How Can I Help My Partner With Their Anxiety?

How do I support my partner who's dealing with anxiety? Because I think that's a very common thing that people deal with today. So what would you say when people, you know, sort of pose that question?

Anytime somebody says, hey, the person I love is struggling with anxiety, the person I love is struggling with these things. The two things I always tell them is, number one, make sure you're a safe place to land, which means you probably have to go work on you. And that's a scary place for a lot of us because it's way easier to help somebody else than it is to look in the mirror and say, I need to lose £50 and I need to, to pay these credit cards off and I need to go sit with a trauma counselor and talk about my abuse and I need to call my dad and say I'm sorry. Like it's much easier to sit with somebody else. So that's number one is you have to do your work to be a safe landing place. And number two, you have to seek connection, not seek to solve. What does that mean? That means, hey, honey, would you be willing to sit down with me?

Let me say this way, the state of our finances scares me to death and I can't breathe. Would you be willing to sit down with me and make a budget? Like just plan and when you make a budget, and it's funny, I've been sending people to make a budget with their spouse for years. Because when you sit down and make a budget, you have to decide what matters to you as a couple. You have to decide what matters, where you're headed, where you want to be someday, what kind of house do you want to live in, what kind of college you want your kids to go to, kind of cars you want to drive. It forces all these other conversations into a who are we gonna be? And. But if you start it with you spend too much and you do this and you're always anxious, then she has to go to war with you. She has to. If you sit down and say, I'm so scared I can't breathe, I'm afraid in 25 years we're gonna have to move back into my parents house within their 80s because we haven't done what we. What I haven't done what I have to do, would you join me in this? And that's the magic moment, right? I think sitting down and seeking connection, not to solve. You know, you'd be less anxious if you just didn't eat grains or sugars. That's not gonna help.

I'm Thinking about changing the way I eat. Would you honor me enough to. To make a whole house change here and just follow me for 30 days? Would you be willing to honor me that way? That was a conversation I had with my wife, and she turned into such a gangster over a period of a year where she just would be like, hey, it's, it's the first of the month. What are we this month? And I'd be like, raw vegan. And she'd be like, okay. And she'd, she'd try to figure something out. And the next month be like, we're just, we're just all carnivore. She'd be like, that sounds weird, but okay. And she, she just rolled with me, but it was because she was doing it a love and honor of, and respect for me, not because I was pointing my finger at her. Right. And so seek connection, man. If you, as soon as you find yourself trying to solve your partner, that is a recipe to spin up that anxiety even stronger and stronger and stronger.

It almost like reinforces that there's something wrong in them 100%.

Instead of honoring there's nothing wrong with, your body's working exactly as it should, let's figure out what's setting those alarms off. And often it is an anxious partner. Often it is, hey, we keep staying up till midnight to watch the next whatever. Can we just go to bed at 9:30? It's often, hey, we have a pot of coffee and then another pot of coffee and then we both get a Red Bull on the way out the door. What if we just chill for a little bit? Often it's, hey, it's October 1st and November. Thanksgiving is hell because your parents tell us what we're doing and we have to spend money we don't have and travel to places and your body just starts ramping it up because it keeps the score, man. It knows what's coming. Even if you're not thinking about Thanksgiving, it sure as hell is because it went through it last year and the year before and the year before. So let's set up some boundaries here. So it's, it's just honoring, oh, sweet. Her alarms are going off, his alarms are going off. Let's get to the bottom of what's actually setting that off and what role can I play in that?

Yeah, I mean, I think a good example of this is like four years ago, I decided to stop drinking it just entirely. You know, I kind of, I, you know, hadn't been drinking a lot. I was having like, you know, a Beer. When I would go out with friends or. Or. Or a couple, you know, sometimes, but.

Or 10. That's cool.

Or. Or a couple or more than that. And, you know, I just decided, like, I want to see what I'm capable of without drinking. And my. My wife was like, well, what about when we go out for dinner? What about, you know, if we have, you know, Italian food? Are you gonna have a glass of wine? And I was like, well, no, no, no. I'm gonna see what this is like. And so she didn't join me at first, but then probably about, you know, five, six months into it, we went out for dinner, and I said, you know, you're gonna order a glass of wine? She said, no, I think I'm okay. And then, you know, a couple months went by and she hadn't had any drinks, and I was like, are you gonna, like, are you joining me or what? What's happening? What's happening here? And she. And she was like, oh, yeah, no, no, I'm not drinking anymore either. And she started, you know, she started, like, telling her family that she wasn't drinking. I was like, oh, that's super interesting. And so it's. It's fascinating how we can affect change in a relationship and how. And how often we're trying to sell the other person on the idea of the change versus actually just executing on it and moving in the direction and creating an invitation and opening for them to join us. And then all of a sudden, we find them, you know, rowing in the same direction as us.

Well, and I think from. Especially for men, but for women, too, for everybody. This idea that I have to hold my partner so tight that they can't breathe. The moment you can open your hand and realize there is one person on planet Earth I can control, and that's me. That's it. And I would love if my partner would lose the 30 pounds because they don't sleep. They're miserable. They don't like the way they look. They don't like the way they. They take it out. I would love that. There is nothing I can do, but I can make sure that I'm taking care of me, and I can make sure that I'm whole and that I'm well and possibly I'm modeling. Here's what this could look like. That's. That's it. That's. That is it. And you can say, I'm worried about you and I love you. I'm worried about your health. You can say those things, but I can control my thoughts. And my actions and that's it. And I think that's why we all get this existential angst around election time because there's so much drum up and there's so much build up and the pressure is so great. We get one vote. I get my vote. And that vote matters. That vote is super important. I took my kid into the, the voting booth during the last election because I want him to see the process and how it worked and who his old man was. All that. But we only get one. We get one toss of the, of the, the ping pong ball at the carnival and that's it. And then we go on to the next. And so it's just. There's no relief. We can control us. That's that. That's that. And the moment I can release my wife from my control is the moment then we can start having a marriage worth. Worth fighting for.

Yeah. Choice. Right. Like reinforcing that the other person has a choice. That we have a choice and that one another's choices actually matter in the relationship. Because I think so often we're not actually asking somebody for their genuine choice. We're saying here's what I want.

Here's what I want you to do. Yeah. You mentioned something important. I think anytime. It's important to know anytime we make a change, we disrupt the homeostasis of our current relationships. And even if you like you stop drinking. I bet every facet of your life got better. Your sleep got better. Your ability to pay attention got better. Your. You became a better husband and it left your wife on an island. And whether she means to or not, her body is going to try to drag you back too. It may cost. She may pick at you a little bit more. Try to start a fight a little bit more. Or hassle you when you're tired a little bit more. Not trying to like I'm going to get him to drink again. Not at all. But her body wants to feel like the way it always has felt in relationship with Connor. And you both have to begin to create a new relationship where we're going to be where we're going to create a new homeostasis. And that's why losing weight so hard, that's why I quit drinking so hard. Because all these other relationships get disrupted and they all want to pull you back like a tractor beam and it's, it's. You just got to know that's coming and it norms it and then you can go on to the next right.