Many of my clients suffer from the hell-realm of intrusive or unwanted thoughts. Thoughts like, “What if I’m a pedophile?” or “What if I’m a mass murderer?” or “What if I contract a deadly disease?” or “What if I don’t love my partner enough (or at all)?” parade through their brains day and night without reprieve creating a state of perpetual misery. The irony about people who are prone to intrusive thoughts such as these is that they’re among the most gentle, loving, sensitive, kind, creative, and thoughtful people you’ll ever meet. The thought is so far from reality that it’s almost laughable, except that it’s not funny at all because my clients believe the lie which, of course, creates massive amount of anxiety.
Or maybe it’s not ironic at all. Perhaps it’s precisely because of this high level of sensitivity and empathy that their mind has gravitated toward an alarming thought as a way to try to avoid the intensity of feeling with which they respond to life. Highly sensitive people were once highly sensitive children, which means their nervous systems were wired at birth to respond to the sights, sounds, and experiences of life at amplified levels. And because most highly sensitive children were raised by parents who had no idea how to teach their kids to value and feel their difficult feelings in a manageable way, they learned early in life to try to control the external world as a way to attempt to manage their inner one.
Lately I’ve been using a model with my clients that helps them conceptualize the formation of anxiety and the addiction of intrusive thoughts. I call it the A-B-C model and it goes like this:
- A. A difficult or “unwanted” feeling arises: fear, grief, vulnerability, loneliness, helplessness, doubt, uncertainty
- B. You push the feeling away and resist it because you think you shouldn’t be feeling this way, that you’re “too much” or “too emotional”, and/or you can’t handle the feeling.
- C. You attach on to an intrusive thought as a way to cover up or avoid the difficult feeling, thereby creating the illusion of control. Now you can focus on the thought, “What if I have a terminal illness,” instead of attending to the initial feeling.
Not all of my clients are highly sensitive, and not all of them have been lifelong sufferers of anxiety. In fact, many of my engaged clients suffering from engagement anxiety tell me that this is the first time they’ve ever experienced anxiety to this degree. But the same model applies:
- A. A feeling of fear, uncertainty, vulnerability and/or grief hits somewhere near the proposal (when the relationship turns from serious to very serious). Or perhaps it’s been there nearly the entire relationship – or as soon as the initial infatuation stage or free-ride wore off.
- B. The judgement or resistance pushes it away with a thought like, “You shouldn’t be feeling this way. You just got engaged. You should be happy.”
- C. The control-ego-fear mind dangles down a thought-vine like, “You don’t really love him” or “This must mean that you’re making a mistake” that will tempt you to take hold as way to try to have control over an out-of-control experience or avoid the initial pure feeling that you don’t know is normal and manageable.
Once you take hold of the seductive thought-vine, you’re on your way down the black hole of anxiety. The further you go down the hole, the darker it gets and the harder it becomes to find your way back out to the light of day.
I know how difficult it is to re-train your mind so that you can learn to attend to the core feeling as it arises without attempting to control in some way. It seems that some people – if not everyone – are born with a natural inclination to try to avoid what’s hard by controlling something external or latching onto a thought-vine. I see it in my own kids: when they’re tired, hungry, or the situation feels emotionally unmanageable, they’ll try to control someone or something external. In fact, it’s one of my highest goals as a parent to teach my kids that they can handle their difficult feelings, that feelings are just feelings and that they will always pass through, and that trying to control circumstances as a way to avoid the feeling never works: the feeling is still there, but now it’s buried behind a layer of control.
