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- Dating Someone with Anxiety: Building Boundaries and Support – Bridges to Recovery
- Dating Someone with Anxiety: Building Boundaries and Support
- Dating with anxiety and depression, and other things discussed in this episode:
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Better luck next time, friend. No worries, I am going to see if you want to come watch The Office and make cookies. Making plans is terrifying to you. Being rejected is terrifying to you. You have some pretty deep secrets. You have had a crazy life that brought you down to your knees and the simplest tasks like making plans or talking to someone in real life are excruciatingly painful.
Dating Someone with Anxiety: Building Boundaries and Support – Bridges to Recovery
You tell them about your favorite color and how you love Chipotle. Aaaaaaand no connection was made that day. Imagine yourself seven feet under water. The world may be in shades of grey right now, but constantly trying to make little victories will be everything.
Dating Someone with Anxiety: Building Boundaries and Support
Make a commitment to make real plans! No one has it all together. We are all just trying to figure it out the best we can.
Someone out there wants to come from the surface to swim down to you seven feet underneath the water until you are ready to come back up. In this way, you can both gain greater awareness of your personal and interpersonal challenges and develop the boundaries necessary for healthy relationship dynamics.
Professional treatment support is the other critical piece of the puzzle on the path of recovery.
Dating with anxiety and depression, and other things discussed in this episode:
When Ariel started dating Paul, it was all warmth and excitement for the first few weeks. But then things started to get a little tense. It was as if their dynamic was completely different when they were together compared with when they were apart.
Paul would check in often but repeatedly want to know where she was or who she was with. He was self-disparaging, especially if she was busy and unable to respond to his messages for a while. The negativity seemed to get heavier and heavier; eventually, Ariel brought it up with Paul when they were together.
Paul was nervous that telling Ariel the truth about his anxiety might mean an end to their relationship. As Ariel came to discover, dating someone with anxiety is a lot like any other relationship: The relationship itself can be a trigger for their anxious perceptions. They may appear controlling and critical, they may be distracted and unfocused, or they may be withdrawn and passive-aggressive. All of these tendencies can wear on you both and on your relationship.
One of the most effective measures to building a supportive relationship with anxiety in tow is to foster space for honest communication and to practice it regularly. He can be pretty convincing. Sometimes Anxiety and Depression work together.
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