Anxious in Love: How to Manage Your Anxiety, Reduce Conflict, and Reconnect with Your Partner

by Carolyn Daitch

Healthy relationships require trust, intimacy, effective communication, and understanding. However, if you suffer from chronic anxiety you may have trouble dealing with everyday conflicts and tensions that can arise in relationships. No matter how committed you are, anxiety can leave you feeling distanced from your partner. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to overcome the anxiety-fueled reactions that keep you from achieving true closeness in your relationship.

Written by two experts on anxiety disorders, Anxious in Love offers easy-to-use techniques for calming anxieties and strengthening communication in your relationship. With this book, you will learn to stay centered when faced with conflict, understand your partner’s perspective, and become more independent. By changing the way you react to triggers and stress, you will be able to focus on enjoying time with the one you love, without anxiety getting in the way.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Relationships, Mental Health, Psychology, Health, Science

1 pages, Audio CD

First published December 1, 2012

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not finish. No longer anxious in love

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book offers many useful techniques for dealing with the physiological effects of anxiety and provides scripts for engaging in dialogue with your non-anxious partner; however, I was disappointed that this book offered no techniques for preventing anxiety in the first place. This may be a good place to start for couples that have not been exposed to any sort of couples therapy techniques, but it was not what I was looking for at this stage in my personal growth. My suggestion, in terms of general anxiety prevention, is to look for books that discuss the 'inner critic'. For couples work, I suggest "Hold Me Tight" which is based on Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT).

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone has anxiety. Some cases are worse than others. Some people just get an overwhelmed feeling and others take it out on their loved ones. I suffer badly and my husband suffers equally from my aftermath. I have reccomended this book to others to see if it can help get a better perspective. I hunk that it would be a great book for couples as a work book. It has great exercises. Awesome book!!!

[Michael Mulraney · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who struggles with anxiety, I have been curious as to how my problems affect my ability to communicate and this book has done wonders. It provides not just advice, but assessments and readings that will help you to develop coping mechanisms and a strategy to become a better communicator despite your anxiety. It’s all about repetition and I will be coming back to this book and it’s lessons quite frequently.

[Christina Cater · Rating 1 out of 5]

I expected a lot more from this book. If you have anxiety and have read resources on it before, chances are this is not new information. I also didn't find it helpful for my husband in regard to dealing with my anxiety.

[Delaney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books I’ll have to re-read a few times in order to truly get something out of it, but overall, a great start. The end-goals are to be more aware of your triggers, learn how to manage them effectively, reduce anxiety’s daily burden, and understand how your anxiety affects the people in your life so that you can loosen anxiety’s control over you, communicate effectively in the midst of anxiety, and strengthen your relationships with your loved ones.

As someone who has struggled with anxiety for years, seeing things put into the words I could never find for myself along with an explanation of biological effects of anxiety that I face everyday feels validating. Seeing the perspective of how our loved ones without anxiety feel about how we do (or don’t) handle our anxiety and the cumulating toll it takes on them was humbling.

It was basic and some of the exercises were cheesy (I skipped half of them), but it’s a good building block.

[Murf Reeves · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given Anxious in Love to read by an ex-girlfriend because she has dealt with depression. I took to long to read it and may have missed out on some easier moments, but I learned a great deal. I started reading "Anxious . . ." and my first thought was the authors are using Buddhist meditation techniques but with a different vocabulary, and I thought that was kind of lame. Then I thought further and realized, each person deals with problems in their own way and the verbiage in this book may just be what someone might need. The more I read I ended up examining some of my own anxieties or anxiety-ridden moments. The end of the book provides some really good exercises on how to maintain the balance of attunement and interdependence as well as maintaining some individuality. A good insightful read.

[Jacqueline Marroquin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great tips on how to deal with anxiety in a relationship

They discuss issues that may occur in relationships with anxiety disorders and tips on how to avoid conflicts. Even has exercises on what to write in a daily journal.

[Tamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would be a useful tool for someone without a lot of knowledge of anxiety. Good concrete examples of ways to manage anxiety.

[Jake]

the research on my attachment style went somewhere ig??

[Margaret Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the things I do to prepare for the high holidays is to take stock of all my major relationships. Husband, daughter, step-adults, friends. This book was recommended by a friend. It provides useful tools and exercises for those who have anxiety issues. It relies on guided imagery, and breathing exercises to help find balance. And it works. I was not a fan at first. A little too repetitive (that's actually good) and sometimes too hocus-pocus sounding. Its major flaw is that it is aimed at one person with anxiety issues and assumes the other person in the couple has none. This tripped me up more than once because a couple is really a system and we don't work in a vacuum. However, in the second reading and in working each of the exercises meticulously together with my spouse and an outside consultant, it has helped us to be able to talk about some underlying issues in a way other resources have not.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Blargh. I liked the introductory chapter of this book about how to talk to your partner about anxiety, but after that? If you've ever learned about meditations and done any kind of talk therapy, a lot of the advice is frustratingly simple, formulaic and common sensical-- taking time outs and listing postive attributes of your partner, etc. Blah. Was bored and skimmed much of the second half till I could claim it was "finished". Not recommended.

[Laura Peckyno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anxious in Love is an excellent source of information for everyone dealing with anxiety. Using these simple descriptions, readers identify their anxiety issues and triggers and learn easy techniques to reduce anxiety, stress, and the associated relationship challenges. I highly recommend Anxious in Love to everyone; in this hectic world, we all need better tactics for stress reduction!

[Nat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect for as due to my many anxiety attacks in the past. Its advice truly did help.

[MelAnnD · Rating 5 out of 5]

This an awesome book for couples!!! We all suffer anxiety at some point in our lives and take it out on our partners.

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this through first reads giveaways. I am very anxious in relationships so this is perfect for me.

[Bailey Inderbitzin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone should read this book.