Why does anxiety make us doubt?

[Joellie]

Eugh im sick of it. I thought i was over the whole "do i love my boyfriend" thing when i know i do! but my anxiety randomly decides to make me doubt it again. I feel like im going nowhere, i really thought id made progress!

It makes me feel so confused :(I just feel like is it me doubting it or is it the anxiety and blablabla! Im sick of it :(:weep:

[giger]

i think i have the same problem. my boyfriend is amazing better then anyones.lol.. but then there are these days where.. wow... i doubt everything in my life.. including him.. its suuuucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...ugh!!

[Joellie]

it really gets me down, because people always go on about "being in love is different to loving someone" and i get all paranoid about how i feel. I really wish he was here with me right now because i know then i would feel that i love him.
I feel this is taking over my life.

[charlotte83]

It sounds like a sort of ocd thing, they call it relationship ocd and its quite common. People without anxiety/ocd etc can ask themselves the same question and get a satisfactory answer of yes or no and move on but with ocd you just get stuck in a constant loop and when you finally think "yes I do love my bf", the ocd kick is with "what if I don't, how do I know, I need some kind of proof that I do...." but you don't. You have to have faith in yourself and your ability to make decisions, the less time you give to the obsessive thoughts, the less often they will crop up, trust me I know I have had ocd for 10 years and its the only thing thats helped me. Next time you get an thought like that, try not to engage with it and analyze it, just accept the thought and let it be there but don't do anything else and it time it will fade. I have all kinds of ocd type thoughts over the years and this is the only thing that helps, even if it takes time, it will help evntually.

[Joellie]

Thanks, yeah i was just at my councelling session and she said the same thing. She said theyre just questions but as long as you already know the asnwer why do you need to prove to your mind? Like i always think "what if the love i think is love isnt really?" and i always argue with "but i do love him" so theres my answer i should just try to ignore the question. Il try to do this, after i talk it out properly with my counceller i can think ration with the thoughts.

[bellabessnjet]

Hi Joellie,
Funnily enough my Dad asked me on Monday if I loved my Husband. And I hesitated, and he said some people would say because you didn't answer straight away that you didn't love him. To which my reply was, at the moment I'm struggling to feel anything, yet if someone was to point a gun at my Husband and or son I would not hesitate to stand in front of them, theyd have to kill me first. (Obviously feeling depressed puts a different twist lol) but before the depression I always felt like this. I dont know what love is, I dont know what love feels like, maybe its different for everyone, all I know is that since meeting my hubby and having our son, lifes been hard (extremely hard) but ive never wanted to give up or leave them. The situation Yes, but nor them, I would not be without them or their different disabilities. I'll let you make your own minds up whether this is love, but its my version of it, and when left alone as a family we're really good together.

[Joellie]

Yeah, i know what you mean. My counceller said that i should stop asking people what love is and looking on the internet becasue everyone thinks of love differently and only i know what my version of love is. She said after all the expensive research therapists have done to do with the emotion of love they can never pin point it to an exact feeling. So i guess i have to trust my self and my judgment like charlotte83 said. It gets hard to trust myself when im in that state but its something im working on :)

I am positive but the depression muffles out any positive feelings i may get like "i cant wait to see you" instead i feel "oh your coming down" but i know il like it when hes here. I know i love him on my own terms and were still relatively young im not naive to think that we will be together forever! We might well be, il give my best shot at keeping us good forever but i know from life things happen. I just want the NOW to be good.

[Bill]

Joellie:hugs:

Don't let these thoughts make you feel sick. As Charlotte says....Next time you get an thought like that, try not to engage with it and analyze it, just accept the thought and let it be there but don't do anything else and it time it will fade. Train yourself to remember they're just irrational thoughts being created by your anxiety and they're NOT real.:hugs:

As for my definition of loving someone?............


Being there

To be there in your highs and lows,
When you feel so ill that time goes slow,
To love and comfort, to dry your tears,
When all around fills you with fears,

To tend and care when you feel so alone,
Providing a listening ear to all your moans,
To be there when needed, to catch you when you fall,
Providing support each time you call,

To be your loyal friend for life,
When just living means daily strife,
To hold your hand, to lend a shoulder to cry on,
When the future appears bleak and all hope feels gone,

To always be there to help you live,
This much I promise I’ll always give,
To be that light when all seems black,
When you feel so lost, I’ll shine the way back.

If you want to do all those things for someone special to you, surely that's loving them?!?....and I bet you'd do all that for your b'f so that would mean all the doubts you hear are meaningless so don't deserve your attention.:hugs:

[Joellie]

I know, thanks bill :) Thats a nice poem. I dont know what my definiton of love is because it changes sometimes. But generally i know i care for nick, want to be with him, like being with him when im around him, i think hes attractive etc and even though theres not a physical thing there to say "hey this is love" whenever someone says like "well if your doubting then maybe you need to move on" i can only say "no i dont want to because i know i love him" So i guess i need to just trust myself because otherwise i think il go back downhill again lol

[nat38]

Funnily enough my Dad asked me on Monday if I loved my Husband. And I hesitated, and he said some people would say because you didn't answer straight away that you didn't love him. To which my reply was, at the moment I'm struggling to feel anything, yet if someone was to point a gun at my Husband and or son I would not hesitate to stand in front of them, theyd have to kill me first.

your post made me cry.
i always feel that way about my husband. and that's one of the things makes me 'know' how much i love him.

for some reason i feel better now but a few minutes ago my anxiety was driving me mad (that's why i came to the forum...)

he's been away for a couple of days in a year course that he just started. we had a chat on the phone and he told me course schedule had changed and from next week he would not need to stay over there and he could go and come home the same day. my reaction was kind of neutral. i don't think i felt happy. or i did not feel as happy as i thought i 'should' feel. then i thought 'why did i react this way?' and that go me anxious and then i started....'if i feel so anxious about this, there must be a reason, it must mean something, surely 'normal' people feel happy, do i want to be alone, do i love him enough, etc etc ....you know the cycle.
in 5 minutes, and since then, i analised and over analised our entire relationship and got to no conclusion, apart from the fact that there is something seriously wrong with me.

why? what are those reactions/feelings of anxiety?
thinking about it now, i think that what made more and more anxious was the thought that 'it must mean something' that the reaction itself.
yet why? how do you stop that?

then i read this post, and something clicks. most of the anxiety is gone.

what the hell is going on with me?




ps - sorry i did not mean to steal your post joellie

[phil06]

I'm also bad with doubt at the moment. OCD and anxiety makes you want to doubt. Have confidence in yourself and know it's how you act and not what your thoughts say. We all get thoughts some true some false.

[IwantClarity]

Is anyone still having this doubt issue with their relationship? I would love to talk to some people that have been through this before. I am goint through something like this at the moment and am having a hard time with anxiety (obsessive thoughts and worry) about the situation.

I had absolutely no doubt about my feelings towards my partner until a few weeks ago, when I recieved a hello message from an old flame, and since then I started thinking about the fact that he messaged me and then I started thinking well if im reacting this way does that mean that I don't love my man as much as I thought I did, and now I am on a spiral of questions in my head that I am finding hard to control. I am taking 100mg of Zoloft but they are yet to kick in.

Can anyone offer any advise on this. I just want to be how I was feeling before my old flame contacted me.