People often don’t even notice how the inner excitement and stress, an anxious expectation of something bad that can happen destroy love, friendship, and general psychological well-being. Each couple encounters unexpected difficulties in personal communication, which as a result, can undermine and destroy even the most stable and strong relationships. You often can hear stories about how a person harasses someone else with worries and a partner feels that he or she is playing the role of a sedative in a couple. Let’s try to figure out what’s behind all this and also how to date someone with social anxiety!
What is anxiety?
Anxiety takes away strength, immobilizes, and causes chronic excitement. Each of us can sometimes find in ourselves thoughts that accompany the alarm: “Something terrible will happen”, “I can’t cope with it”, “I think I’ll go crazy”, “It will not work”. Symptoms may vary. This is a cocktail of unpleasant premonitions, psychological arousal, and fear. Dating someone with depression and anxiety, you may understand that anxiety is a constant state, a person’s tendency to frequent and intense negative experiences of anxiety. Such a person becomes irritable, he/she often manifests sudden emotional outbursts, tearfulness, vulnerability, and at the physical level – fatigue and muscle tension. However, first of all, we need to figure out what the difference between fear and anxiety is. Both of these concepts are emotional reactions, but the first one is experienced more intensely than anxiety.
It is known that fear develops gradually from anxiety. Imagine that your loved one doesn’t come home at the usual time, you start worrying but remain calm. This is how anxiety is manifested. But if you imagine horrible things of what can happen and think about it endlessly, have a violent heartbeat and panic, then this is fear.
How to determine hidden anxiety:
You can feel that anxiety is “settled” inside you by external signs – your habits and behavior:
- Gluttony;
- Excessive craving for alcohol;
- Frequent feeling of fatigue, you are tired not from your activity, but from the constant internal tension accompanying anxiety;
- Increased drowsiness when prolonged sleep doesn’t lead to deep relaxation and recovery;
- Unquenchable sexual desire;
- Increased sociability when a person is not able to remain alone and fills any free time with activities and meetings;
- Workaholism;
- Excessive enthusiasm for computer games;
- Excessive, obsessive reading of books.
Pure love and joyful life could be revealed to those who have freed themselves from their inner tensions and limitations and have gained genuine self-confidence. A confident person, unaffected by fear and anxiety attacks, doesn’t seek evidence of love from a loved one. If in everything that a partner does, you try to see some “message” about the attitude toward you, nothing good will come of it. A relationship will ruin and you will suffer, experiencing the pain of mistrust, fear, and anxiety, torturing a soul mate. 
And you become more and more impatient and ruthless. You know, a wise person is a patient person. But patience comes only when internal anxieties give way to it. And this is the only true way – only realizing own self-worth, having learned to respect oneself, a self-confident person can really become happy.
Dating with social anxiety: what it feels like
It turns out that not only women but also men often feel a sense of anxiety, having a permanent relationship. Different factors and a number of negative emotions provoke such feelings. For example, your girlfriend had a relationship and she continues to communicate with her ex. In a normal person, such situations can’t cause a feeling of jealousy and anxiety that a loved one can leave. Also, many problems are delivered by close communication with friends, an insufficient amount of time spent together.
Since a relationship always includes constant changes, growth, and uncertainty, there is no need to worry. In a relationship, anxiety poses a fear of losing the approval or respect of a partner, losing intimacy and understanding. For those people who have difficulties in accepting themselves and have an unstable self-esteem, it is especially terrible to lose support, love, and respect for loved ones. In addition, they face the fear to be left and they often insist on official relationships since a formal marriage is more certain and helps to reduce anxiety ahead of the future.
When one person is dating someone with social anxiety, it will be very difficult for the second one to remain calm and relaxed. An anxious partner needs to invest in oneself a lot of time, energy, and other resources. Usually, someone who acts as a sedative can begin to feel frustrated, irritated, and angry when these “investments” of resources don’t cause immediate changes. An anxious partner needs to regain confidence again and again.
Tips for those who want to get rid of unnecessary anxiety:
- Listen to your feelings. Watch for the change of emotions and experiences. Take your feelings beyond imagination. Feel free to change the negative story to a positive moment. Set a barrier between yourself and the negative picture.