So after 20 or 30 years of this, a deeply ingrained habit is etched into the brain that starts with the false belief of, “I can’t handle difficult feelings.” The work is to learn how to soften into the fear so that it breaks open to reveal the soft underbelly of grief that has lived inside for so long. As Elizabeth Lesser quotes Chogyam Trungpa in her beautiful book, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Help Us Grow:
“Going beyond fear begins when we examine our fear: our anxiety, concern, nervousness, and restlessness. If we look into our fear, if we look beneath the veneer, the first thing we find is sadness, beneath the nervousness. Nervousness is cranking up, vibrating all the time. When we slow down, when we relax with our fear, we find sadness, which is calm and gentle. Sadness hits you in your heart, and your body produces a tear. Before you cry there is a feeling in your chest and then, after that, you produce tears in your eyes. You are about to produce rain or waterfall in your eyes and you feel sad and lonely and perhaps romantic all at the same time. This is the first tip of fearlessness, and the first sign of real warriorship. You might think that, when you experience fearlessness, you will hear the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or see a great explosion in the sky, but it doesn’t happen that way. Discovering fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart.” (p. 37)
If you can understand the alarming thoughts as a flare sent up from the Inner Child to try to get your attention, you will learn to slow down and listen. Your Inner Child doesn’t always know how to say, “I’m hurting. Please pay attention to me,” so he or she sends out a jarring thought because she knows it will get your attention. Once you start to pay attention to your feelings and trust that you can handle your emotional experiences, the intrusive thoughts begin to diminish. Again, the thoughts are a distraction, a first-layer attention-getter designed to force you to turn inside and attend to your inner world. Thus, when you’re perseverating on an anxious thought, the question to ask yourself is, “What am I trying to control, avoid, or fill up?” or “What is this thought trying to protect me from feeling?” and see if you can connect to the softness of the human heart, knowing that what you find when you bring your loving attention to the quiet places is always, always, a pearl.
Hey there Sheryl
I recently stumbled upon your blog and it has helped me a lot though I feel like maybe I might not relate since I am nowhere near engaged but I was hoping you would be able to somehow help me in some way .. A couple of months ago I met a man and at first I saw him as a friend but overtime I realized that he was honestly amazing so we took the next step and began a relationship a month after being in the relationship I started getting anxiety attacks. That maybe I did not like him or that I should run away, but I have stayed because this man is sweet, loving and has all the qualities that I would like in my future husband. When I think about marrying him I get happy, but I am scared that I might run away from this, and I honestly do not want that. When my anxiety spikes and tells me that I should leave, I say to it “no, I want to be with him.” I feel as if my heart is guarding itself. I have gone through heartbreaks, my parents are not really the happiest couple, and through a childhood trauma. When my anxiety is really high I think to myself that maybe leaving is for the best, but that’s not what I want. What I want is to be fully happy with him and love him without having these constant thoughts.
Hi Liliana,
Just saw your comment. You should join the e-course! I am not engaged yet either but going through the same anxiety you described and it set in VERY early into the relationship. There are hundreds of us on the e-course and forum.
I found this poem and thought of this wonderful website. It is written by Robert T. Weston.
Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error,
for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no man fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it;
for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing;
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
He that would silence doubt is filled with fear;
the house of his spirit is built on shifting sands.
But he that fears no doubt, and knows its use, is founded on a rock.
He shall walk in the light of growing knowledge;
the work of his hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the handmaiden of truth.
I LOVE this, SB. What a refreshing alternative to the widespread “doubt versus don’t” mantra touted by this culture (and which I’ll be posting about this week). Thank you very much for sharing this here.
I just wanted to add my 2p worth! There is a lot about ‘when you are peaceful and calm, that is when a voice of knowing and not fear speaks to you’ etc and specifically ‘that is when you find the pearl’. I just wanted to say that i had been with my boyf for 7 years, very committed, very serious, then as i graduated uni and we were due to buy a house (not imminently, but in the next 18-24 months) i started a new job and just got hit by total anxiety. Not about leaving uni, or getting a new job (truly, i couldnt wait to leave uni – hadnt lived there – and was very excited about having a new job and money) but specifically about whether he was the right one for me or not. I hadn’t had anxiety like that ever, i couldnt breathe, felt dizzy etc. when i was with him and we were ‘hanging out’ i felt OK but doubts still very much there. After trying to have a break and then breaking up and getting back together, i found that in moments of true calm such as being in the bath at mine, on my own, or lying in bed at night on my own, the answer which calmed me was not to be with him even though the thought of being on my own genuinely terrfied me. And, 8 months down the line, was it the ‘right’ decision? Who knows. I don’t believe I will love anyone else like i loved him, and im certainly not currently interested or looking for anything. However – from the moment i called it off i have been able to breather and generally function. I suppose people might say i will get the same thing with who i am next with – and maybe i will. My parents got divorced young so i know i crave security – however i pushed through the fear. I’m not writing this to get people’s anxiety levels up – but just to offer the thought that if you consistently, in a place of calm, feel that its not right, perhaps you should listen to that.
