I suffer from anxiety. It is hard for me to love and show my love. I am constantly questioning every single move I make. It isn’t anything that other people do wrong, it’s solely on me. I worry, I can’t stop thinking, my mind is constantly running. Many people suffer from anxiety and one of the hardest things is loving another person. It doesn’t matter if it is a boyfriend or girlfriend, our parents, friends, family, any type of love. So what you need to know first if you love someone with anxiety, it isn’t going to be easy.
What you need to know first is that it isn’t easy for us to let people in. We try hundreds of times to trust people and they constantly let us down. Even if they don’t let us down, we believe that we let them down. We want to love someone, we want to trust someone, but our anxiety makes us question every aspect of the relationship and every feeling we have about someone.
You also need to know that we question everything we do. It doesn’t matter how big or how small, to us everything is bigger than it seems. We worry about the smallest things that the normal person wouldn’t even think of. We constantly run scenarios in our heads, thinking that we know exactly what is going to happen. We are always blowing everything out of proportion, but it is just how our brain works.
Also, we shut people out even when we need people to be there for us. The easiest thing for us to do is to tell people to go away. We don’t want to bother them with our problems and we always think that we are a bother to everyone all the time. So it is easier to be alone than to be constantly worrying about how people feel about us. It’s easier to shut people out and to push our feelings in.
All we want is to be loved and to be understood. But no one could possibly understand, right? No one could possibly want to deal with our constant worrying and our constant fear of the unknown. How could you possibly love someone that is so broken and so worried all the time? These are the thoughts a person with anxiety has.
It’s constant, it never goes away, no matter how hard we try. It isn’t something we can just turn off. And what we hate the most is when someone says, “don’t worry.” It’s easier said than done. For the normal person, it may be easy to not worry about things. For someone with anxiety, that’s literally all we do. We always worry, we always wonder, we can never slow our brain down. It’s hard to imagine what it is like to not worry about something.
It’s hard to love someone with anxiety. And if you don’t have anxiety, you may not understand it. But if you do love someone with anxiety, try to understand them. Let them into your life, and let them know your feelings. Let them trust you, knowing they may push you out. If they push you away, pull them back in. Show them that you will always be there for them and let their insecurities go away. Be their support system. Show them that there is no reason to worry. Be the person that changes their anxiety. Sure it is hard, but it is worth it.
