Dating with Anxiety

Ajouté : 2026-05-11

[00:00:05]Okay. So, today I want to talk about relationship anxiety, which is probably the most common problem I see people facing today.

[00:00:18]And I want to be really clear about what I mean by that.

[00:00:22]Relationship anxiety is this large umbrella. It is anxiety about finding the right person. It's anxiety about when you do meet someone that you're going to be able to sustain the relationship.

[00:00:36]It's anxiety about the relationship in general, about how much you can give to it, how much it's going to give to you.

[00:00:43]It's anxiety about being a good enough partner. But at the core of all of it, it is an anxiety about whether or not you are good enough to make a relationship work and to sustain it with the right partner, meaning that that person is not going to just leave you. So anxious attachment is part of it, but it's not the whole picture. It's it's just a general insecurity about relationships. And the thing is, yes, we can relate that to insecure attachment and something that started in childhood. But the fact is this, the amount of people I see who are so incredibly anxious about relationships right now, even if they did not grow up in a household where love was withheld from them or um they felt overwhelmed or meshed with their family, it's not I'm starting to see more and more of the people who write into me and the people who I've worked with that it's not just starting with childhood. It's that we are so overwhelmed with what a relationship means today and we have never before put so much pressure on a relationship and on a partner to be almost our everything. And even if you don't technically believe in soulmates, we do live in a time where people are looking for that one and only person because we don't have the same things that we had in the past. It's it you know it used to be that you had a village and you had a lot of community.

[00:02:40]And we live in a time where especially in this culture where we are more and more isolated even though we're more connected through technology. And so the influence of that on us and trying to find that one person who's going to be our ride or die, who's going to be um the most evolved person, the person who is going to be our confidant, be our best friend, the greatest lover we've ever had. um unconsciously the parent that we never had. We are all burdened with the weight of those expectations on our shoulders and it is creating a tremendous amount of anxiety and the bottom line is that as human beings we want to avoid suffering and pain at all costs. Pretty much every single person I know over a certain age knows what it feels like to have their heart broken. To many people know what it's like to feel betrayed, to experience a relationship ending when you didn't want it to end. And even when we did want to end it or we did initiate it, there is still that feeling of failure that lives inside of us when something did not work out. And that is significant pain. And almost everyone I've ever worked with, thousands of people, knows what it is like to wake up in the middle of the night with that intense, debilitating anxiety because they do not know where they stand in a relationship because they do not know if that relationship is going to last. And that is one of the most horrific anxieties to live with on a day-to-day basis. Your life could be going really well in every other area. Work could be good. Um, you could have career success. You could have your financial stability. You could have your health, which is the most important thing.

[00:04:50]You could even have strong friendships and a stable family life. But if your love life is not going well, if your relationship is stressed or you believe that you are not capable of a healthy relationship or you are in a relationship and you are afraid like desperately afraid that this person is going to leave you. That stress has the power to steal whatever joy you have in your life from everything else. It is it is a joy stealer. And that's because our relationships, particularly where we were most vulnerable in our romantic relationships, truly determine the quality of our emotional state. They determine the quality of our lives.

[00:05:42]And there is nothing like relationship stress. Yes, there's money stress and that's up there, but I would say that relationship stress sometimes is even bigger for a lot of people. A fear that you are never going to meet someone and that you're going to die alone. You're not going to have a family.

[00:06:01]Um, you might have a a debilitating fear or even a lowgrade fear of repeating your parents' mistakes.

[00:06:10]Um, maybe you have a fear of not being able to build what they have built. You know, these things weigh so heavily on so many of us. And because we don't like to suffer, we try to avoid it. And in the trying to avoid the inevitable disappointment that will come with loving another person, the inevitable pain that will come with loving another person, we become very anxious. And like I said, we are living in a time where people want a soulmate rather than simply a companion. We want someone who's going to meet every need, fulfill every dream, excite us, and stabilize us simultaneously.