Thanks for sharing your story. I have no doubt that it will spike a lot of anxiety from my audience, but I decided to approve your comment anyway so we could engage in some dialogue, if you’re willing! The question for me is whether you did, indeed, push through the fear, or if you ended up listening to the fear and left a good, loving relationship because your commitment and intimacy issues were triggered. Fear’s entire mission in life is try to convince you to run, so an alternate analysis of what happened for you is that once you left (thereby listening to fear), you could breathe and function because the fear of intimacy was removed. Were there any red flags in the relationship? When you say “it wasn’t right”, what exactly wasn’t right about the relationship (other than your anxiety)?
I must say this post has absolutely terrified me. I sometimes get the thoughts that I can’t see my future with my husband when I am feeling calm and that I need to leave and I don’t feel anxiety I just feel emotionless. This makes me think that there is some truth in the thoughts if they don’t make me anxious every time. I’m so tired of all this, I just want to be happy with him like I was before.
Fear-based thoughts don’t always create anxiety. It’s one of the sneakiest tactics of the Wounded Self to throw a thought into your brain that creates a calm response. If you shift out of your head and move into your heart, you’ll find a different response there. Also, the thought that you can’t see a future with your husband is one of the most common thoughts of the anxiously engaged. In fact, there’s a thread on this exact thought on the e-course forum that someone started today. .
Do the feelings of “What if I dont love them” and hiding and burying those feelings mean that we dont love them or just our anxiety speaking up and trying to mess with our thoughts?
If the relationship is loving and you’re with a solid, good partner, then that thought is most likely a cover-up for deeper fears.
Could the deeper fear be growing up with a sibiling that has a terminal illness?
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Yes, that would connect to a fear of loss, and probably ambivalent feelings if your sibling received more attention because of the illness.
Makes sense. She has been in and out of the hospital our entire lifes and it definetly was a huge strain on our family. Your site has been a god send for me because I was really struggling with the “What if I dont love her” stuff and I still am but on a smaller scale. Im getting married in 10 days and Im on the right track. Once the honeymoon is over with I plan on getting into the E-Course stuff. Thanks for your response.
I just want to chime in here and say I did not spike at Melanie’s comment and I hope others don’t either.
Melanie – I understand where you are coming from. I had a previous relationship where I had 2 bouts of anxiety but also a deep sense of knowing it had no future. The deep sense of knowing was very different from the anxiety. When I compare that to the recent engagement hell I have been through, well… it is very different. With my now husband, I had a deep sense of knowing it was RIGHT until we got engaged. Then I had every emotion from it being right, to wrong, to confusing, scary, crazy, miserable. There is a very clear distinction in my mind between the two relationships.
This work is NOT about convincing ourselves to stay in relationships for the sake of it. It is about finding out about ourselves and our views on life and love. I had horrendous anxiety when I got engaged but I worked through it and I am very happily married. I may well see that anxiety come back again tomorrow, next week, next month. If I do, I’ll take a deep breath and I’ll deal with it. Right now I know that I am where I am supposed to be. With my wonderful man. And THAT is my sense of knowing. It took a lot of work to get to this point.
Melanie – you are right to point out that at times the “right” thing to do is leave. The bottom line is that we all have a choice in this. We can choose to stay and we can choose to go. Sometimes the relationship is not “right” for us and in that situation maybe we should move on (but I would encourage anyone doubting their relationship to please only make that decision from a place of consistent peace and clarity).
Sometimes the fear is just too big to cope with. Unfortunately in those situations, we may well find ourselves moving on without really knowing why or what happened. It makes me sad typing that but I acknowledge that this can happen. In some ways this happened to me with my ex. The anxiety freaked me out and pushed me away from him. Luckily, there were also red flags/deep sense of knowing so it is perhaps not a bad thing that my anxiety contributed towards the demise of an unhappy relationship. However, with my husband when the anxiety hit after I got engaged it was even stronger because there were no red flags or deep sense of knowing it was wrong. I was completely at a loss to what was raging inside of me. I felt like I was dying. I couldn’t run this time (despite wanting to). I had to sit with it and work through it.
