This is One of the Essential Pieces to Heal from Relationship Anxiety

by | Mar 19, 2022 | Break Free From Relationship Anxiety, Relationships | 12 comments

For those of you in the throes of relationship anxiety, let me first start by saying that you’re not alone and I know how painful and scary it is.

I also know that it is entirely possible to break free from relationship anxiety.

I have done so myself and I have guided thousands of people through the terrain that helps him to break free from the grip of the perseverative tenacious doubt that you’re in the wrong relationship. One of the most gratifying parts of my work is receiving frequent messages from course members thanking me for my Break Free From Relationship Anxiety course and letting me know that they would not be happily married if they hadn’t come across my work.

Does breaking free from relationship anxiety mean that there aren’t relationship challenges? Of course not, and it’s essential here to differentiate between relationship anxiety and relationship challenges. The former is resolvable while the latter is simply a part of being in relationship to other human beings. The former is untenable while the latter is tolerable,. Both lead to growth.

How does one resolve relationship anxiety? There are many essential spokes to the relationship anxiety wheel. Correcting cognitive distortions and dismantling unrealistic expectations that we all carry about love, romance, and sex is essential. Learning how to work with our thoughts effectively and meet our wells of unmet pain is essential. Learning how to take responsibility for our wounds, our fulfillment, and our joy is essential. This is what I teach in the course.

But the piece that I can’t offer in the self-paced version of the course is my own live voice reaching out to you offering direct support for your struggles. This is what the live course includes: biweekly calls with me where you will have the opportunity to hear other people’s stories in real time, which in itself alleviates layers upon layers of the shame caused by the belief of “I’m the only one”, as well as the opportunity to connect directly with me as you share an element of your own struggle and story. I cannot overemphasize the power of the voice, especially in this day of screentime immersion where the nuance, heart, and tone of a human voice is lost.

For many people the live component is the essential piece that allows them to heal their relationship anxiety. There’s also something magical that happens when you go through the material over the course of eight weeks knowing that hundreds of other people are reading the same articles, watching the same videos, listening to the same interviews, and absorbing the same visualizations as you are. It’s a formula that doesn’t quite make sense on paper, but I know from leading dozens of live courses over the last decade the potency of traveling through these terrains in real time with a global community.

For here’s the truth:

  • You’re not alone with your thoughts and feelings about your relationship.
  • Tens of thousands of people around the world are suffering through the dark night of the soul of relationship anxiety at this very moment.
  • Tens of thousands of people have also broken free from the debilitating chokehold of relationship anxiety and learned not only how to meet their thoughts and feelings more effectively and lovingly but also how to attend to the wounds that underlie relationship anxiety.
  • Relationship anxiety is a portal into profound healing that, when walked through with a roadmap and especially alongside a guide and a group of like-minded others, can lead to life-changing growth that will serve you in untold positive ways for the rest of your life.

I only offer this course live once a year, so if you feel compelled to join us I invite you to do so. The next live round starts on Sunday, April 10th, 2022, and I very much look forward to meeting you there. 

Here are the times for the live coaching calls. Keep in mind that only about 1/3 of course members are able to attend live calls, and there is still potency and healing power in listening back to the recordings afterward:

Call 1: April 11 at 6:15pm ET

Call 2: April 26 at 3pm ET

Call 3: May 16 at 6:15pm ET

Call 4: May 31 at 11am ET

P.S.: If  you’re wondering about the difference between relationship anxiety and ROCD, please read this post.

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12 Comments

  1. Hi Sheryl,

    Thank you for this post. Is it possible to bounce between the liminal stage and the rebirth stage when breaking free? I noticed that from doing my inner work I had moments of clarity where I saw the problem really was not my partner and I could feel such a sense of relief and was more open with him and I could think of the thoughts and know they hold not weight and they didn’t have much of a hold on me. But then 2 days later I could feel myself going backwards to the numb disoriented type feeling that you have in the liminal stage. When I’m in this headspace I name the fear to try to dismantle the thoughts but the thing with fear is that it really makes you feel like you’re ignoring something important when you try not to listen to it. I find my mind getting very tired!

    Reply
    • Yes, that’s quite common. It has more to do with the levels of willingness around taking responsibility than it does with liminal/rebirth. When you’re fused with projections, it’s a clue that you’re not taking full responsibility for your own pain, wounds, joy, aliveness, etc.

