Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
My anxiety is caused my unwanted thoughts. Thoughts that I dissect, reevaluate, analyze, just tear apart until I think I have justified them and them boom, cycle repeates, or the thought gets replaced with another. I believe this is an OCD issue and I'm following that group as well but I thought I'd ask for some help on here. So lots of my anxiety, almost all of it actually, stems from past mistakes or things I regret whether they be thoughts I had, feelings I felt, or actions. I've been working hard on forgiving myself for feelings and thoughts because I can't control those. It's been difficult. This morning though, my thoughts are about things I may or may not have done when my husband and I first started dating. I know I did the action but I don't know if we were together. One is that I made out with someone when I was really drunk. I told him that already, however today I'm feeling like it is imperative to tell him that we were laying down. Doesn't change what we were doing, just kissing, but I feel like that makes it worse and he deserves to know. However, I'm not even sure this happened while we were dating, and he's already forgiven me if it did so if I bring it up again it will just make matters worse, right? But then how do I not feel like a horrible liar? I constantly feel like he needs to know every detail of anything I've done that would hurt him. But I think if I tell him then I'm hurting him unnecessarily. Another action, I texted something sexual about another man (one I had been with in the past) to my sister and I'm not if my husband and I were together at the time. If so I feel really really horrible about what I said. I told him I made a sexual remark to my sister about another man and he said it doesn't matter however now I feel like I need to tell him exactly what I said. I'm going crazy. Someone help me out please, what should I do?
You're in good company. I've also felt anxiety over similar things, feeling as though I needed to reveal every deep dark secret of my past to my husband. It can make you feel like a terrible, dishonest person. While I'm sure our experiences are different, I'm sure what you're feeling is terrible and I'm sorry you have to feel those things. I want to share a couple tidbits that have been helpful for me. Feel free to take them or leave them.
The first is something I heard in a podcast with Brene Brown (If you haven't listened to any of her stuff or read any of her books I strongly encourage it - she is a therapist who talks a lot about the concepts of shame and vulnerability and how we address these so we can live whole-heartedly). In summary, she said, "When we're feeling bad/ashamed/guilty/anxious we should ask ourselves, 'What am I actually responsible for?'" As I've practiced this, I've realized that a lot of things I'm feeling badly about are moments where I was embarrassed that I said something unintelligent, or I accidentally hurt someone's feelings, or I did something that didn't feel wrong at the time, but now I wish I hadn't done it... Rarely am I doing anything to maliciously hurt someone. Like every other human being, I have my regrets and make mistakes. We will at times be guilty of having done things that were wrong, again, we're only human. But most of the time we spend fixating on things are instances where we didn't do anything wrong, per say, but we just didn't like the outcome. Again, this response to the question "What am I actually responsible for?" will have different answers depending on the context, but it has relieved me of feeling anxiety over a lot of things I had no control over or didn't intend to hurt anyone.
The second tool I want to share is something I learned in counseling that has been amazingly helpful for me and I think this one may be more applicable to your situation. When we're feeling bad/negatively/angry/sad/ashamed/anxious over something, we should take a moment to stop and identify the thought we are having toward ourselves. Perhaps it's "I'm a dishonest wife," "I'm a bad friend," "I'm dumb," "I need to get my sh#! together"... Once we've identified the thought, replace it with the opposite, even if it doesn't feel true --> "I'm an honest wife," "I'm a thoughtful friend," "I'm learning about myself and becoming a more whole person"... At first it feels foreign, as though you're lying to yourself. I've had to post these positive thoughts around my house so I can be reminded to tell myself them all day long. If we keep telling ourselves how bad we are, then we will eventually believe in that whole-heartedly. However, if we preach loving thoughts to ourselves, we will begin to believe those. We'll actually LIKE and hopefully LOVE ourselves and will be more inclined to give ourselves grace when we acknowledge areas we fall short in.
I hope you find some comfort in this or at least have some new tools to try out. What you decide to tell your husband (or not tell) is up to you and what you truly believe needs to be shared to foster a healthy relationship between you both. I do think that when we take the time to work on our own wellness, it pours into our relationships and allows us to love others better.
I like that you said, "to foster a healthy relationship between you both." Most of the things I want to tell him (like details of past mistakes and deep dark feelings/thoughts) are things that I feel I need to confess to get reassurance from but they are never ever anything that would benefit our relationship. So if I ask myself, "will bringing this up again make it worse or better" I should work on keeping my mouth shut and swallowing the bitter pill lol. <---OR telling myself that I'm an honest person and a committed wife.
Praying for you!
I told that guy stuff he had absolutely no business knowing, let alone asking for, hauling me over the coals for, making me cry for. But hey, I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown at the time and highly suggestible.
I have since got back on my feet and one of the things I have noticed goes away is that urge to purge. I had an interrogating mother with no boundaries who had to hear every last detail. I had this guy with no boundaries who had to hear every last detail.
Now I'm in a relationship with a guy who thinks that the past is the past. The past is what brought us together. The past is what made us who we are.
We don't owe anyone any explanations for our actions. Ever. We are what we are, we did what we did, we have become what we have become.
Who we are is what is important, not what we had to learn to get there.
Or even how we had to learn it.
Just ask yourself if you're fine now. If you are, then let the past wash downstream and away. Nobody is interested and nobody has an interest in it. Honestly. :)