8 effective ways relationship anxiety can be curbed in an otherwise good marriage
Monday, May 27, 2024. Revised and updated. This is for S.
Working with couples to lower their relationship anxiety in what would be an otherwise good marriage presents couples therapists with a paradox.
On one hand, the quality of the therapeutic bond is essential.
Clients need to feel safe and believe that their couples therapist has their well-being foremost in mind.
But on the other hand, if safety and comfort are our only clinical values, progress will most likely crawl at a snail's pace.
Curbing relationship anxiety in a good marriage requires confronting difficult and painful feelings.
The process can be successful if the couples therapist provides a supportive holding environment.
The couple is encouraged and guided to learn new skills and deepen their understanding of one another.
What is relationship anxiety?
Relationship anxiety is an ongoing fear that your relationship has hidden deficits that require immediate attention. Symptoms of relationship anxiety include picking fights, turning away, and constantly testing boundaries.
Where does relationship anxiety come from?
Working models for our intimate adult relationships emerged from the dynamics of our attachment to our parents and other caregivers. Our early emotional experiences fundamentally shape our future adult relationships.
Our attachment style shapes how we behave in relationships. A secure attachment style bestows confidence and self-assuredness. However, if you have an anxious attachment style, you may be troubled with ongoing anxiety and uncertainty.
Understanding your attachment style can help you to notice the quality of your thoughts and the repetitive messages in your self-talk.
Attachment theory and relationship anxiety
In the 1950s, British psychologist John Bowlby and his colleague Mary Ainsworth developed the Attachment Theory. The theory's importance lies in its ability to predict relationship anxiety.
As a result of experiences in our family of origin, we develop an attachment style. The 3 main attachment styles are Secure Attachment, Anxious Attachment, and Avoidant Attachment (Ainsworth et al., 1978).
Anxious and Avoidant Attachment are both considered insecure styles of attachment.
Many spouses feel relationship anxiety. A relatively recent study ( Ein-Dor et al., 2010) estimates that Anxious Attachment afflicts one-third to one-half of humanity. Relationship anxiety, unfortunately, is quite common, if not pervasive.
Anxiously attached Partners may become frightened and angry if they fear their partner will leave (Stanley, Rhoades, & Whitton, 2010).
Resisting relationship anxiety with a present-oriented focus
Helping couples to lower their relationship anxiety requires a focus on managing moments.
Anxiety is defined as a nervous disorder characterized by a state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension, typically with compulsive behavior or panic attacks.
In other words, the anxious mind is not focused on the present moment. Helping couples notice what is happening right now and expand their menu of healthy responses requires a keen focus on the brain and nervous system.
The antidote to past and future-oriented anxiety is to be calmly grounded in the present moment.
How does a good marriage manage powerful emotions?
Many couples struggle with managing their emotions. For some, constantly escalating and venting emotions can foster a habit of negativity, which slows down positive change. When negative emotions dominate the brain, they intensify relationship anxiety.
Describing and venting negative emotions is only the first step in grappling with, and overcoming chronic anxiety.
Strengthening the mind with a present-moment focus is crucial to curbing anxiety.
Relationship Anxiety and Personal Growth
Relationship anxiety can significantly impact self-esteem. A lack of strong early attachment often compromises marital satisfaction in adulthood. This anxiety can also be inwardly directed. For instance, a spouse with avoidant attachment might shut down emotionally or flee from the pain of low self-esteem when faced with an anxiously attached partner's complaints. Some folks are so guarded and fearful that they resolve their relationship anxiety by not being in one or behaving as if they were single (Tashiro, 2014).
4 Techniques to lower relationship anxiety in a good marriage
Focusing
Developed in the '70s by Eugene T. Gendlin, focusing involves "felt-sensing" in the body to guide you into deeper self-knowledge. This new awareness helps us notice the body sensations that mirror our thoughts and feelings.
"With Focusing, we develop a new kind of awareness. Because of the pace of modern life, many of us tend to ignore the subtle, gut feeling of all we have endured. Focusing notices the entirety of what is happening in the present moment...particularly the body sensations that accompany and mirror our thoughts and feelings."
Asking
Gendlin describes an internal process called "asking." Questions like "What are you anxious about?" or "What do you need right now?" are addressed to the body-aware, felt sense of self, as if talking to a trusted friend.
Labeling
By slowing down and asking important questions, you can notice your body's expression of your thoughts and feelings. Find a word, phrase, or image that best describes these sensations.
