Living with an anxious partner can be stressful for both people. Often, a supportive home environment makes a difference in the effectiveness of anxiety disorder treatment. Whether the person with anxiety is a spouse, child, parent or roommate, anxiety in relationships can affect everyone involved.
If you’ve made it here, you’ve already taken the right first step. The team at Mental Health Hotline offers resources for people with anxiety and their loved ones, including confidential conversations with trained counselors and directions to resources in your area.
Today, we’re offering our best tips for supporting someone with anxiety.
Educate Yourself About Anxiety Disorders
Knowledge is power; the more you know about anxiety disorders, the better you’re able to provide the right kind of support for your loved one. First, understand the type of anxiety they have. There are several diagnosed types of anxiety:
- Situational anxiety
- Postpartum anxiety
- Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
- Anxiety related to a drug or alcohol addiction
When you understand the specifics of your loved one’s anxiety, you can learn how their disorder affects their daily life and where and when they need support most.
Create a Calming Home Environment
Home should be a haven. When helping someone with anxiety, ensuring their home is a stress-free and calming environment is key. Many people with anxiety are overstimulated by stress and clutter, so organizing their home is a good start.
This process may help the person with anxiety, giving them agency and ownership over their environment. You may work together to infuse the house with calming scents like lavender or lemongrass, paint the walls a light pastel color or even employ feng shui techniques for furnishing their home.
Encourage Open Communication With Your Loved One
Not feeling heard is a common stressor for people with anxiety. They often feel frustrated when a loved one says, “Just don’t worry; it’ll be OK.” Someone living with GAD or situational anxiety would like nothing more than to just be able to stop stressing out!
Instead, recognize that their feelings or fears are valid, even if you don’t understand them. Practice active listening skills and encourage your loved one to talk to you when their anxiety peaks.
Learn Their Triggers
Everyone with an anxiety disorder has certain situations that create an anxious response.
Your loved one may have told you certain triggers they have; helping avoid these triggers and providing support when someone is triggered is critical. Sometimes people with anxiety may not realize that a certain situation is a trigger until, well, they’re triggered with an involuntary anxiety response.
Although some triggers can’t be avoided, do your best to ensure your loved one isn’t thrust into a triggering situation without warning. If they must go somewhere or do something that triggers them, like go on a job interview or travel on a plane, create a plan beforehand to manage their anxious response.
Support Your Loved One’s Self-Care Practices
Self-care, such as proper sleep hygiene, a healthy diet and regular exercise, helps people manage GAD and other types of anxiety. There’s a deep mind-body connection; when you care for your body, you may notice a natural reduction in your anxiety symptoms.
So, if your loved one wants to start eating whole foods instead of processed foods, joins a gym or carves out 15 minutes a day for mindfulness practice, encourage them. Even if you don’t choose to participate in the activities with them, verbal encouragement and support can keep them on the right track.
Practice Anxiety Management Techniques Together
Coping with a loved one’s anxiety can include being an active partner. Mindfulness exercises, a popular form of anxiety treatment, are good for everyone, not just people with mental illness. Other anxiety-calming techniques, from deep breathing to yoga, taking a walk or engaging in a creative activity like painting, are all things you can do with your loved one.
Learning anxiety management techniques together gives you better insight into your loved one’s struggles. And, with your actions, you demonstrate by example that you support them.
Provide Healthy Reassurance During Peak Anxiety Occasions
Talk to your loved one about how to best help them when their anxiety peaks or they have a panic attack. Develop strategies for helping to calm them and ask about their preferences. For example, do they want you to hold their hand or touch them during a panic attack? Do they need to learn breathing techniques or be reminded of their calming place?
Providing reassurance and understanding while respecting their boundaries (and honoring your own) can help you both feel more reassured that you’re prepared for a triggering situation.
Find Anxiety Coping Resources in Your Area
Do you need help finding an anxiety treatment provider near you? Do you need someone to talk to about your feelings of anxiety or your worries about a loved one? We can help. Our Anxiety Hotline provides confidential information and help for people living with anxiety.