When you are ready to date again I wish you all the best! Whatever happens, please remember that IF you feel the anxiety coming back on Date 1, or Date 900, you know where we all are. It can be fixed (with a lot of work and courage!). Indeed for me, it took the anxiety coming back a second time with a different person (where I had no red flag or deep calm sense of knowing to pin it on) for me to realise that this was not about my other half, but something deeply rooted inside of me.
SB- I always love your posts : ) I will say that I got a little bit spiked by it though- and don’t worry…I’m okay with that
One of the lines that spiked me was: “With my now husband, I had a deep sense of knowing it was RIGHT until we got engaged. Then I had every emotion from it being right, to wrong, to confusing, scary, crazy, miserable.”
For those of you who are reading this, I’m also a conscious married and I’ve been married for about 2 years : ) SB and I are buddies on the forum, lol : ) The reason why that spiked me was because I’m not sure if I ever had that deep sense of knowing. For God sakes, the week before my husband proposed, I said to myself “if he says one more ‘mean thing’ to me, I’m breaking up with him”. Little did I know, he had already brought my ring and would be proposing one week later on vacation with my family, lol! Now, I definitely thought throughout our 7 years of dating that we’d get married- but I thought that about every guy I was ever with. Even the guy that beat me up in high school : ( My husband was the opposite of any guy I had ever dated though. I remember in college, my friends would all talk about how they were going to marry their boyfriends, but I would never say it. I remember thinking, ‘if I start telling people we’ll get married one day, then I’ll jinx it, and I don’t want to do that.’ I guess, I was just always cautious of “oh god, I don’t ever want to loose him”. I’m not sure that it’s possible for me to have a ‘complete knowing’ that it’s right. But, I also don’t have any knowing that it’s wrong. I’d say it’s about 90-95% good overall and that’s just on my ‘blah’ day today. I believe Sheryl or someone said “shoot for 80%”. I can go from feeling 90-95% in the morning to 45% in the afternoon to 82.5% (lol) at bedtime. I had to get use to those fluctuations in my mood for a while. For me, I ‘know’ I made a good choice (on most days I feel that way). However, somedays I am moody and I just want to hide in a hole.
My husband and I are great of each other. We respect, love, encourage, and are always there for each other. Yes, we drive each other crazy, but at the end of the day (and throughout everyday), we choose each other, we choose be together, for better or worse we have each other’s best interest at heart and each other’s backs : ) We don’t choose each other based on our feelings, we choose each other based on the commitment we made and I plan on choosing him for the rest of my life <3
Janelle: It sounds like you soothed your own spike. Great job showing up with your Loving Adult and modeling it for everyone here : ).
And Janelle, if more people admitted this, we would see a lot less relationship/marriage anxiety:
“I can go from feeling 90-95% in the morning to 45% in the afternoon to 82.5% (lol) at bedtime. I had to get use to those fluctuations in my mood for a while.”
Thank you, as always, for your honesty.
Hi Janelle
When I look back at my “deep sense of knowing” it was actually based on very superficial feelings. I suppose it was more infatuation and desperately wanting to tie myself to him forever because I wanted that feeling to last forever. We hadn’t been together that long so we were still riding on that “in love” wave.
I think maybe the biggest reason for my engagement anxiety was that it came at the turning point of my relationship – when it went from “in” love to “real” love. I stopped having the “infatuation” feelings so I didnt know if I did want to marry him because all I’d associated marriage with up until that point was getting to feel that infatuation forever!! I had never even considered such concepts as “shared values, shared goals, friendship” etc. Can you believe that?! Wow just goes to show how naive I was.
Now that I know what real love feels like, I can say exactly the same as you. I have days/hours/minutes of contentment/knowing its a great marriage and i also have days/hours/minutes of: what am I doing, can I do this, am I ok, this feels weird and wrong.
Basically one of the biggest lessons for me has been re-programming myself to see what love actually is and to see the benefits that real love brings. It took me a long time to see that but now that I am, it’s very rewarding and worth all this pain!
