Building Trust: Using Mindfulness to Overcome Relationship Anxiety
I accidentally found Mindfulness before I ever heard the word. I was having a minor emotional breakdown in my early 30s, living in West Hollywood, hung up on a devastatingly draining boyfriend and stuck in a concrete rut of no joy. Somehow I made my way to a body/mind healer who immediately clocked that I was lost in fearful over-thinking and barely aware of my body. I recall her laying hands on me, struggling, almost wrestling to get me to simply inhabit my body. Nothing worked, until luckily when she directed me to “pay attention to the sensations hitting your eardrums,” I did it – and suddenly, for a split second, there was delicious respite from my anxious, chattering thoughts.
That microsecond of being engrossed in the sensation of sound on my eardrums was so potent that it erased days of suffering. I had found an escape hatch from the pressure cooker of my overactive mind, and most importantly, a place to dwell that vibrated with goodness – the present moment.
I learned that I could find freedom by focusing on other sensations too. One of my favorites was to take whatever fabric was nearby – the wool of a blanket, or denim of my jeans, anything with texture – and apply all my attention to seeing and feeling the texture. And in the nano-second in which I related to that texture, before words could barge back in, I was free, expansive, happy.
If that sounds woo woo, here’s Jon Kabal-Zinn describing what I did in more scientific terms. He calls it “dropping into the bare bones of our present moment experience” and explains how cultivating this skill of “awareness” can bring freedom and literally change our brains enabling us to navigate our lives more successfully.
I didn’t dedicate my life to this new practice, but I didn’t need to. Even small gaps in thinking were enough to allow much more joy into my everyday life. I went on to experience lots of interpersonal and creative adventures in interesting places. However, through all of those years, locations and people, I always struggled pretty hard with relationships.
This is probably a good place to mention that I have what I call “attachment issues.” That’s a general way to refer to the insecure attachment style (self-diagnosed) I’ve always grappled with. I’m not a mental health expert, but to learn more about attachment you can click here. The simplest way to summarize is that it seems to me that relationships have been WAY more challenging for me than for the average person.
I’m pretty resilient, so in spite of the difficulties, I have given relationships a good shot – a real good shot, meaning a LOT of relationships over the years. Let’s cut to where mindfulness plays a big part and opens the door to more fulfillment.
It’s decades later and I’m in a new relationship which feels DIFFERENT. Everything about this new situation is foreign because it’s not what I’m used to. For example, this partner is very actively pursuing time with me rather than being a bit out of reach. But he’s also independent so I don’t feel the need to push for space. He wants me in his life and seems to find me adorable and fascinating. And the fun! Our days together include moments like: stopping to gaze at each other soulfully on nature hikes, singing all the parts (even the background vocals and horn stabs) of 70’s songs, and laughing so convulsively at our own banter that we have to pull over to the side of the road for safety.
I’m excited by this new romance, but relationally challenged and terrified that I will somehow wreck it. This guy has unintentionally put me in a tight bind, between my paralyzing fear of abandonment and my instinct to blow things up and run. Thankfully, I turn to mindfulness at this very juncture.
We’re about 5 months in and, as predicted by smart coaches, the intoxicating honeymoon phase is moving into normal life. My boyfriend has gotten more engaged with his work lately, catching up on what he missed when he was focusing on wooing and winning me. Uh oh. I had gotten used to that intense, non-stop attention and now I have to contend with my old feelings of abandonment and insecurity. My inner circle of friends urge me to relax and let things progress naturally.
Easy for them to say. How can I relax when my fears are ramping up and what feels like life-and-death distress makes me constantly want to “talk” to him and get reassurance? One day when he’s especially busy and I’m thinking I can’t take it anymore and must break up, I suddenly remember that thing I discovered…with the eardrums and the fabric. I walk to the park to try it. If I still want to break up after this, fine.
Sitting by a creek, my grasping mind vies for domination, but for a second I manage to put my full attention on the sound of the water moving. I find it – the gap in thoughts. The tiniest space opens up. I can breathe, relax. I’m present, alive. When I’m here, I trust there’s something more powerful than my anxious thoughts to manage life.
When I get back home, there is a long text message from my boyfriend thanking me for being patient and gushing about how wonderful I am. Seriously!
I kept doing these mini exercises when I was anxious. The tiny moments of freedom allowed me to relax into weeks and months, now years, of being in a relationship with this man.
I once heard Dr. Robert Firestone say that a person should “sweat it out” when they’re anxious and out of their comfort zone due to being loved. I hunted down the following gem from the book Fear of Intimacy by him and Joyce Catlett: (A person) “has to sweat it out when things get close with other people, and they have to learn to suffer the pain of being loved and not provoke rejection… When the relationship is good… they have got to sweat that out, like an addict who goes cold turkey. They have to take a chance and not damage the relationship. They can feel like damaging it and they can share that they feel like damaging it, but they must not do it. If they do, they end up back where they started—there’s no growth. If they sweat it out, then they do grow.”
I think that’s what happened for me. At a point when I could have blown the whole connection to smithereens, I used mindfulness to stay calm long enough to sweat the anxiety out, and grew into a person who could better receive the love. I also had a therapist and several close friends who supported me closely through the process. Having people in my corner, who rooted for my growth rather than my old stories, was everything.
The cool thing is that mindfulness works for anything and everything. If I’m angry and my knee jerk reaction is to call someone and make them hear me, I can listen to the wind or the sound of traffic first. When I talk to the person AFTER surrendering into that now space, I’ll be more calm. Or if I’m feeling sad and my mind is adding to the misery with a running narrative of doom, I’ll focus on the sound of my breathing and suddenly feel okay; I can be present with the bittersweet feelings without the punishing downer of the thoughts.
I have come to believe that being present in the moment, through my senses, is the elixir for pretty much everything that ails me. It doesn’t mean I won’t feel emotions; it simply detaches me from the critical, misguided thoughts that cause me to suffer unnecessarily, and to make harmful relationship decisions.
In real life, I don’t use the word ‘mindfulness’ very much at all. That’s because it works better for me if I don’t label it. I’d rather not turn it into a discipline that goes on my to-do list. I like to activate it on the fly, throughout the day. If I’m irritated or stressed, I can take a few seconds to put my attention on my senses and get a clean slate, a fresh start, a moment that’s perfect just as it is.
There is no denying that whatever you want to call it, ‘mindfulness’ is a powerful tool. It opens up the space between feeling and reacting, trigger and response – and in that space, we get to intentionally choose who we want to be in our relationships and in our lives.
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