Tracy Dennis-Tiwary
THE WASHINGTON POST – If you struggle with anxiety, you can turn to many resources, from high-quality mental health advice to therapeutic interventions. There also is ample advice for those who want to support loved ones with anxiety disorders.
But what about finding help for the flip side of the anxiety coin – what if other people’s anxiety is making you miserable? In that case, I’m sorry to report, there’s not much out there for you.
I’d never considered this lack in the wellness landscape before a reader pointed it out to me. I had written an article for The Washington Post about working through anxiety, with a particular focus on perfectionism. The reader asked why I had failed to consider the experiences of the people who have to live with these anxious, perfectionist types: their constant questions, their demands that things be done in a certain way and their apparent “superiority complex.”
That got me thinking: What do we understand about anxiety in relationships?
A lot of what we know can be described in terms of a contagion metaphor: If one person is anxious, the anxiety can spread to those nearby, “infecting” them with apprehension and worries. But this happens through several channels.
In parent-child relationships, this can happen through modeling – where children learn from what parents do rather than from what they say. For example, anxious parents model anxiety on the first day of school when they tightly grip their child’s hand and walk them right to the doors of the classroom, rather than place an easy arm over their child’s shoulder and drop them off at the school bus stop.
Anxious parents also reinforce their children’s anxiety by over-accommodating, or persistently removing sources of worry and emotional discomfort from their children’s lives in the moment, which inadvertently blocks them from learning coping strategies to reduce anxiety in the long run.
Similar patterns emerge in adult romantic relationships that become dependent: one partner takes over decision-making for the other partner, who constantly expresses insecurity and ineptitude while seeking reassurance and approval.
But the reader wasn’t talking about any of this. I believe she was talking about how the personal coping strategies of highly anxious people can cause unhappiness for everyone in relationship with them. When someone struggles with anxiety, they almost always fall into the trap of doing one thing too intensely and too often: avoid anxiety and any situations that might give rise to it. Maintaining this status quo makes their lives – and the lives of those around them – much, much harder.
Here’s how to figure out of this describes your loved one and some steps you can take to make it better:
BEGIN WITH COMPASSION
Compassion must be directed toward yourself and your relationship partner, accepting what each is capable of in a given moment, but working to improve.
You might feel anger and frustration toward the anxious person in your life. You might feel guilt. You might be wondering whether you can maintain this relationship. Whatever the case, the truth is that the attempts by both of you to cope with anxiety are getting in the way, and acknowledging this reality with compassion is the necessary first step.
IDENTIFY THE PATTERNS
Avoiding anxiety often takes two forms: dependence on others or exercising control. People who are dependent seem needy, ask for frequent reassurance, don’t trust their own judgement and prefer the passive back seat to the driver’s seat. You can try to help them contain their feelings of overwhelm, but unfortunately nothing you can do will satisfy these dependency needs or make them feel better for long.
On the other end are the controlling, perfectionistic types who try to achieve a sense of stability and certainty by holding onto life with a viselike grip. Maybe they need to keep the house a certain way, maybe it’s everyone’s schedule, or a set of rules to live by – and it’s their way or the highway. They become truly distressed when the world inevitably doesn’t perfectly conform to their plans – and they blame the world for it.
CREATE CONSISTENT BOUNDARIES
Once you’ve figured out whether your relationship is one of dependence or control, the next step is to create boundaries – and be consistent.
It’s natural to be anxious about your loved one’s anxiety. It feels good to help them banish these difficult feelings. But that will set you up for more problems in the long run because over-accommodating their every worry and trying to protect them from these feelings prevents them from figuring out better ways to cope.
Setting limits is the best way to help them do this. Without boundaries, your relationship will worsen, and your life will slowly but inexorably become more constricting and frustrating because your own needs won’t be met.
Set limits by calling out the patterns; describing the problems the behaviours cause; and suggesting compromises. To create effective boundaries, you must believe that you can care for others while also caring for your needs.
SCAFFOLD INSTEAD OF ACCOMMODATE
Setting boundaries may feel harsh to some, but what you’re doing is infusing more support with flexibility into the relationship. It’s not always their way, and it’s not always yours. This is why scaffolding – offering support and resources as your relationship partner makes changes – is the best approach.
High levels of anxiety can make this hard because the impulse is to do whatever it takes to banish it as soon as possible. Your relationship partner and you yourself may fear it’s likely to spiral out of control.
Anxiety, however, doesn’t grow stronger when we experience and go through it – we grow stronger. We develop resiliency to discomfort. We learn to sit with our difficult feelings and build skills to cope with them more effectively. We build emotional skills like we do physical fitness – with practice, and little by little.
There’s no magic bullet when it comes to living with other people’s anxiety because we can’t control what other people do or how they feel. But by creating the conditions in which you can act with compassion, identify patterns, set boundaries and scaffold instead of accommodate, you stand the best chance of making your relationship better and living better with the inevitable anxieties that we and our loved ones must navigate.
