How to live with an anxious person

An anxious person is sure that the world is full of real threats and it is simply impossible to survive in it without special precautions. “He constantly expects problems, so he worries,” says Anna Varga. “At the same time, tired of the constant tension, he seeks to protect himself from his own anxiety, for which he chooses one of three common behavior strategies.

Someone makes his life as predictable as possible: he tries to foresee, check and calculate everything. Usually he is still trying to control the people around him, especially those close to him.

Another protects himself with the help of rituals: for example, he compulsively steps or does not step on cracks in the sidewalk, believes in all kinds of signs, surrounds himself with all sorts of amulets.

And someone tries to avoid, as far as possible, meetings with people, new relationships, projects – everything that can cause anxiety. And then his life is reduced to complete monotony.

But all anxious people sincerely believe that in any situation you can and should strive to protect yourself by 100%. From the outside, it is obvious that such efforts take away a lot of strength and health from such people – and lead to almost nothing. But how to explain this to someone who is used to worrying about everything? How can I help him without hurting his feelings?

The logic of emotions

It is not easy to understand an anxious person, and even to him many people seem inadequate. Maybe that’s why couples are so rare in which one of the two would be really anxious, and the other careless. Although it is these people who are often united by long-term friendship.

“Love occurs between people with similar levels of anxiety. Restless people are “of the same blood”, despite the fact that their anxiety zones may not coincide, Anna Varga explains. – They worry for various reasons and often do not take the feelings of another seriously.

For example, a mother worries about her son-schoolboy: the class teacher clearly “sharpenes a tooth on him.” The husband assures her that there is no cause for concern, but she is simply inadequate. At the same time, he himself is worried, for example, because he parked the car unsuccessfully: it can be scratched, etc.”

“My sister sees a threat in everything and expects a dirty trick from everywhere. And when something really serious happens, she just loses her head,” says 32-year-old Irina. – When my 10-year-old niece Sasha fell off her bike, my sister literally sobbed: “How could I let this happen!” And then for several days she did not let go of her daughter a single step.

All attempts to cheer her up, to prove that nothing terrible had happened – a slight bruise on her arm, but it could have been worse – offended and annoyed her. It seemed to her that we completely did not understand the gravity of the situation.

“When a person is anxious, he is in the world of emotions,” explains Anna Varga. – Talking about his experiences, he often reinforces them with demonstrative behavior – and all so that his feelings are not questioned, that he is pitied, sympathized, supported.

Being next to him, relatives, as a rule, try to cool his emotions and speak to him from the point of view of logic, from the position of the rational world. He screams: “I feel bad!” – and hears, as it seems to him, a cold answer: “What’s the matter, what happened? Let’s figure it out.” A constructive dialogue does not work, because people speak different languages. As a result, they take offense at each other, become isolated and misunderstanding intensifies.”

When a person screams that he feels bad, but they don’t hear him, he starts screaming even louder, but, as a rule, he only achieves that those close to him go even more stubbornly into their rational world, trying to hide, to abstract from his anxiety.

“As a result, couples come to psychotherapists, where one of the spouses has long forgotten how to feel, and the other how to think. One thinks for everyone, the other feels for everyone, and both suffer from the fact that they have lost contact, ”comments Anna Varga.

Start a dialogue

We sympathize with those around us: relatives, work colleagues, friends, neighbors or just random fellow travelers. But empathy without becoming infected with anxiety, without raising your own level of anxiety, is very difficult.

For anxious people, problems and dangers are always real. They do not invent them, but they exaggerate real difficulties and become afraid of them. They are sure that others simply do not know how dangerous the world is.

“People who are prone to anxiety are very reasonable,” says Anna Varga. – In conversations, they give logical arguments and rigidly defend their view of events. You should not start a conversation with them “in hot pursuit”, that is, when they are excited by something and peremptory. It is better to talk later, when the person close to you has cooled down a bit.

Do not question his worries and do not try to convince him. Listen, calm down, agree: yes, it’s disturbing, I understand that it worries you so much, and try to switch his thoughts to something else. And always pay attention to the positive aspects of a particular situation. Be patient and understanding: it takes time for a person to change, so your efforts are a long-term investment.

Understand your motives

Ask yourself: why would I want to help an anxious person stop worrying? Maybe I don’t want him to complicate my life? Or maybe, on the contrary, I behave like an altruist, not allowing my loved one to get bogged down in fears and anxieties? Or is it important for me to do both: I want to help him, save myself and our relationship? Answering these questions honestly will help you understand yourself better.

“Often they say about anxious relatives:“ He just tortured him with his attempts to control everything! How to resist this control? Anna Varga continues. – Let’s think, is it necessary? For example, anxious mothers often say to adults, children living separately: “When you come home, be sure to call.” And those in response are indignant that they are controlled, forced to report.

Of course, maternal fears can be perceived in different ways. But the easiest way to help, to calm her down, is just to call. And it’s not hard at all to do it! If it is possible not to resist this kind of control, it is best not to do so. Just reassure the relatives with the usual actions they need.”

Patience and Tolerance

Mankind has developed different ways to reduce the level of anxiety. The best is polite, correct speech. Jokes with which we would like to reduce the intensity of the situation can be perceived by an anxious person as irony and even mockery.

“Speak correctly, politely, in a low voice, at a slow pace,” says Anna Varga. – Show your interlocutor your openness and goodwill with a smile. Watching, try to understand what affects him most soothingly. Try to gently switch his attention to simpler and “safer” plots of life. The general rule is: first soothing interaction, and then meaningful communication.

Don’t try to “finally fix” anxious people.

By the way, this is precisely the task of psychotherapy – not to eliminate anxiety, but to learn to control it. In this case, sometimes our experiences can even be useful: after all, they allow us to focus on the problem and immediately begin to act to solve it.

But then the anxiety must subside to enable us to perceive life as it is, unpredictable and therefore beautiful.