[00:06:55]And we carry this largely unconscious requirement for a perfect partner. And many of us carry an equally heavy pressure to be perfect ourselves.

[00:07:07]And so much of this comes from the myth of the one. The idea that somewhere somewhere out there there is a single perfect person who will complete us.

[00:07:16]Hollywood sells this, books sell it, social media sells it, and it is a complete lie.

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[00:08:45]Chemistry that like when we have that chemistry with someone that's something that happens to us. But love is something that we actually have to build and co-create with someone. There is no perfect person. There is only the right person for you.

[00:09:03]And part of the anxiety that a lot of people have is that they don't understand who is right for them. And so they ignore all the red flags and then they get themselves into something incredibly painful and then the cycle continues. The cycle of anxiety continues. The cycle of insecurity continues. So this is what relationship anxiety actually looks like. And I want to get very specific about quote unquote symptoms because I think it's important to be able to recognize when what you are experiencing has crossed from just the normal uncertainty that comes with loving someone or or just feeling vulnerable and when it's crossed the line into anxiety that is running and ruining your life. So let's talk about obsessing. If you're dating someone, obsessing over whether they like you, whether you like them, whether they are right for you, reading into something they said to the point where you feel completely paralyzed. Okay. So, when you are getting into that place of completely obsessing where you're like you're keeping your phone out when you're hanging out with friends because you're waiting for that text, you're reading into everything. So, that's when you know that you've crossed a threshold.

[00:10:21]And then number two, there's mind readading. Instead of communicating, there's a lot of assuming. There's a lot of jumping to conclusion. Conclusions like, you know, they must be thinking this. Um, if they did this, then they must not like me. They must be feeling that. So again, so you're you're you're very quick to jump to conclusions before you have any real information. That is a sign that there's a lot of anxiety going on inside of you. There's the consistent doubting. It is completely normal and part of the process to have some ambivalence about a relationship, especially when it's in the beginning stages. But when the doubting is constant, when you are waking up in the middle of the night, doubting, waking up in the morning, doubting, that is anxiety. It's like you've left the present moment and you go into micromanaging trying to control everything because you want to know if this is the right relationship.

[00:11:27]And so much of the first 6 months in particular is letting yourself be in the present moment so that you and and to observe and to stay connected with your body and how you feel.

[00:11:40]But you're not going to be able to figure everything out if you do not know within the first 6 months. If the person who you are dating is someone who you want to seriously commit to like marriage, then that is okay. There is no reason for you to know whether or not someone who you're dating in the first 6 months is someone who you want to have a child with or marry.

[00:12:05]It's too soon.

[00:12:08]Um, you have to give that at least a year. Another symptom or sign that you are in the throws of relationship anxiety is catastrophizing.

[00:12:18]They did not text back within 20 minutes, so they must not like me anymore. They mentioned they were stressed, so maybe they are stressed about me. Maybe they are reconsidering everything. You know, maybe they're considering being in the relationship with me. Maybe they don't know if they're having fun with me. And a lot of that is um a lot of that does come from insecure attachment. That a lot of that does come from growing up with a parent whose moods were very unpredictable, who ran very hot and cold, who was maybe emotionally unavailable, who left the family when you were very young. And so um there is this lowgrade sort of persistent fear that you are going to be left by someone who um you're very vulnerable with. And that's very real. And one thing that I really want to say about attachment wounding wounding is that all attachment anxiety all all of that whether it presents as an anxious pursuit or an avoidant withdrawal is rooted in fear. It is the fear of not being good enough and therefore not being loved. It's the fear of abandonment. So I will maybe abandon you first. It's the fear of being consumed. So if I truly love you, I am handing you the power to destroy me or to completely take away my freedom. And that is the underlying fear in all of it. And none of us like feeling out of control.

[00:13:55]And so if you feel that every time you start to actually like someone or you're starting a relationship, you are starting to feel out of control, that is the most important sign for you to then say to yourself, okay, I have to now become aware of what's happening. I feel out of control the moment I start to like someone because I am basically handing them the power to destroy me in some way. That is very real. That is very common. That is happening all the time. But what changes everything is how you relate to feeling that loss of control.

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[00:16:22]So, what is so important for you to understand is that the anxiety that you're experiencing is literally your nervous system trying to protect you from pain. So all that obsessing, that mind readading, the doubting, the catastrophize, the catastrophizing has one purpose, self-p protection. The anxiety is trying to prevent you from experiencing the deeper pain underneath it all. The pain of not being good enough, the pain of being rejected, and the pain of being abandoned. But whatever we resist persists. And not only does it persist, it grows. The part of you that is trying to protect you from the deeper feeling is actually preventing you from processing that feeling, which means that the feeling never moves through. It just sits there growing and running your life from underneath. So part of the work is learning to lean into the discomfort to be able to identify, oh my god, I have all this anxiety. I'm feeling disregulated. I'm feeling like I'm going into micromanaging or whatever. I'm withdrawing whatever the thing it is that I do. I'm doing it because I feel out of control. Because being single, as much as most people don't want to be single, it is where people feel most in control. And that is why a lot of people tell me that when they're single, they feel healed and confident. And then the moment they get into relationship, all their old wounding and stuff comes up.

[00:17:51]And that's because that's exactly what's supposed to happen. It's because we're we're meant to actually face that. And we're also meant to communicate it and choose someone with whom we can communicate all this fear with and work it out with. So part of the work is to recognize the discomfort rather than flee from it. So you take you stop for a moment, you get in touch with what you're actually feeling and you literally ask yourself, you take a deep breath and you ask yourself, where do I feel this in my body? Where is the sensation living right now? Do I feel it in my chest? Do I feel it in my throat?

[00:18:29]Do I feel it in my belly? And get as specific as you can about where the feeling is and what it feels like. And it's really helpful if you can to write it down because this is how we work through this. Okay, that's step one.

[00:18:45]Step two is asking yourself, how familiar is this feeling? When did I first feel this? When did I first feel this? That question will almost always take you back to something much older than your current relationship. It could be a moment in childhood. It could be a moment that happened in a in a previous relationship. It can be an early experience of loss or uncertainty or not being chosen somehow. And when you can make that connection, when you can see that that what you are feeling right now is older than this person, older than this relationship, something will begin to shift because then the anxiety becomes contextual rather than something that you are um something that you are. You are not just anxious. There is always always context. In fact, you could be experiencing relationship anxiety, a lot of it, if you are not taking care of yourself physically, if your blood sugar is off, if you're having um problems with a particular friend or you're having something a problem with work and feeling particularly insecure with work and your financial stability. You could also be having relationship anxiety that's really coming from a a relationship that's in need of help in your family. So that anxiety and that feeling out of control could be something that's coming from outside of the relationship, but you're bringing it into the relationship. So you have to always your greatest leverage and understanding yourself and healing is understanding your psychology and understanding what is going on in your life holistically so that you can have more self-standing.

[00:20:37]Because if you don't truly understand yourself, then you can't have it's very hard to have compassion. It's very hard to actually work through it. And one of the things that you have to understand about yourself that will change everything that is a big part of your personal growth and development and that really truly moves the needle in your relationships are your beliefs. And this is something that I want to add to this conversation that is so essential and does not get talked about enough in the context of relationship anxiety specifically.

[00:21:13]Our beliefs are the lens through which we experience everything. And when it comes to your relationships, what you believe about yourself, what you believe about men, what you believe about women, and what you believe about love, they have an enormous impact on how you operate in relationships and the anxiety that you have. So if you believe at a core level that you are not good-looking enough, rich enough, healthy enough, whatever, funny enough, um stable enough, secure enough, interesting enough, you will bring that belief into every relationship, into every dating situation. If you believe that men always leave or women always leave, your nervous system will be in constant alert for signs of leaving. If you believe that love always comes with pain, you will brace yourself for the pain before it's even come. If you believe that you do not deserve the kind of love you actually want or that it's not possible for someone like you, you will unconsciously create the conditions that make that belief come true. So, you will sabotage things. you will sabotage something good or you will chase the person who doesn't treat you well. This is not a character flaw. This is how the belief systems work. They are formed early often in childhood, but they're also formed from past experiences and they're also formed you're influenced your beliefs are influenced by the people that you spend the most time with. So, if you're hanging out with a lot of people who are having bad experiences in dating, you are going to start to absorb that and that is going to be part of the lens through which you look at dating.

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[00:24:32]So what actually helps with this?

[00:24:37]The first thing is investing in and building a life that feels genuinely good to you independent of whether your relationship works out or independent of whether or not you are in a relationship. I once had a client say to me, "If my relationship doesn't work out, I have this lonely, empty life to return to."

[00:25:06]And I get almost emotional uh thinking about that because I think that this is something a lot of people feel like if this relationship doesn't work out then I have to go back to something that I wasn't happy in. And it's that that single sentence, that single thing that she told me actually told me everything I needed to know about why why she was so anxious.

[00:25:33]Because when a relationship is the only place where your needs are being met, the stakes of losing it are really high and feels unbearable.

[00:25:44]our core needs for security, connection, adventure, for contribution, for growth. If those needs are only being met inside the relationship, the relationship will carry a weight that it's not actually designed to carry. and you will be anxious because you are one person's decision away from losing everything that makes your life feel meaningful. The work is building a life in which all those needs are being met in multiple ways. Through community, through friendships, through hobbies or work that feel purposeful, through contribution to something beyond yourself. When your life is already meaningful, not perfect, not 100% whole, but meaningful.

[00:26:46]A relationship and a partner becomes something and someone you want rather than something you desperately need to save you from the life that doesn't feel good to you. And that shift changes everything about how you show up in a relationship and and it changes everything when it comes to your anxiety. So when you are feeling really anxious about someone you're seeing or someone you're in a relationship with, these are questions that can help you get grounded and out of your head. How do I feel in my body, like in my nervous system when I am around this person? And also when I'm not around them in between dates, do I feel calm? Do I feel wrecked? Do I feel activated? Do I feel safe? Do I feel free to express an opinion with this person? Can I have a genuine difference of perspective without it turning into an argument?

[00:27:54]What kind of partner do I actually want to be?

[00:27:59]How do I want to show up in this relationship? What kind of woman do I want to be? What kind of man do I want to be in this relationship? What kind of partner do I want to be? What three traits actually matter the most to me in a long-term partner? Not appearance, not status. I want you to go to like character traits and also temperament.

[00:28:24]Whether this person's an introvert or an extrovert. like what are the top three that actually matter to you the most for a long-term partner?

[00:28:33]Because all the rest and maybe you can do somewhere between three and five. All the rest you have to make the decision that you can be totally flexible about.

[00:28:42]But what are the things that are absolutely non-negotiable about this person's character and temperament that you know you need in order to function in a relationship at a very high level.

[00:28:54]And then the last question, maybe one of the most important questions to ask yourself is, is the anxiety and the feeling out of control that I'm feeling actually about this person or is it about something else that's going on in my life or something that happened at an earlier time in my life.

[00:29:15]So this is the work. It is not a quick fix. So much of it is just about the awareness of when you feel out of control and to name that you feel it out of control rather than your head going to all these conclusions or blaming the other person or wanting or going into these sort of instinctive reactions to kind of micromanage or flee or whatever it is that you do. You have to be aware of what's happening inside of you. It is, like I said, it's not a quick fix, but it is this is the work that actually changes things. And I genuinely believe that anyone who commits to this will find their way through. Anyway, I hope this helps. I can't wait to, if you're watching this, I can't wait to read what you have to say in the comments. And um, thanks for listening. Until next time.

[00:30:11]Jillian on Love is a QC code production executive produced by David Henning and Steve Wilson. Produced and edited by Travis How. Music by Will Tendy.