Hey SB : ) I dated my husband for 7 years before our engagement. Once we got married I still had to do major work in the love department. I’m still doing major work about my ‘idea’ of love. I don’t think it’s crazy that you didn’t consider those grown up things like shared values, goals, friendship,etc. I think that the only shared value that I really considered was that we both wanted a family and wanted our family to be raised the same way. If I’m honest with myself (and probably lots of women are like this) I was so in love with the idea of being in love. I don’t think that this is a ‘bad’ thing now, however, I’m def. learning a lot now. I really think that it takes getting married to learn about real love. I use to try and ‘change’ things about my husband. Sometimes, I still find myself trying to change things about him. That’s not right, it’s not fair to him or to me. Marriage has really allowed me to take a really good look at him (good and bad parts) and completely love him for all of it. Does it drive me crazy if he says a rude comment? Yes, for sure, but I’m not trying to change that about him anymore. I now look at what he really means behind the rude comment, most of the time, he doesn’t even realize he’s being rude. For example, when we are with my in-laws nothing he does ever bothers me. However, he is the same person around my family, he’ll say the same thing, and I flip out…pretty interesting : ) Sorry for the babble….hope someone can take something from this : )
So i just read the part, “A. A difficult or “unwanted” feeling arises: fear, grief, vulnerability, loneliness, helplessness, doubt, uncertainty
B. You push the feeling away and resist it because you think you shouldn’t be feeling this way, that you’re “too much” or “too emotional”, and/or you can’t handle the feeling.
C. You attach on to an intrusive thought as a way to cover up or avoid the difficult feeling, thereby creating the illusion of control. Now you can focus on the thought, “What if I have a terminal illness,” instead of attending to the initial feeling.”
I understand it but how do you deal with the initial feeling? I will have the most horrible intrusive thoughts and feelings, either one can come first but the thoughts make me feel weird and strange like i’m a freak or something and vise versa i can feel like that without the intrusive thoughts so i want to know what causes the initial feelings and how to deal with them? Or how to make the thoughts stop?
You make the thoughts stop by dealing with the core feelings. How do you deal with the feeling? You learn a process like Inner Bonding, which will teach you to distinguish between core feelings of life and wounded feelings brought on by what you’re telling yourself. You can learn more about Inner Bonding here: http://www.innerbonding.com
Having read through the comments above, I have a couple of questions:
1. What does a good relationship mean?
2. How do you know when it’s the “right” time to leave?
3. How can you exactly distinguish the “emotionless” state when fear is in control and the “peace and clarity” state in which there is no fear involved? Assuming that you can see a future with your partner/future husband, but when he says things like “I love you so much. You’re my sunshine etc.” and you don’t feel like saying those things back, what does it mean? Does it mean that you are so identified with the the thoughts of “What if I’m making a mistake?”, “What if there’s someone better for me out there?”, “What if I don’t love him anymore?” and so on that you can’t say them back naturally because of that?
Hello,
I need help. My husband and I have been together for two years and recently gave birth to our beautiful and perfect son. However, my husband is suffering from severe anxiety and a form of OCD called pure-o. He obsesses over these thoughts he has, exactly like you wrote about. He is constantly worrying about the “what ifs”, what if he goes crazy, has a mental disease, becomes schizophrenic, hurts me or our son. It is tormenting him completely. The life in his eyes is gone and his intense appetite disappears completely when this comes on. It lasts for days, recently weeks. It started for him being scared and worrying he had a heart disorder years ago. The recent thoughts were sparked from a nightmare he had of a family member going crazy and hurting other family members. Ever since he’s been terrified that will happen to him and he will hurt us. What kills me is seeing him like he is because he’s such an amazing, kind, and absolutely wonderful man who wouldn’t hurt a soul, and I can’t assure him enough he’s not ever going to go crazy. The thoughts are too intense. I would give anything to take this upon myself so he could finally breathe and enjoy being a newlywed and a father. He puts so much effort into controlling the thoughts but after so long they get the best of him. Please help me be the best support system for him. We are trying to find a hobby together and a way to keep us busy. I want him to know I will never let him deal with this on his own. I need some tips and advice. Thank you so much!
As you can tell from this article, there really aren’t quick tips for dealing with intrusive thoughts. Your husband would have to be willing to dig deep inside to excavate the root causes of his anxiety which are manifesting now as intrusive thoughts. If you email me directly, I’m happy to speak with you more about this and give you information about my Skype/phone counseling sessions.