- Ask yourself a specific question: “What is it that worries me at this time?” Knowing about your anxiety, you can get rid of it just imagining that it is something materialistic: erase, wash off, cut with scissors, disperse into the wind, wash off with spring water, burn, etc.
- Think about what can calm you, relax, encourage, support. What can you rely on when excitement, anxiety and fear begin to overwhelm you? Find a person (occupation, hobby) in your environment that could calm you down.
- Remember that anxiety is always an exaggeration of events. As some people say: “Don’t make mountains out of molehills”. Calculate the scale of your anxiety and reduce it to a minimum.
- Ask yourself what will happen in the worst case? The great value at this moment is that you take out the parameters of the final result of your anxiety. Don’t forget to erase negative information and thoughts.
Excessive anxiety is perceived by surrounding people in different ways. Some will calm an anxious person, others will regret, the third will scold, the fourth will sympathize or think that you completely lost your mind. The main thing is how you treat yourself at this moment. And here approval, good mood, and humor can do a good job. Be calm and be able to overcome fears, doubts, and anxieties.
Tips for dating someone with anxiety
How to date someone with anxiety and depression (women, in particular)? It is not easy to understand an anxious woman. When she is anxious, her object of anxiety captures her completely. She begins to convince loved ones of imminent danger, confirming her arguments with obsessive behavior, control, emotions and even tears. She screams: “Pay attention to my fears, I feel bad”, “I know. I have a premonition”. And she hears in response: “Calm down, everything is all right. Your fears are groundless”. It is impossible to have a dialogue with a good end because people speak different languages; their state of mind is not the same. As a result of the dialogue, there is no understanding; there is a state of resentment or a desire not to meet anymore. But still, how to date someone with depression and anxiety?
Dating a girl with anxiety, you must understand that problems, dangers, and catastrophe are always real for her. Such girls don’t come up with such things but exaggerate their scale and begin to create an “alarming field” around themselves and other people, which can really be reproduced in the real world. It is not necessary to figure out everything with an anxious woman immediately, as soon as she gives arguments of her fear. It is better to talk about this later when imaginary events and thought forms of anxiety will not be so huge and destructive in their strength.
The main thing in dating someone with anxiety is not to question her anxiety, not to try to prove otherwise. Listen, calm, and agree: “Yes, you are concerned, I understand. Don’t worry, everything will be fine”. Then try to switch thoughts of an anxious person to something else: what she was interested in before. And always draw her attention to the positive moments of life and the positive moment in this or that situation.
Find out the real cause of anxiety. Perhaps the reason for the deterioration of relationships was an incorrectly interpreted or insignificant situation that needs to be clarified.
Understand yourself. This applies to men who regularly give reasons for anxiety. If a representative of the stronger sex constantly cheats on his loved one or flirts with surrounding women, then this is a serious reason to think – is it the one he wants to see next to him? Or maybe cheating is just a way to assert oneself? Then you need to change something in your life, otherwise, a loved one will go away forever.
Be honest and sincere. If you aer not ready for a serious relationship without intrigues and flirting, don’t give a girl a false hope – it’s better to honestly admit that there will be others in your life. This is one of the best tips for dating someone with anxiety.
Give a girl attention. How to date a girl with anxiety? Even a calm and balanced girl, whom a man pays less attention, will become anxious sooner or later. So, you need to try to find time for her even in a busy work schedule. Don’t forget about folk wisdom, which says that women love with their ears – one short call or message with gentle words sometimes gives an incredible result.
Change your attitude towards women. The habit of kissing female colleagues on cheeks or calling them by caressing names can mean absolutely nothing for a man, but for a girl, it is a constant source of tears and resentments. Therefore, if a man really values his relationships, he will have to exclude all unequivocal manifestations of attention to other women from his life.
Strictly dose information. However, such a way to get rid of anxiety can’t be called optimal – it has nothing to do with sincere relations and carries the risk of getting confused in own lies.
Resign and tolerate. If none of the ways helps, there is only one thing – to accept the scenes of anxiety and persistently endure them. There were examples when men stopped paying attention to attacks from their loved ones and everything was great then.
Therefore, it is better to prevent the situation, call in advance and warn people close to you that you are late, and so on. In dealing with an anxious person, you should show tactfulness, politeness, and correctness. In this case, humor and jokes are inappropriate, they can be perceived by an anxious person as irony and mockery. So, now you know how to date someone with anxiety.