Anxiety is a powerful condition. It can challenge your ability to access a calm, clear-headed perspective. Anxiety can use up a tremendous amount of psychic energy as it causes you to scan the environment for real or perceived threats. Sadly, it can also make you a controlling person.
It’s exhausting as you do the mental gymnastics to try and figure out how you’ll fare in innumerable possible worst-case scenarios.
And, anxiety can take a toll on your relationships…
Is your anxiety making you a controlling person?
Anxiety, and the fear that underlies it, grasps for control to make things that are out of your control feel more manageable.
Sometimes, this manifests as taking over in ways that the people closest to you don’t actually enjoy.
Consider the following possibilities:
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Do your family or friends feel that they can’t be themselves around you?
- Do they feel that they can’t express carefreedom, spontaneity or take risks in your presence because it evokes too much of your anxiety?
- Are they not allowed to eat certain foods, drive a car, express certain parts of their personality, or go to specific places, because it would make you too nervous?
If so, that might be something for you to look at.
Your anxiety could be making you a controlling person.
And the reality is that no one wants to feel controlled.
If your anxiety is negatively impacting the people you’re closest to, it might be time to come up with some new solutions to manage it. After all, managing mental health is ultimately an inside job.
Anxiety tends to overestimate the possibility of threats and underestimate our ability to handle whatever comes our way.
While the people around you can offer support, relying on them to manage your fears isn’t fair to them, and it could undermine the quality of your relationships.
3 Tips to help you manage your anxiety:
1. Develop self-awareness. What are you afraid will happen/what are your fears?
2. Cultivate resilience. If the worst-case scenario happened, how would you handle it? (*Check out another post on resilience here)
3. Look forward with clarity, humility, and optimism. Will any of this matter in a year? In five years?