It is a relief that I am not the only person that has these intrusive thoughts. It wasn’t until a month ago that I learned about intrusive thoughts and how they affect the mind and body. I have been having them off and on for the last 14 years. I have similar thoughts as your husband Jenny and I am tired of having thses fears and anxiety attacks. I have always been an emotional person person but also have been doing everything in my power to ignore these thoughts and emotions and “man up”. I work as a firefighter and after some of the things I have seen on the job my thoughts seem to spike. My wife and I are expecting our first kid and I think some of the stress and worrying about ” what if’s cause more spikes. Thank you for sharing your story because I always felt something was wrong with me and I was a bad person. Please let your husband know he is not alone and I also am glad to hear you support him during the tough times. Thanks again.
I was finding comfort in knowing its not just me by myself who doubts and worries about their marriage. My husband is a good man not perfect and neither am I but we get along well. I just hate when I get anxiety when he is really sweet n I cannot embrace it
it makes my anxiety worse. I fear going to Hell for being with him if I don’t LOVE him. I don’t know how to be relaxed n just know he is a good man. I could cry with the overwhelming sensations anxirty gives me
You’re far from alone, Liana. Please continue reading through my site and you’ll see what I mean. There’s absolutely NOTHING wrong with you for not being able to reciprocate his love; it’s a result of your own fears, and they would come up with any available partner.
I am so relieved to find this website. I have been married for almost 4 years to a wonderful man. I had absolutely zero doubts when we got married, and had never felt so happy and at peace in my entire life. We met when I was 22 and got married when I was 23. I’m 27 now, and we just suffered a miscarriage in December. Since then, my OCD and anxiety (I hope) have convinced me that we miscarried because we are not meant to be together. I cannot stop obsessing over the “what-ifs.” I am constantly worrying, “What if we got married to young/soon? What if I don’t love him anymore? What if we get a divorce? What if we were never meant to be? What if I hurt him?” I then feel guilty being around him because I feel like I am lying and hiding this from him. I am so scared and these thoughts consume me all day every day. I am triggered when I hear the word divorce, stories about people breaking up, or even sad songs. They all result in me thinking “Is that us? Is that going to be us?” I try to challenge these thoughts and remind myself that it’s my anxiety, but then I worry that I’m just making excuses to hide or ignore how I truly feel. I worry that I don’t know who I am and how am I ever going to “find myself” while I’m married. I worry that I could be happier on my own or that I’m never going to be happy. I have an amazing husband who loves me dearly and who I love and would die for. I just can’t shake this feeling/fear that we are going to end up getting a divorce and that I no longer love him. It really is all I can think about.
The what-ifs and anxiety are a protection against the grief of miscarrying and possibly other losses that you’ve never processed. When you drop down into your heart and feel the core feelings, the obsessions will diminish.
I feel your pain! I’ve thought the exact same thing. It is all I think about too. Even thinking of my boyfriend and I gets me anxious! I don’t know why because I love him!
Thank you, Sheryl. I’m so used to being able to share all my struggles and fears with my husband, that I feel especially alone with this particular case (I haven’t shared any of these “what if” and divorce fears with him). It is nice to be reassured that I am not crazy or abnormal for feeling these things. I just wish I could enjoy my life and stop living in such fear and anxiety. Two days ago I pretty much convinced myself that my marriage was over and felt like I was already starting the grieving process of a divorce.
I’m relieved to have found this thread. I stumbled on it when searching for intrusive thought management. I suffer from anxiety and depression. I see a therapist and psychiatrist 2-3 times a month to manage and control it. It helps to know that I’m not alone. That’s something I don’t get from therapy. When I’m there, I am being “treated”. I really wish I could find an online support group for this. If anyone is interested, please let me know. I have been going through pretty bad ups and downs lately.
Hi Teresa: Your timing is interesting as I’ve been considering starting a drop-in weekly or bi-weekly phone support group. If you’re interested, please email me directly and I’ll keep you posted about it.
Coming across this web page has given me a little hope. My anxiety is out of control and the new thing that has come with it is intrusive thoughts. I have not found anyone who has been able to start my healing, but your A B C approach and the whole control thing makes sense. I know I am not a bad person but I can’t wrap my head around why I think bad things about the people I love. I am a highly sensitive person who can feel other peoples pain and worry so that doesn’t help either.
I’m glad you found your way here. My entire site and courses are filled with highly sensitive people who struggle with intrusive thoughts, so you’re in good company : ).