      Reply
  2. Thank you so much for your work Sheryl. I am so grateful to have found you. I am in the dark night of the soul right now with my relationship anxiety and I am trying to figure out if it is really my truth and my intuition that is saying that it’s not right or if my anxiety is pointing towards something that is unhealed in me. How does one know? I feel like the anxiety is pointing me to my lack of self-love and self-worth. My partner and I were long distance for only 4 months before deciding for her and her daughter to move across the country and move in with me. My story is that she gave up everything to be with me and now I am putting a TON of pressure on myself and have the constant pain the middle of my upper back (trying to figure out what that means). I was madly in love with her before but it was from a distance and during the times we got to spend together it was like being on vacation. Now with moving in things are more real of course. The anxiety really hit when all of her stuff arrived and hasn’t really gone away and it has been almost 3 months. My fear is that the anxiety will never go away or it will only go away if I choose to leave. I have these all or nothing thoughts that in order to love myself I need to leave and staying isn’t loving myself. It feels like I either get to love her or me but not both. I want to be with her. She is an amazing, kind, beautiful woman who is a wonderful partner and it’s so confusing to feel this way. We have noticed some unhealthy attachment patterns, but that aIl seems like something we should be able to fix. I just want the anxiety to stop so we can live our beautiful life together. I feel so anxious and depressed and it doesn’t make any sense. Do you have any words of wisdom for me? Thank you so much.

    Reply
    • I know how much you’re suffering, and you’re not alone; this is textbook relationship anxiety. I recommend that you go through the course material slowly and thoroughly, and also join the live course so that you can benefit from the group coaching calls. As I write about in this post, oftentimes it’s hearing other’s stories and listening to the way I respond that helps people break through to the next level of relationship anxiety freedom and find their way back to love.

      Reply
      • Thank you so much for your response. Knowing that this is textbook relationship anxiety helps me not feel so crazy. I have this pain in my chest and my heart beats faster when I am close to her and that is so hard and confusing. I am trying to figure out how to heal these inner wounds that are being triggered. How do I know if they are wounds being triggered or if they are truly needs that aren’t being met? It’s so hard to believe that this feeling will go away… but I am willing to dive in again and keep doing the work. I don’t want to give up on her or us or our relationship AND I don’t want to give up on me. I want to get out of the either/or thinking and embrace this beautiful partner that I have. My anxiety seems so out of proportion and I feel so scared to lose her. I feel attached to making it work. She means so much to me but I don’t want it to be at the expense of myself. I feel so alone and confused on this journey. It feels like nothing makes any sense and I have lost my motivation in my work – which has been really hard. Grateful for your insights and perspectives.

        Reply
  3. Beautiful Sheryl. Still love lurking through your blog, even though I am no longer a sufferer of relationship anxiety and now enjoying my beautiful and loving relationship.

    Reply
    • I’m so glad you’re here, and very glad you’re in loving and beautiful relationship! 🥰

      Reply
  4. This blog has been so reassuring to read over the last several months that I’ve been suffering from my thoughts. I am glad that I have found this website and community. I met my boyfriend in the summer of 2021. He didn’t really stand out to me the night we met but we exchanged social media info and we got chatting. I found that we had lots in common and the conversation never stopped flowing. When we met up for the first date, my first thought was “oh no I don’t find him attractive”, I was panicked a little inside but we walked to the bar and over the course of the evening I began to find him attractive because we got on so well. I had an intrusive thought on the first date that said “yes he’ll be your next boyfriend but you will break his heart”. We continued to date and I remember on the third date I felt so drawn to him and all I wanted to do was move where I was sitting in the restaurant across from him to sit next to him and kiss him.

    I remember thinking on that third date that I wasn’t obsessing too much over how I felt about him and I wasn’t experiencing severe anxiety. (For context I obsessed over my feelings for an ex from the third date and this relationship subsequently ended as I thought I wasn’t much into him, I think that was true because I didn’t want to spend time with him much or stay over at his house on the weekend). I think comparing the two relationships invited the anxiety in because shortly after that, as the dates went on and we continued to meet up, I became more and more fixated on how I was feeling. I had one week before we made things official when I decided enough was enough, I was going to stop overthinking. That week was amazing, I felt some infatuation and decided I could see myself falling in love with him. The morning after he told me he loved me, the first night we stayed together, was amazing and I felt infatuated and I couldn’t stop thinking about him at work the day after.