Gendlin suggests that if you slow down, ask yourself important questions, and listen to your body, your gentleness and patience may produce valuable insights.
Adjusting
Work with what comes up as you label these feelings. Switch back and forth between the physical sensations and the descriptions you create. Adjust your narrative description, which often results in deeper awareness and appreciation for the problem itself.
Gendlin says that resonating with the bodily sensations and adjusting the words and images you are using to describe them often results in significantly deeper awareness and appreciation for the problem itself.
Using Imagination to Lower Relationship Anxiety
Situational Reconstruction is a therapeutic intervention for clients facing a recent crisis that threatens their nervous system. It involves using the power of imagination to manage anxiety.
5 Steps for Situational Reconstruction:
Imagine three ways the problem could have been worse.
Imagine three ways the situation could have been less stressful.
Consider what would have to be different for these scenarios to play out.
Consider what you might have done or still could do to improve the odds of a positive outcome.
Imagine how someone you admire would handle the situation if you're stuck.
Compensatory Self-Improvement
Compensatory self-improvement involves changing what you can, informed by the wisdom of knowing the difference. This approach can increase a client's agency in chosen areas of life while acknowledging other unchangeable problems.
Compensatory self-improvement is the applied practice of changing the things you can, informed by the wisdom of knowing the difference.
Last year I did coaching with a lovely woman (let's call her Mary) who was married to a malignant narcissist.
He had installed his mistress in a house three doors down from his family home 24 years earlier, and nothing had changed since. Mary had spent more than two decades in profound relational anxiety.
She fired her last therapist for "being pushy." Mary was a devout Catholic and became tired of her therapist badgering her to get a divorce.
Deciding What Is Most Important
I asked Mary what was most important to her.
She said that while she loved her husband, she was most concerned about how her 13-year-old twin daughters would process living with his narcissistic behavior. Mary assured me that the twins loved their father and a divorce would be extremely unwelcome from their point of view.
There was another issue that Mary was dealing with...she was terminally ill and only had a few months left.
We talked about how she wanted to be remembered. Mary was most concerned about the messages her girls would receive about her husband's open infidelity, which they were all too painfully aware of. But what she feared most was her apparent history of accommodating the arrangement and the spiritual dilemma that she kept to herself.
Mary wanted to show her daughters forbearance, patience, and a firm sense of self. She had frank and open discussions with them about her struggles, and her connection with them deepened more than she ever thought was possible.
Compensatory self-improvement increases a client's agency in chosen areas of life while conceding that other problem areas might be unredeemable.
Mary chose to focus on her twin girls and the life lessons she could impart to them, not on her husband's infidelity or her terminal illness.
Managing Anxiety with Paradoxical Intention
Paradoxical Intention involves exaggerating the symptom. For relationship anxiety, indulging in anxious feelings to the extreme can help regain balance. This technique encourages clients to take a step back and display control over the symptoms.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but when you're feeling relationship anxiety, something you can try in the meantime to regain balance would be to indulge in your anxious feelings to the extreme.
4 Additional Techniques to Curb Relationship Anxiety
Stop Digging for Bad News: Avoid over-analyzing your partner's words just to challenge them with negativity. Be skeptical of what you imagine about your partner. "As Freud famously once said, 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.'"
Talk to Your Spouse: Share your relationship insecurities with curiosity, not blame.
See the Bigger Picture: Interrupt anxious thinking with thoughts about helping others. Avoid a victim mindset.
Change the Channel: Find something fun to do. Reach out for a hug, focus on the positive, and challenge anxious thoughts. If you need support from your spouse, ask for it.
Final Thoughts
Science-based couples therapy can help you take the first steps toward reducing anxiety and gaining a sense of control. Tools like focusing, situational reconstruction, compensatory self-improvement, and paradoxical intention can equip you with the skills to manage relationship anxiety in a good marriage.
Couples therapy in 2024 is all about helping clients to manage the unmanageable. External stressors are the single largest source of marital stress in the world today.
Understanding your attachment styles and how they relate to one another can also provide insights into your relationship satisfaction.
A good couples therapist will help you build resilient coping skills for managing current and future stressors.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Stanley, S.M., Rhoades, G.K., & Whitton, S.W., (2010) Commitment: Functions, formation, and the securing of romantic attachment. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 2(4), 243-257.
Tashiro, T. (2014) The Science of Happily Ever After; What really matters in the quest for enduring love. Don Mills, ON: Harlequin.