Meditation On Relationship Anxiety
Feelings of worry, insecurity, or doubt can arise in all kinds of relationships, whether with romantic partners or friends. In this meditation, we will focus on understanding why we experience relationship anxiety, which will help us overcome it.
Transcript
Go ahead and find the meditation posture.
Push the crown of the head up towards the ceiling.
And start settling in.
And now take a deep,
Deep breath in.
And exhale.
And once again,
Super deep breath in.
And exhale.
And once again,
Super deep breath in.
And exhale.
Good,
Good,
Good,
Good.
All right.
Now,
Put yourself in that place of relationship anxiety.
So see yourself in a situation with the other,
Maybe with a romantic partner or even with just friends.
And then,
You know,
Kind of shape the scene in such a way that the anxiety come up.
And then notice the images.
Like,
Do you see the other person's face?
What do you imagine would happen?
And now here we're going to take the pro-symptom position.
So we're going to kind of seek out how this symptom of anxiety makes sense.
So now finish this sentence for me.
So it makes sense that I am anxious in this relationship because so-and-so.
That's right.
And then as you see that,
Notice the body.
What does the body feel like?
What thoughts come up around this?
And now just notice everything.
That's right.
And now,
Obviously,
I mean,
It's okay to see how what's coming up is neurotic or problematic or distorted.
But once again,
See how this makes sense for you.
That it makes sense that you would have these thoughts.
These emotions and so forth.
Okay,
Good.
All right,
Now we're going to kind of come at this a bit differently.
So there you are in this relationship that would generally cause you anxiety.
And now ask yourself,
In this relationship,
What is it that I need?
What is it that I desire?
What is it that I want?
And now,
What is your expectation of how the other will respond to that desire?
What is your expectation?
Give that space.
Just think about that.
And now,
How do you respond to their anticipated response to your desire?
So,
Okay,
So you have your desire.
They respond.
Again,
And this is imaginal.
You're just imagining how they'll respond.
And now,
How did that response affect you?
Okay.
All right,
And now,
Now go back to the anxiety.
Kind of feel into it.
Allow the image thoughts to arise.
Allow the body tensions to come up.
And now ask yourself,
What kinds of earlier experiences have I had that have contributed to my kind of anxious,
We'll say,
Posture around this relationship?
So go ahead and look back,
Looking back,
Maybe even to childhood,
And see if you can find that early experience that contributed to this negative expectation.
Okay,
So see yourself in this old memory.
And now notice how you feel the body tensions,
The emotions,
The thoughts that are coming up in this old memory that you believe to be connected to current adult relationship anxiety.
Okay.
Now here,
Really see how this makes sense.
It makes sense that you would have anxiety under this condition.
And now,
Again,
Notice what's going on in this scene.
How is it that what is going on affected you?
How did this impact your kind of view of self in the world,
Like your concept of self in the world?
That's right.
And now,
In this old negative scene where you,
Which contributed to your current relationship anxiety,
Notice back then,
What is it in this scene that you want?
What is your wish?
And now,
How did the other or others in the scene respond to your wish?
Now,
Don't get caught up on whether or not they were aware of your wish.
So how did they respond to what it is that you wanted?
Often it's the case that they didn't even see it.
They didn't even see your desire,
Your need.
And then now,
How did you respond to their response to your need?
What was that like for you that your need,
Your want was not met?
Good.
Good.
And I'll just remind everybody that,
You know,
What we're really doing is just trying to reprocess all these memories,
See it,
See the distortion and integrate.
And so these different kind of exercises help us do that.
So now,
Go back to the scene where you had an experience that is now contributing to your adult anxiety within relationships.
And now,
What's going on for the other person or people in this scene?
How are they seeing things?
What is their view?
And here,
The purpose of this is not to,
Like,
Invalidate your view,
But sometimes just popping out of your own view and trying to understand the intentional stance of the other can help clarify things.
So see what was going on for the other in this scene.
Likely,
Here,
This would be your parents.
What do you think they are thinking?
And see if you can name that.
You can even speak it out loud.
And see how their view of you and of the situation contributed to how they behaved.
And now,
See how their view of things,
Which motivated their behaviors,
And now see how their behaviors impacted you,
Had an effect on you.
That's right.
Keep going.
And now,
Again,
Thinking about how their behavior impacted you,
Such in,
To first,
Emotions.
What are the emotions that are coming out?
And now,
What does this feel like in the body?
And now,
What thoughts about self,
Other,
And world are coming up?
Okay.
And now,
Now have the perfect nurturers come into the scene and they see your distress.
And then also the perfect nurturers are these parent-like figures that are perfectly suited to you.
So the perfect nurturers,
And they see your distress.
They attune to you.
And so now here,
Really feel into this quality of being seen and known,
And kind of through the eyes of compassion and understanding.
And now,
Have the perfect nurturers comfort you.
But maybe they just hold your hand or give you a hug,
Or maybe they don't give you any physical contact.
It's whatever you want.
But as they're attuning to you and trying to comfort you,
Now explain to them what is unfinished.
Explain to them what you feel is still unresolved about this old scene,
These old experiences.
And they really want to understand.
That's right.
Keep going.
That's right.
Keep giving voice to what is unfinished,
What you're still struggling with,
And explain it to the perfect nurturers.
They really want to understand and help you.
That's right.
Keep going.
That's right.
That's right.
Good.
And now,
Now in the voice of the perfect nurturer or nurturers,
Have them feed back to you what it is that they understand.
And then also,
I want you to feel into a kind of a slightly different perspective as you hear them feed back to you kind of what your trouble was,
How this still affects you,
What is unresolved and so forth.
Go ahead and do that now.
So they feed back to you what they've heard.
That's right.
And then now,
As they're feeding this back to you,
They comfort you.
They soothe you.
Good.
And now,
Now dissolve the scene.
And float up above this scene,
Up above the meditation.
And now,
What is it that you see here?
What do you notice?
What are the insights?
Good.
Keep reinforcing those insights.
Kind of keep massaging them into your psyche.
Okay,
Good,
Good,
Good.
And now,
Now see your real adult life unfold before you.
And see yourself applying these insights.
Also,
See yourself having a little bit more patience and understanding towards yourself.
Maybe even a little bit more patience and understanding towards others.
Visualize that.
And now,
See yourself in the relationship.
And then see the same old anxieties coming up.
But now,
There's just a little bit more awareness,
Understanding,
Compassion.
See how this anxiety that's coming up is a little bit less worrisome,
That you're a little bit less reactive.
And now,
Notice how this exercise is equipping you with a whole new way to see life.
And how you can just kind of step outside of this relationship anxiety.
Step into a kind of quality of openness,
Even excitement about the relationship.
Good.
Good.
Making a deep impression of that.
Okay.
I'll count from five to one.
When I get to one,
You'll be awake and present in the room,
Settled in the experience.
Five,
Four,
Three,
Two,
One.
Awake and present in the room.
Settled in the experience.
