Marriage During Covid-19: 5 Tips for Helping Your Anxious Partner
As we’re all fumbling and navigating our ways through this pandemic, it’s kind of like we’re building the plane as we take off. There’s no “right” or “wrong” way to deal with the fears, sadness, and adjustments we’re all experiencing. We often have different coping styles from our partners. One issue that has come up for me over and over from clients, friends, and family surrounds needing support and wanting to give support.
One of the questions I was asked on social media was about how to help your partner cope with heavy anxiety. What an amazing and compassionate question for us to explore! I was certainly excited to dig into this topic in more detail.
First of all, I’d like to say it’s very challenging to have a partner dealing with anxiety. Anxiety is a beast, and it isn’t always logical in its presentation. In reality, anxiety doesn’t always look how you think it will-your partner may be experiencing symptoms and you wouldn’t even know. They may also be driving you crazy with how much they focus on worry or news. Show grace to them, they are suffering. Show grace to yourself, you also have a lot on your shoulders. You’re doing a great job in supporting your partner; you don’t need to fix it, you just need to be there. Take some pressure off yourself.
Educate Yourself on Anxiety-Specifically Anxiety During a Crisis
The way I like to think about it is anxiety is a trick of the brain in the way we typically function in the modern world. We actually need anxiety in our lives, it serves an important function in keeping us safe from harmful situations. But sometimes our brain gets confused, or tricked, as to the seriousness of the threat and the fear overtakes our brains and bodies. Anxiety presents in many forms, there’s no one size fits all. Here’s a great blog on the science of anxiety during a crisis. You can also ask around to get a better understanding of how anxiety presents in others, as well as read some articles or books on the topic. Gaining knowledge about anxiety will help you better understand your partner and create space for empathy.
2. Don’t Inadvertently Feed Into Your Partner’s Anxiety
We often believe we are being kind or helpful by overly accommodating our partner’s anxious thoughts and behaviors. If a task feels too overwhelming because of anxiety, we may instinctively take over that task so our partner doesn’t have to deal with it. I’m sure you can think of a million examples, but let’s dissect one example that may occur in our current pandemic situation.
Let’s say your partner experiences anxiety about going to the grocery store. There could be several triggers in this scenario- fear of germs, fear of contact, changes in the layout of structure of the store, limited quantities of needed supplies/ingredients, etc. In an effort to help your partner, or to relieve your own overwhelm of hearing about the concerning trip to the store, you jump in to take on that chore. Your intentions are admirable, but you are inadvertently making the anxiety worse.
When your partner’s anxiety increases, you take away that uncomfortable feeling by going to the store for him/her. The next time the anxious feeling returns, their brain tells them the only way to get rid of it is for someone else to do the thing for us. This cycle also reinforces the idea that there is in fact something to be feared or threatening about the experience of going to the grocery store, maintaining and heightening the anxious symptoms.
But it’s also reinforcing to you; the excessive worry your partner expresses is likely burdensome and perhaps annoying or overwhelming. When you agree to take on that task, the aversive experience of hearing about the worry goes away and next time anxiety is expressed you’ll jump in again to calm the exchange. This can feel like a good short-term solution, but can have damaging long term effects.
It’s kinda like buying the candy bar for your toddler when they have a tantrum-we’ve reinforced their behavior of throwing a fit to get candy, and finding a way to make the tantrum stop reinforces you giving them the candy bar. The kindest way to help your partner is to challenge them to face their anxiety and not try to fix it for them.
3. Set Boundaries for Yourself
Although you may want to (or not?), you can’t pour yourself completely into managing your partner’s anxiety. Unless you’re their therapist, which NO!, you can’t be the person providing treatment to help them deal. It is THEIR responsibility to learn how to cope with their anxiety, although you can be supportive and encouraging.
It is YOUR responsibility to manage your own feelings and reactions, which include setting boundaries. One way to do that is setting time to talk about worries and fears, and when the time is up making a concerted effort to talk about other subjects. It could be you still doing what you need to do, such as attending a virtual gathering with your friends, even if it’s something your partner currently isn’t able to do or chooses not to participate in. You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of someone else, so consider what boundaries you need in place so that you can make space for yourself, your partner, and the relationship.
4. Relax Together
Find ways to relax together. Right now you have an amazing opportunity to practice doing new things as a couple. Try walking in a park, a meditation app, mindfulness techniques, taking a bath together, reading, playing games, puzzles, building legos, etc. It’s good to focus on individual ways to relax or improve our coping skills, but I think it’s important to explore ways to do this together with the understanding that different things work for different people. More than likely, some things will work for both of you, especially if you’re doing them together.
5. See Your Partner & Provide Reassurance
When all is said and done, your partner doesn’t need you to take away their anxiety. You can’t possibly do that anyway, so we can just take that of the table. Your partner needs you to see that their struggle is real and recognize their pain. Be with them, see them, and let them know you are there and you will figure it out together.
The quickest and most effective way to dissipate the anxious energy is to recognize it, face it, and destroy it with the reassurance that we’re safe and have the capability to solve our problems while taking a more grounded and realistic look at how dangerous the threat is. In the case of this pandemic, we should acknowledge there are scary things happening and we have real reasons to be fearful. Minimizing that or pretending it’s not true won’t help your anxious partner. Acknowledging that fear, sitting with it, and providing reassurance is the best way you can help them cope.
More Tips!
I dove more deeply into some pretty interesting points about anxiety and how to help your partner. But I wanted to provide some additional tips for communicating about anxiety specifically. Understanding the bigger picture is super helpful, but sometimes it’s challenging to figure out how to put that into practice. The video below has practical tips on: