# Intense anxiety and major trust issues..



## johnO77 (Apr 15, 2014)

My name is Johnny, I'm 25 years old and I can't seem to get over my major trust issue. It effects my everyday life, I can't focus on school, on my business, my family, or my gf. 
I've always had bad trust issues with relationships, I honestly blame my self for all the gf's that have left me, or decided to run off with another guy. Luckily! The gf have I have now, has noticed my problem and loves me enough to be by my side. I feel horrible! She's never thrown up any red flags...but it seems like any slight deviation in my conversations with her, throws up all kinds of red flags that aren't even there! I start rambling on about nonsense, and throwing accusations. She's told me before that she has to walk on egg shells when she talks to me because she doesn't know if I'm going to over analyze (which I do a lot) what she said and start throwing those pitiful red flags. I know I have an issue..unfortunately it took us breaking up to realize that, but she was willing to take me back and help me through everything. But it seems like when I start to feel "ok" my mind just goes crazy..and I start to get really bad anxiety and I usually don't eat for a day or two. 

She has a little girl, and I know her father has to be in the picture, and he is actually here for a month doing training for his job. But I get real bad anxiety when she has to go drop her little girl off to see him and she usually stays for about an hour talking to him about the little girl...but it sets my anxiety off real bad. 

I'm hoping this will help a bit, I know that when I have problems with my BMW I hit the forums for help and advice... Thanks all.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

Johnny, welcome to the TAM forum. The issue you describe sounds like you may have a very strong fear of abandonment. If so, you likely also have difficulty with perceiving "object constancy." That is, you may have difficulty perceiving loved ones -- such as your GF -- as having essentially the same personality from day to day. 

Those two problems together would result in your having great difficulty in trusting your GFs. Until you learn how to trust yourself, you will be unable to trust others. Do you recall ever being abandoned or abused in early childhood?


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## johnO77 (Apr 15, 2014)

Yes, sexually abused and abandoned..the abandonment came from seeing my sister go through the same thing and when she told my mother..my mom kinda shrugged it off and still welcomed the guy around. I felt abandoned, mainly because I saw throne person in my life that is supposed to be there for me just brush off something like that. I just hate the feeling, I feel like I can make my own feelings but when I do my emotions just spiral out of control and I throw up red flags left and right...I never have any solid evidence, but I always try to be two steps ahead of the women in my relationships and it usually ends up in a argument.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

johnO77 said:


> Yes, sexually abused and abandoned.


Johnny, given that you have a strong fear of *abandonment*, there is a good chance you also have another strong fear that often accompanies it. It is the fear of *engulfment*, i.e., a suffocating feeling that occurs during intimacy -- with the result that you find yourself often pushing your GFs away (by creating arguments) immediately after an intimate evening or great weekend spent together. Does this sound familiar?

Having both of those fears is especially problematical because they both lie at the opposite ends of the *very same spectrum*. If this is true for you, it puts you in a lose-lose situation with your GFs because every time you back away from one fear you are necessarily drawing closer to the conditions that trigger the other fear. 

What will happen is that, like nearly every other human being, you will crave intimacy. Yet, having only a fragile, unstable sense of who you are, you will find that you start feeling engulfed by the woman's personality during intimacy. It is an uncomfortable -- sometimes frightening -- feeling of being suffocated and losing yourself in her personality. 

To get breathing room, your subconscious will protect you by creating a fight -- over nothing at all -- as a way of pushing her away. Because that "projection" of your bad feelings onto her happens entirely at the subconscious level, you will consciously believe that you are angry with her over the minor issue you are fighting about. If you are doing this, you will find that you usually start most fights immediately after an intimate evening or midway through a long vacation -- i.e., when you are getting more intimacy than you can comfortably handle. 

Importantly, because argument is created entirely by your subconscious, you will consciously be convinced that you are angry about the minor issue being fought over. The anger is not really coming from that issue, however. Rather, it is anger you've been carrying inside since the abandonment you experienced in childhood. That anger is being released because the intimacy, in triggering your fear of engulfment, also triggers a release of that pent-up anger.

Yet, as you push away the woman and back off, you will find that you are creating the condition -- i.e., the distance -- that triggers your fear of abandonment. If this is happening, you will find yourself -- days or weeks later -- frantically trying to pull her back closer to you by being extra sweet and caring around her. And, by drawing near to her, you will soon find you've started the push-away/pull-back cycle all over again. Does this push-pull pattern of behavior sound very familiar to you -- or am I mistaken about what I've just said?


> I feel like I can make my own feelings but when I do my emotions just spiral out of control.


If your childhood trauma occurred before age five or six, there is a good chance it interfered with your emotional development. To survive a trauma at that young age, you would have had to rely very heavily on the primitive ego defenses available to a young child. These defenses include denial, projection, temper tantrums, black-white thinking, and magical thinking. Although they are primitive, these defenses nonetheless served you very well, allowing you to survive childhood abuse. 

Yet, because you were so heavily dependent on them for survival, you may have refused to let go of them and replace them with more mature emotional skills. These advanced skills include learning how to regulate your emotions, how to do self-soothing to calm yourself down quicker, how to avoid black-white thinking, how to trust yourself so you can start trusting others, how to "stay in the moment" instead of escaping into daydreams, how to intellectually challenge your intense feelings instead of accepting them as self-evident "facts."

If you missed out on learning those skills in childhood, there is no reason that you cannot learn them now. You can make a little progress by reading books about it. But you won't get far on your own. What is needed is guidance from a professional who is trained in teaching those skills. These therapy programs are offered by psychologists in most major cities in North American and Europe. 