    The first few months of the relationship I found that when I was alone the doubts would creep in and I would ask myself if I actually liked him, if I was infatuated, if I loved him, if I found him attractive. However, when I was with him the thoughts subsided to a degree and I was able to enjoy my time with him. He became my safe place away from the thoughts and I’d come to hate the moment we had to part, one reason being I loved spending time with him and the other being I knew the thoughts would come back. Then, after about three months of being in the relationship, I began to Google how I was feeling and I haven’t been able to stop searching online forums to compare and see how others are experiencing this. Ever since then my thoughts have been so much worse and I can’t escape them. The days I ruminate and think less about my feelings I find I can feel the love and the “pull” of him.

    However, I’ve started to wonder if this is really fair to him. I care about him a lot and I want him to lead a happy and fulfilled life that isn’t wasted being with someone who second-guesses their feelings for him every day and every waking hour. I feel as though he deserves someone who loves him wholeheartedly for everything that he is because he’s not only the best boyfriend I’ve ever had but the best friend I’ve ever had too. This is probably the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had and I’m worried that I’m staying with him simply because he treats me better than anyone else ever has. The thought of breaking up with him breaks my heart, I don’t know if that’s because I simply cannot bring myself to break his or because in spite of my constant doubts I do in fact love him. Apologies for the long comment but I need to know if this sounds like relationship anxiety or denial and whether you think your course would be able to help me. I’m prone to anxiety anyway and have dealt with health anxiety, anxiety around death, and relationships too. If anyone read this far, thank you.

    P.S. the only 2 men I have felt infatuated with were emotionally unavailable. One was my first love and cheated on me countless times. The other constantly canceled dates and strung me along for months without seeing me. I don’t know but I think because I didn’t have consistent feelings of infatuation and never lust that I can’t be in love with my current boyfriend. Anytime I feel love I also shut it down quickly. If I have a good day of feeling in love with my boyfriend, the next day I am back to doubting everything and I almost feel like two different people.

    Reply
  5. Hi Sheryl, thank you for doing this work.
    I’m in a terrible case of relationship anxiety that started while having an anxious/depressive episode related to my parents getting into physical fight with each other. I can hear your voice say: Of course you’d be scared of love after being trough such a shock related to your primary caregivers!
    And still I can’t shake the thoughts questioning my (loving) relationship. It’s terrible. After the depressive episode my days are kinda empty and I get overwhelmed by the racing almost every day. After the classics of “What if I don’t love him?” and “What if something is really wrong?” more creative versions came as in “What if on my deathbed I will be unfulfilled if I stay?”

    Part of it may be that I’m still feeling disconnected from the things I normally like doing (creative things, work with people) and I’m kinda lost as to how to connect to myself again… And maybe I project it onto my boyfriend?

    Anyway… Do you think the Breaking from relationship anxiety course would help me? Or maybe the Trust Yourself?
    I’m seeing a therapist too but I’m just learning to trust her.

    Reply
    • Yes, the course would be extremely beneficial for you, especially if you can join us for the upcoming live round so you can receive the additional support of the calls.

      Reply
  6. Hello Sheryl

    You have responded to many of my previous comments and I am very grateful but I have a slightly different question if I may?

    My anxiety started on about the 3rd date with my current girlfriend, it wasn’t intrusive thoughts, from what I can remember I just started feeling anxious in her presence and that even continued to when i was away from her. In the beginning I was very clingy, although not so much now.

    We do have a loving relationship (I keep questioning if it is loving) we both care greatly about each other and feel content in each other’s company though i get an intrusive thought (without physical symptoms and feels like intuition) that we’re just friends, despite the fact we are intimate even if just in a very basic way.

    Is this anxiety in someone’s presence a sign to run? She has never said anything abusive or been physically abusive, though she has called needy once!

    I am looking to sign up potentially to your anxiety course but thought I’d ask for some advice.

    Many thanks

    Reply
  7. My anxiety has really ramped up and my current issue is the thought that I could do better, that I’m only staying to avoid a painful ending and that I really want to leave. I’m obsessing over someone I don’t know at all who goes to my church who I thought once was good looking and it sent me into a spiral of guilt. It’s so bad to the point I’m scared to go to church for fear if I speak to him I’ll connect more with him than my boyfriend. Then I obsess over my boyfriend’s age (19 years younger), the differences, saying we have nothing in common, only trauma bonds us, etc. He is loving, kind, has never hurt me or abused me. He has wounds as well but my therapist says it’s ok to heal while in a relationship. I’m tired. My brain is tired. I’m tired of crying, shutting down, pulling away until I’m CERTAIN. It’s horrible and painful. This is the one place I feel safe to talk about how this hurts me every day.

    Reply

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