Hi. I’ve been dealing with a lot of anxiety lately. I’m in an awesome relationship with a great guy, but lately I have been thinking about my ex boyfriend a lot and thinking that maybe I still love him. We have been broken up for 5 years and he has been engaged twice. It never bothered me because there were a lot of red flags in our long distance relationship and I knew ending things was right with him since we fight all the time and broke up off and on a lot. He recently contacted me when his least engagement ended and my mind started going crazy thinking about him. This it’s ruining my relationship with my current boyfriend and I just want to be happy with him get our indigent plans back on track and have a clear mind again. Please help me understand what is going on.
You’re suffering from classic relationship anxiety: your fear-self trying to circumvent the possibility of loss by trying to convince you to leave. The wounded self likes to attach on to exes, especially when there were a lot of red flags!
Engagement not indigent plans…
Sheryl, even when the anxiety goes away I still have negative thoughts and feelings. I know they only came because of the anxiety, but when the anxiety is away I still question being with him, if I want to be single or not, etc. Then I’ll think about how I want things back to the way they were before the anxiety. I use to wake up everyday happy and in love and then once the anxiety hit that disappeared. I’m still not use to waking up without those emotions. I hope I wake up “in love” everyday and when I realize I don’t I get so blah. Even when he and I talk it feels different. Sometimes it feels like we’re just friends and I hate that. Is this normal Sheryl? How can I stop this and get my relationship back on track?
Briana, I am feeling just as you are right now…except i really dont have thoughts about being single. My anxiety has passed for the most part…but now i have a sort of empty feeling, almost like its hard for me to have happy emotions. I am still being plagued by negative thoughts and feelings, and Ive been having them for a little over a month and my biggest fear is that the negative feelings will seem like a “gut instinct” and make me do something I will regret so much. I would give anything to be the happy me that i was just 2 short months ago.
ive also been so down lately, that I too almost feel like I am grieving as if my fiance and I are no longer together. I will see his shirt or jacket and i will pick it up and hug or hold it and cry. but i know part of the reason i cry is because i am hurting him with my anxiety, and it hurts me so bad inside to know i am hurting him. someone help
This is going on my third month. Ill see my boyfriend, hear him or listen to a song that reminds me of him and I’ll start crying. That is how I know I love him. We were talking about our anniversary and I was hysterical because I kept saying how this needs to end by then and he said “yeah there is no way we can both last like this till then.” I just can’t deal with waking up with anxiety everyday and feeling the emptiness that makes me question. Usually when I go to bed I’m happy and I’m like “okay I’m feeling good, tomorrow I’m going to wake up great!” Then I wake up and it’s the same stuff over and over. It also hurts me that I am hurting him. Sometimes I feel like a break up is the answer, more for him than me so he doesn’t have to deal with this.
I also believe if it was a “gut instinct” we would not get anxiety or feel upset. Who cries when they break up with someone? Unless bad things happened in the relationship, I don’t think anyone does. My relationship was always perfect. Yes, we have had some arguments, but no fights. Nothing bad. I was always so sure of everything, until I thought one pointless thought and then the anxiety came. Does that make sense Sheryl?
I also believe if the “gut instinct” was really that strong, we really would actually leave, but rather we stay because it is something great that is keeping up with our partner/fiance. My fiance is my rock, my wonderful love, and everything ive ever wanted in a life partner. Anything really worth having is worth fighting for, even if i have to put up a mean fight.