Although it is called "therapy," it is not the traditional "talk therapy" where one discusses their past. Instead, it is a training program that teaches specific skills for controlling one's own emotions. This is important because, until you're able to better regulate your emotions, you will often experience such intense feeings (e.g., jealousy, abandonment, suffocation) that they will distort your perceptions of your GF's intentions and motivations.


> I never have any solid evidence, but I always try to be two steps ahead of the women in my relationships and it usually ends up in a argument.


If your abandonment fear is great enough, you will always be expecting that -- once your GF sees how truly empty you are on the inside -- she will leave you immediately. If you feel this way, the result is that you will subject her to an endless series of sh!t tests. As soon as she passes another test, you will raise the bar for the next one -- because the abandonment feeling you have is so intense that you will be convinced it MUST be true. When feelings are that intense, a person gets no sense of peace or relief from the absence of "any solid evidence." Does this sound familiar?


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## johnO77 (Apr 15, 2014)

Yes use and yes...but not so much the engulfment, when we have an intimate night, or when we went on our vacation I felt so much closer to her..it's when she's not around that my mind starts to wonder and throw accusations. It is really hard to "stay in the moment" I always catch my self day dreaming, usually it's the worst when something triggers it..but I also day dream about good thing, I love this girl, and I know she loves me..not a lot of women would stay with a guy like me but she's decided to help me through this. That's how I always try to reassure myself that everything is ok, but my emotions usually get the best of me. Honestly, I don't think I know what "being in the moment" feels like, I spend a lot of my day with anxiety or going off into day dream land.

We broke up last week, and I was lucky to get her back so I told her that I would do anything and everything to get over my issues. I started counseling yesterday and plan on doing it for however long it takes.


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## johnO77 (Apr 15, 2014)

We always used to argue all the time before we split up, and now..we don't really argue, it's nice, I don't like her having to walk on egg shells around me. She tells me my trust issue is the only one flaw I really have, any I'm hoping to control it. She knows all about my past, I felt like she had a right to know what set off my anxiety and why I couldn't trust her..and she accepted it, as a matter of fact, she was in the same position as me. I'm really into this girl, and she means the world to me so I will do whatever it takes.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

johnO77 said:


> Honestly, I don't think I know what "being in the moment" feels like, I spend a lot of my day with anxiety or going off into day dream land.


The excessive daydreaming usually serves two purposes. One is to escape the anxiety and stress of dealing with your current feelings. The other is to focus on the past (at which time you were a victim) and the future (being fearful of the expected abandonment). This is why, if you enter a treatment program to learn the skill sets I mentioned, the therapist likely will start off teaching you techniques for "mindfulness," i.e., staying in the present instead of the past and future.


> it's when she's not around that my mind starts to wonder and throw accusations.


You seem to be describing an "object constancy" problem. Learning object constancy starts when we are babies. The first thing we have to learn about it is that mother doesn't cease to exist when she leaves the room and is out of sight. Then, throughout our childhood, we have to learn that other people have personalities that generally do not vary much from day to day and week to week. Your inability to trust your GFs suggests that, perhaps due to your childhood trauma, you did not get very far with that second lesson. If so, the result is that you have great difficulty feeling that you're an important part of your GF's life even when she is not physically near you.

Another result is that you may be doing a lot of the "black-white thinking" I mentioned earlier. If so, you tend to categorize everyone as "all good" (i.e., "with me") or "all bad" (i.e., "against me"). And you will recategorize them from one polar extreme to the other based solely on a minor comment or action that triggers your abandonment fear. If this behavior is true for you, it also will be evident in your frequent use of all-or-nothing expressions such as "you never..." and "you always...." Does this B-W thinking sound familiar? Do you often think of yourself as being a victim and your GF as being the cause of your pain?


> I started counseling yesterday and plan on doing it for however long it takes.


What type of "counseling"? I ask because, until you learn the skill sets you had no opportunity to learn in childhood, marriage counseling is unlikely to be helpful. I suggest you see a clinical psychologist to determine what type of training is needed. Do you live near a big city where you can choose from among many different psychologists? I ask because skill sets vary greatly among psychologists, as is true for any professionals.


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## johnO77 (Apr 15, 2014)

I do tend to categorize people the way you mentioned, but instead of categorizing them in an anger category its in a "you don't like me category" almost like I feel hurt not angry. The doctor I am seeing is a psychologist, and am anxious to ask him about these skill tests. I noticed that when I tend to daydream I hold my breath and focus in on an object, so I started a breathing exercise to help mellow the anxiety. I do live in a big city, I'll look into seeing a clinical psychologist as well...i don't want this burden anymore, its been with me for as long as I can remember.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

johnO77 said:


> I'll look into seeing a clinical psychologist as well_...._


Johnny, that's good that you're seeing a psychologist instead of a marriage counselor. He very likely is a "clinical" psychologist. I wish you the very best!


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## johnO77 (Apr 15, 2014)

Thanks for all the advice chuck!


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## TikiKeen (Oct 14, 2013)

Hey John? hang in there. Your journey will be amazing, even with life's setbacks. 

Quieting the mind is a skill, just one you haven't learned. Your willingness to learn it, to face fears based on the past and to walk through the pain shows, and you will heal.


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## johnO77 (Apr 15, 2014)

Thanks Tiki! I'm hard at work to fix my issues, it'll be nice to live "in the moment".
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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