Christian Relationship Help: How Anxiety in Difficult Relationships Contributes to the Dysfunction by Karla Downing
Are you looking for Christian relationship help to enable you to understand how anxiety in difficult relationships contributes to the dysfunction? Then this article will help you.
Anxiety is a sense of disquiet or dis-ease that is experienced as mental or emotional distress. Anxiety isn't comfortable and people usually react to get rid of the anxiety that comes from all types of problems in difficult relationships.
Reactivity takes one of two major forms to manage the anxiety: People either typically under-react or overreact. Here is how each of those are exhibited in the relationship:
1. Under-react - People distance, shut-down, become dependent or incompetent, or avoid feelings by engaging in activity, pursue addictions, and/or withdraw.
2. Overreact - People say too much, try to control, hover, talk, fix, tell others what to do, take the lead, become emotionally intense, fight, blame, push to resolve, and/or seek closeness and reassurance.
The formula works like this: Anxiety + Reactivity = Dysfunction and More Anxiety + More Reactivity = More Dysfunction. The solution is therefore to manage the anxiety in a healthy way so you won't under-react or overreact.
You do this by facing your fears and managing your anxiety to calm things down. This will allow you to make better choices. You also need to learn how to speak the truth in love, let go or things that you can't control, set boundaries, take care of yourself, detach with love, and focus on changing yourself.
Recognizing that your loved ones are also experiencing anxiety in the relationship and reacting to it may help you to understand why they do what they do. This should help you to react less to them. If you can identify the anxiety and deal with it in a more effective way, it will make discussion, understanding, resolution, and discussion more likely and will definitely keep things less dysfunctional and crazy even it only changes your reactions.
God says this about anxiety: "Do not be anxious for anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:6-7, NIV). Peace prevents you from overreacting and under-reacting. It helps you to process the situation by bringing it to the Lord first which allows you to handle it in ways that come not from fear but from strength.
