How Anxiety Affects Your Relationships And Quality Of Your Life - Insights from Psychologist in Hawthorn
Anxiety is one of the most common struggles characterised by feelings of fear, worry, tension and sometimes physical changes such as increased blood pressure, sweating, shakiness, heart palpitations etc. At Inner Eastern Psychology, we acknowledge that anxiety puts lots of stress and strain on relationships, as it often affects the people around us when one’s fears and worries become unmanageable.
Prolonged anxiety without being treated may consequently cause a higher risk of physical illnesses and other mental health conditions, such as depression, contributing to a reduction in quality of life. We will discuss how anxiety plays a role in affecting your relationships and mental wellbeing below.
Anxiety Contributes to a Lower Sense of Relationship Satisfaction
Over the years, research has found evidence of fluctuating relationship quality, lower satisfaction, and poorer relationship disclosure in association with a partner’s anxiety. It suggests a cross-partner effect in which partners are more likely to report a reduction in positive qualities of the relationship, if their partners are prone to experience anxiety. This posits anxiety with a significant role in affecting your overall relationship satisfaction owing to the extent that life experiences can be encountered as they are, without their distortion from empathy for another’s suffering, our own dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and other emotions or effects that anxiety often brings.
Anxious Thoughts Lead to Mistrust and Disconnection
A direct side effect of anxiety involves worries and unhelpful thinking. It leads to a breakdown in trust and loss of connection with our partner, as it starts to cloud experiences and understandings in the relationship dynamic. Clear signs of symptoms may involve overthinking, worrying, fearing and avoiding relationships altogether. It causes people to start pushing their partners away in the context of rejection avoidance, eventually causing a sense of disconnection and loss of intimacy with their significant other.
Anxiety Influences Your Sense Of Happiness
Excessive worrying and the inability to manage our fear can lead to not being present in the moment, inhibiting us from fully feeling the full spectrum of emotions in everyday life. Anxiety also contributes to a lack of certainty and security, and if left untreated, it often leads to other complicated physical and emotional challenges. It is helpful to note that Anxiety and Depression often come hand in hand, thus learning ways to manage anxiety is crucial in improving our overall well being.
Anxiety Causes Stress on Our Physical Body
If you have been dealing with anxiety for a long time, your body may have been consistently exposed to tension and stress. Consequently, there may be some implications to impacts on our physical illnesses, especially to our nervous, cardiovascular, digestive, immune, and respiratory systems. These may affect the quality of our life both physically and mentally.
Prolonged Anxiety Forms Unhealthy Over-Reliance or Over-Avoidance of Partners
Long-term anxiety may contribute to unhealthy patterns of behaviour, such as over-reliance or avoidance of intimacy, or being dependent on others, such as our partners for emotional well-being and happiness. We may find ourselves being reliant on others to maintain emotional stability, validation, and approval. This dependency may create imbalance and dissatisfaction in our interpersonal relationship.
On the other hand, anxiety may also contribute to the opposite of over-reliance. Some may react to anxiety by trying to avoid conflicts and arguments at all costs. Some may be people pleasing and feeling overly responsible for their partner's happiness and steer clear of any potentially tense circumstances. The healthy communication of needs and feelings within the partnership may be hindered by this avoidance.
Next Step
If you are finding yourself experiencing symptoms of anxiety, it is helpful to seek support and guidance from a professional psychologist, to eliminate negativities it may be costing your interpersonal relationships and personal life. Contact our team at Inner Eastern Psychology to learn more about how we can help!