Are you feeling anxious in love? Are you considering joining a convent after one lousy date? Ok, maybe you don't go to those drastic steps, but you may say that you are not going to focus on love. Instead, you may wind up overworking or concentrating on something else that will distract you from what you truly yearn for. Love and dating can trigger a lot of pain from past, and it's natural that we want to avoid it.
But the yearning is still there, and why wouldn't you have a happy love life? Anxiety therapy can help you feel safe to embark on this quest for finding love. For now, you can gain some awareness of how anxiety affects you in this area of your life.
Anxious in love
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Anxiety prevents us from experiencing full happiness in love
Finding love is an essential quest in human life although many women struggle with it. We, women, get so many confusing messages about how we should go about finding love. We seek advice on dating and relationships from numerous sources. If we don't pair this help with confidence and authenticity, it can bring further confusion.
Thus, we may wind up being afraid to even get on to the dating scene. If we are not afraid, we may wind up anxious in love. I use this term to describe a state when we are unable to enjoy our relationships fully due to anxiety. There are various ways in which anxiety affects our ability to form and maintain happy relationships and love life.
Anxiety prevents us from being authentic, and authenticity is essential for a good connection and happy relationships
The reason for the struggle with authenticity and confidence can be due to the fact that women are raised to be attuned to others' feelings and to make sure that they measure up and please others. This kind of upbringing often leads to anxiety and depression, which further complicates this quest of finding love.
Think about it. There are many confusing messages that we get about this as we are growing up. Women are bombarded by different messages of how they should behave, think, feel and be. Therefore, internal work may be needed so we can learn how to love ourselves and how to be authentic to who we are.
This authenticity can be hard to achieve because we are raised to play designated roles in the society. Women are often expected to sacrifice for others. And, when we spend the life of catering to others’ needs and trying to avoid our own emotions, this catches up to us, and we feel empty, guilty, angry, frustrated….Finding love or manifesting fulfilling relationships from this position is not an easy deed. Being anxious in love doesn't feel satisfying.
Anxiety keeps us relying on logical brain and avoiding emotional brain, which is essential to connect with romantic partners
Besides struggle with authenticity and self-love, many women have become so left-brain-sided that they utilize logical, analytical skills in dealing with romantic partners. This kind of mindset leads to further confusion because these logical skills don't apply to relationships. Have you ever found yourself wondering, "Why is he not calling? Did I text him too much? Was I too eager?" You may wind up analyzing your interactions in hope to find the answers, but the answers can't be found in this way. Logic doesn't apply here. Dating confusion is not a "problem solving" situation.
Answers can be found through emotional intelligence. Accessing emotional intelligence can be hard for many of us, modern women because we learned to avoid feeling our own emotions. When you are in the balance and in touch with your feelings, you are able to "feel" how your relationship is going and what may be wrong. You are not confused, and you don't work too hard to figure it out.
Relying on logical brain and avoiding emotional brain can lead to confusion which further perpetuates anxiety
Anxiety may be the reason why you may be relying on logic and left-side brain skills instead of your emotional intelligence. When we experience anxiety, we tend to stay in "our heads" and avoid feelings and being in our body. This avoidance of feelings and trying to explain everything logically perpetuates this cycle of confusion and anxiety. We don't consult our emotional intelligence, which leads to confusion. Confusion leads to further closing off in order to stay in a safe place, which also supports anxiety. Thus, relationships and dating become confusing.
Anxiety prevents us from expanding our experience and thus keeps us thinking that there are no good men for us
Another way in which anxiety keeps us from enjoying dating and love is that it keeps us from going out and enjoy dating and meeting men. Did this ever happen to you? Did you go out on a bad date and after this decision that you are better off staying at home. While you are yearning for love and connection, you sit in your tower filing your nails in the hope that a prince will come and rescue you. The problem is that doesn't even know that you exist or that you are interested when you are hiding in the tower.
When we have anxiety, we tend to avoid experiences that may be triggering. Dating is triggering because it may evoke our past negative experiences from the family of origin or past relationships. In addition to this when we go out with someone, our anxiety can give potential partners wrong impression. Our communication becomes awkward due to our fears, while our date may read our behaviors as if we are not interested or as if we are rude.
Are you anxious in love? Will you settle or try to fulfill your quest for happiness?
Hopefully, awareness of how anxiety affects your happiness in love will help you. You can understand yourself a little better and hopefully be more compassionate towards yourself when negative thoughts come up. This awareness can help you pause, and remind yourself of opposite what your self-defeating talk tells you. You can start by reminding yourself of the facts that you are good enough, that you are worthy, attractive, and that you have a lot to give to a potential partner.
The issue may be that you may struggle to feel good about yourself, just like many women do. Many of us are able to see all those positive aspects and traits, but we have a difficult time feeling it. One of my beautiful, intelligent, loving friends stated, "I know I'm worthy, but boy do I not feel that I am." This kind of condition is caused by trauma and wounding in the family of origin.
Because this trauma or wounding are stored in our body, it's helpful to participate in body and mind oriented therapy. This approach can help you feel as good as you know you are.
Why settle for living a life that's missing such an important aspect. If you are yearning for love or happiness in relationships, working on your anxiety could liberate you to pursue what you truly want and not what you settle for. If you are anxious in love or just anxious to find love, body-mind oriented anxiety therapy can help you with this.
Learn more about how online anxiety therapy can help you feel better and be open to more opportunities in life. This can help you be in the place from where you can enjoy dating, love, and relationships in general.
