start snowballing and catastrophizing those thoughts. And that is really, in my opinion, where the stress, the strain, and.
It can kill your relationship because it's not grounded in reality anymore. It, you have mentally taken your relationship into this another space where it's actually not there right now. Your mind is just there with the catastrophising of thoughts. Now this, can be easy to do. A lot of people do it, so it's not uncommon.
It's very common. But there are so many things that you can do to actually power that down and create a more loving and connected relationship. So obviously communication is number one. We need to communicate the thoughts, the feelings, the anxieties, and the worries that you might be having, but from a proactive place, right?
And supporting each other through that, which is really, really key because if you can't support each other, then. It becomes very difficult to manage this within your relationship. And so when you have healthy boundaries as well in your relationship, then you can actually, it creates safety, it creates security and predictability, which can in turn decrease anxiety in your relationship.
So when you have those healthy boundaries, it's established. There's less likely to be high anxiety. If you've got no boundaries, it's more likely. It's not to say that you don't have them. If you do have healthy boundaries, you can still have anxiety with healthy boundaries. But it's just one of the things to have in place to ensure it decreases the anxiety.
And as I said, you need to really be navigating the anxiety together. So how can you support each other and love one another through this? And I would say it's using mindfulness techniques too. It might be. Deep breathing, prayer, meditation, being present in the moment can really help reduce anxiety and help overwhelm.
I also find one of the biggest things is writing things down because it slows down the thoughts long enough for you to really get a grip on what's going on and for you to see what's happening when you write them down. It's such a great and underutilized tool that really could be helping you right now.
The next one, which I'd have to say is one of my favourites for helping anxiety, is a digital detox. So many people's anxiety comes from technology. It comes from watching the news, it comes to listening to the radio. It comes from constantly scrolling, Instagram and Facebook. It is constantly consuming fear-based negative content.
You are what you consume in all forms of that. Okay? So if you are consuming a lot of social media or a lot of the news or things like that, you will naturally start to become more fearful on edge, more anxious. So having a digital detox can be a game changer with anxiety, and you will find it helps your relationships too.
Also be really mindful of what kind of content you are consuming around relationships. So sometimes there can be a lot of memes and different things coming out, which doesn't actually add to your relationships. It takes away from your relationships and you start questioning and worrying and concerning yourself with, well, do I have the right relationship?
And it's based on something you saw on TikTok, which may not be the best advice, right? So that digital detox can be one of the main tools to help you reduce anxiety. Building resilience is very important. So I want you to know as well that life ebbs and flows. You have different seasons to your relationship, and sometimes we just need to build resilience and our toolkit of ways to cope and combat when our stress is high, when our anxiety's high.
So if you can have that in a resilience. That can come from a whole lot of things. It can come from, doing therapy, breath work from, journaling. It can come from the past things in your life and seeing them as a gift they see is life happening for you not to, you can be a big shift, which helps build resilience.
Having the tools, like we talked about, meditation, mindfulness, being present, digital detox, having all these tools can actually help build your resilience on a whole, which will help decrease anxiety. The next one is to set realistic expectations. Sometimes your partner might not want to know what anxiety is, might not know how to handle it, and you need to be able to clearly communicate that and set the expectations of what different things look like for you.
Because if they don't know, they don't know, and they don't know how to support you best throughout that, and then it becomes a bigger issue than what it needs to be. So set realistic expectations. Talk about it. Talk about what you need and what you don't need, or ask your partner what they do need or don't need in regards to their anxiety.
Another big thing that can help is to practice self-care, yes. Exercise, hydration, nutrition, that's low-hanging fruit that needs to be really dieted in, especially if you're experiencing anxiety often. Sometimes, food can play a big part of it. Lack of hydration can play a big part of it. No sleep will definitely with a hundred percent certainty play a part in it.
And sometimes as well, if you are not engaging with family and friends, if you are holding yourself back, then that will be a big part of increased anxiety as well. We are social beings, even if you're an introvert who loves to connect, so you need those support systems and networks around you, even if it's just one or two trusted people.
Addressing past traumas can be a big part of anxiety and. It can really help you understand what's going on with you and impact you positively in your current relationship. So if that's you, getting help and support can actually be the biggest thing you can do to shift that anxiety for yourself.
Another one you can do is educate yourself. So understanding what it is, understanding its impact on relationships, which you're doing now, and which is fantastic, and understanding the root cause and how you can change the behavior and the patterns to manage the anxiety a lot better. Quality time can help manage anxiety.
It really does depend. Sometimes it can be the small gestures and the meaningful moments can help decrease your partner's anxiety, especially if anxiety is around the relationship itself. And this one is a bit of a funny one, but I say it's one of my main tips for today is creating a worry jar. So if.
Yourself or your partner is a big one in the relationship who worries a lot. What I would suggest is to write it down, put it in a jar once a week, sit down, talk with one another about these worries, about these concerns in a structured way. So not just haphazardly, there's actually a structured process.
You can go back. I've done a lot of episodes and communicated effectively. You can use all the tools in those episodes and. Really talk about the worries and the fears. Are they founded? Are they, like you, they're real 'cause you feel them, but are they happening? What needs to change?
What could be improved? How could you love and support? Maybe you just need to reassure one another. Maybe it's just a simple act of listening, but you can sit together once a week and talk about all these things and it's actually a great relationship strategy because if you don't set time aside to talk about these things and sometimes they just never get addressed.
So it's actually a really great one. So creating a worry job. I would love to know what you take from this episode? What was your main takeaway? Because I know relationship anxiety is prevalent everywhere and there are many different things causing it. I have touched on some things.
There'll be many other things. I have touched on some of the strategies. There is plenty more. But I wanna know, have you experienced it? What do you do to help yourself? Because the more we can start talking about it, engaging it, it gives more people tools and strategies to decrease it and or hopefully eliminate it from their life to have a much more amazing relationship.
Please send this to someone that you know would benefit from this and hit follow because there's so many amazing episodes coming out really soon. So hit follow. Subscribe to this podcast wherever you are listening, and until next time, it's time to turn your relationship on.
