Why Shaming Yourself Isn't Going To Get Your Anxiety To Go Away Faster
— Written by Liana Gergely
I get it. You’ve just had a weird evening with your partner, and suddenly your brain is going 3700 miles a minute: “what if they’re the wrong person for me?” “what if I’ll never be happy in this relationship but also won’t find anyone else?” “Maybe they don’t love me that much anyways?” Your mind is off to the races and as the thoughts pile onto one another, the anxiety in your body increases until you’re
a. Scrolling mindlessly on Instagram to numb the discomfort
b. 4 spoons into a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or
c. picking a fight with your partner because something MUST be wrong if you’re feeling this icky.
That, my friends, is a relationship anxiety spiral, and I know it well.
It feels terrible when it’s happening, and it also feels out of our control - which is so hard! All we know is that we feel really uncomfortable, and we want the pain to go away NOW.
When I first started healing my relationship anxiety, one of the first things I realized was that every time my anxiety spiked, so did my self-criticism. I thought I could shame myself into being better, and if I was better, I would feel better.
I ruminated on what I had just said to my partner and how that “messed it up.” I thought of all the things wrong with me that make me feel unloveable. I criticized myself mercilessly for having this relationship anxiety issue and worried about how it could push men away.
Suddenly, I became my own self-improvement project, and the hammer was out and ready to work. It took me years to heal this belief that shaming myself, fixing myself, and beating myself up wouldn’t get my anxiety to go away faster.
Instead, it has the opposite effect! Shaming yourself is like picking a scab on a wound and wondering why it doesn’t heal. You have to leave that scab alone and tend to it with nurturing and love.
Your Relationship Anxiety is Caused By Low Self-Esteem, So You Can’t Heal It With Low Self-Esteem
When you’re beating yourself up for another relationship anxiety spiral, you’re trying to fix the problem with the problem. Our attachment style -- whether insecure/anxious or avoidant -- is a significant contributor to our relationship anxiety, and both types have low self-esteem and negative self-regard at its core. When we are mean to ourselves as a way to get ourselves to change, we’re pouring salt on the wound.
We have to heal the wound with its opposite - which is radical self-acceptance and self-kindness. If not, we contribute to the problem instead of the solution.
Healing Relationship Anxiety is About Self-Acceptance, Not Self-Improvement
If you drill down your relationship anxiety fears (which Sarah will do with you in private coaching!), you’ll see that the fear that you’re unlovable is at the core. Unlovable because you have relationship anxiety. Unlovable because something must be wrong with you if you have these doubts about your totally available, awesome partner. Unloveable because you never feel happy in a committed partnership.
The core belief: Something is wrong/defective about me.
So the healing is in reconnecting with the parts of ourselves we’re branding as “crazy” or “needy” or “unlovable.” This is done by shifting the attention away from self-improvement (which can often make us feel MORE flawed) towards self-acceptance.
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What do you bring to the table?
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What progress have you made in the last 3 months?
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How are your anxious tendencies actually character assets that have simply gotten out of balance? For example, if you often feel guilt and anxiety about being a bad partner because of your doubts, that is the part of you that wants to be authentic and kind with the volume turned up just a little too high. At its core, it’s something wonderful about you that goes into overdrive and becomes relationship anxiety.
Learning to love yourself IN SPITE of your relationship anxiety is paramount to healing it.
You Can’t Rush Your Healing
When I am shaming myself in the midst of my anxiety, I often feel like it’s never going to get any better. I am impatient to have all these parts of me fixed so I can finally feel “normal” in a romantic relationship.
But healing takes time. And I have to give time, time.
Practicing patience with myself and my growth reminds me that even on the journey of healing my relationship anxiety, there are gifts to be had.
I am exactly where I am supposed to be and healing at exactly the speed I’m supposed to be healing.
Liana Gergely is a self-help writer, meditation teacher and spiritual coach based in Los Angeles, California. Her work focuses on women in their 20s and 30s who struggle with an anxious attachment style that affects their romantic, personal and professional relationships. Think dating anxiety, overthinking, people-pleasing, codependency, perfectionism and all that fun stuff :)
With experience and training in 12 step recovery and Buddhist meditation, Liana helps overthinkers heal from their approval-seeking, perfectionism and low self-esteem with practical spiritual tools. Her work has been featured on Huffington Post, Thought Catalog, Elephant Journal, Medium and more. You can find her on Instagram at @lianagergely. In her spare time, you can find Liana reading at the beach, browsing coffee shops and going to Broadway plays.