Hi Sheryl,
I have been on and off suffering from waves of anxiety with my relationship with my boyfriend for about a year and half. I had 2 major freak-outs about a year apart and both were as we were very seriously talking about getting engaged. We have been dating since Fall of 2007. We met in the college then have been living long distance since the summer of 2010. Both freak outs were about me thinking I may like another boy who is a friend of mine I work with. The first time I told my boyfriend and I was unsure and didn’t understand why this was happening, as I really do love my boyfriend and I don’t want these thoughts. Then second was a combination of not be able to stop randomly thinking about this other boy and what was, I think, not being ready myself for marriage just yet. That time we tried not talking very much and even thought about breaking up but it didn’t work, we couldn’t not talk with each other and did want to give up on each other. I also confronted this friend of mine (he was moving away) and told him that I also broke up with my boyfriend a year ago because I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He told me that he thought I was being silly and that all I have ever talked about was my boyfriend and how I love him and want to be with him. He has never thought of me as anything more than a friend and would never want to come between my boyfriend and I.I ended up again concluding that clearly some things were still unresolved with my boyfriend and I and we needed to confront them and me liking this other person was just highlighting deficiencies I saw in my own relationship that needed addressed before I could be ready for marriage. We slowed down and everything has been great and again I was so happy and all I wanted was to be married to him (which I had also thought numerous times before). I have planned to move to be where he will be in grad school later this summer after I complete an important milestone at work. I have been so excited. We were recently talking about getting engaged and everything. He asked my dad for his blessing to ask me to marry him this weekend. I am so excited, but I’m also ridden with anxiety because I keep thinking about this other boy. I don’t want to think about him. I have never dated him nor do I want him. I love my boyfriend, he is perfect for me and I want nothing more than to have peace of mind to rid myself of thoughts of this other person. This week I even deleted this friend of mine form my phone and email to try and help. We are Catholic and I have started to intensely pray about it, which helps me a bit as well, but I’m still so confused at times. I just want any thoughts of this other person to go away–I don’t want him. I want to be overjoyed and no doubt in my mind when he proposes sometime soon, but I’m so worried that these repeated thoughts mean I’m making a mistake. I don’t think I am. I want to be with my boyfriend and build a life with him. Why am I being like this? Can your course help someone if their anxiety is manifesting itself in thoughts about another person other than their significant other?
“Can your course help someone if their anxiety is manifesting itself in thoughts about another person other than their significant other?”
It’s one of the most common areas where anxiety hangs its hat, so the answer is a resounding yes.
That is true Jnell, I agree on that. I love my boyfriend and when he talks about breakup I get hysterical! So I know that it’s not what I want.
Kelly, I know how you feel on the thoughts. I get very anxious when I think of guys who I don’t even want! The bad thoughts get me so frustrated. I sometimes think about being single and maybe that I will be better that way and maybe I will “find myself” but I will be so devastated without my boyfriend. He’s the third guy I’ve been with and the first serious one and my first love at that, so it gets me very anxious when I think those things. Even when the anxiety is gone those bad thoughts are there, which makes me think that they are true and then ill get anxious because I’m like does that mean they’re true?!
Sheryl is it okay to question being single? It scares me.
Hello Sheryl,
I have been having a lot of anxiety and intrusive thoughts over the last month and I am terrified. I can hardly eat and have lost 20 pounds in a two week period. The thoughts circle around my boyfriend.( Am I falling out if live with him?) ( Do I love him?) ( what if he is never financially secure?) my boyfriend and I have been together since January 2011. I am 24 and he is 28. Our relationship has not been perfect. 4 months into dating he lost his job and ended up moving to CA to live with his parents while he looked for work. We had a long distance relationship for 6 months. It was very difficult for me. He eventually moved back after I got an apartment with my friend while attending college and he found a job finally. After a lot of pushing from me. Like I said he isn’t perfect but no one is. I was always sure I loved him until recently. In October if 2012 he broke up with me claiming he didn’t live me anymore in a romantic way. We had a lease together so we were stuck living with each other for a while. He started seeing a girl just a week after ending it with me. I was a wreck. In November he started talking about how me missed me and then her and him broke up and he asked if I would give him another chanced. It has been 5 months since then. It all started feeling so right again. Then he lost his job. He found another one right away. He is horrible with money but agreed to let me budget because he realizes he needs help in that department. He has been so understanding and affectionate during my struggle and is trying to be there for me in anyway he can. He keeps talking about our future and marriage. But I keep having these thoughts. They switch from I live him with all my heart to I can’t love him. My friends and family don’t care for him since what happened in October but acknowledge he has made huge improvements and is trying to make things right. i know I have mostly written the negative but lately that’s all I can see. He is funny, caring, smart and before these thoughts I felt happy with him. I want the future we planned but me anxious thoughts are destroying me. Sorry this post is so long but I wanted to explain everything. What should I do? The thought of ending it with him makes me miserable, and sometimes the thought of running away sounds like a relief, but at the same time I don’t want that.
I also forgot to add that I as diagnosed with OCD as a child. My boyfriend makes me very happy at times and has never been abusive. We are very different though. He loves to stay at home and I love to socialize. Like I said I always knew I loved him until a month ago I woke up with these obsessive thoughts.