Relationship anxiety

[mollyfin]

I hate this about my anxiety. 

I've shown signs of love addiction behavior in the past, and I've been working really hard at getting past that.  And I suffered a couple of major setbacks last year with relationship anxiety.  But a few weeks ago I had a huge breakthrough and I felt amazing (after trying birth control sent me off the deep end; the damage it did to my mental state took weeks to repair).  It was like I'd finally figured out why I have the specific anxieties that I do, and why it manifests the way it does.  I found steps to help me deal with it, and eventually that anxiety was gone.

But then on the anniversary of my father's death (I don't know if that was the trigger, but I can't think what else it might have been), it was like that never happened and I was back in the place I'd been before.  Those voices in my head (not literal ones) were back, saying that the people in my life who love me are going to leave me, the constant obsessive worrying about my mother's death, etc. 

I hate that it keeps me from enjoying my awesome girlfriend as much as I do when I'm in a good state of mind.  It felt so good to be back in a sane place where I didn't constantly doubt her motives for being with me (I don't think she's that kind of person AT ALL; it's purely my mental dysfunction talking, but being aware of that doesn't make me feel better, you know?)  And that anxiety feeds the love addict type behavior I worked so hard to escape.  Ugh.  It's all so frustrating.  I love her so much, and when I'm functioning all right I know she loves me just as much.  Right now I'm just trying to hide it from her, because last time I let her into my thought processes she freaked out that I was being like her obsessive ex.  That really hurt, because I'm SO aware of my abnormal thought patterns and try so hard to overcome them, but it's really hard.  But she was right.  I was acting crazy.  I don't want to start again. 

I tried to discuss these issues with a love addiction message board, but a person there just said I was in denial, that it was clearly a bad relationship, and no one has anxiety and depression without a root cause.  I made the mistake of telling the girlfriend about this, because it really scared me (when you're in a low place, sometimes hearing stuff like that gets to you), and she ended up upset with me over it. 

I guess the only good thing is that I understand the root of my relationship anxiety - I fear messing up and ruining a good relationship by doing something wrong - and read something someone else said that for some reason made me feel better: if someone's going to break up with you for a stupid reason, it says more about them than it does about you.  So reminding myself that I hadn't done anything to make my girlfriend leave me, and that if she did leave me now, it wouldn't be about me or it would be about something so absurd that it wouldn't reflect badly on me but on her.  My fear is based in being wrong or doing wrong and MAKING people leave me.  And I guess it flared up again partly because she said some things that I took the wrong way, and I made some comments that I later thought she might think I was being a b-word about.  I mean, it didn't cause any problems, but I have a hard time not worrying regardless.

I love her, more than anything.  I just need to get back out of the headspace that I NEED her, and stop obsessing that she's losing her feelings for me and is only staying with me on the hope that they'll come back.  I don't know where that particular line of thought originated, but I HATE it, because it's a mindset that makes compliments feel like barbs!  She'll say I'm the best girlfriend ever, or that I'm the most thoughtful person she knows, and I'll mentally fill in, "and I should be in love with you, but I just don't feel it."  (I know this is a product of my sick brain, and IF by some leap I'm actually correct, it means she's the one with a problem, not me.)

Does anyone have any tips for dealing with this, outside of going out meeting new people and getting new hobbies?  I know those things are important, but physical and mental illness make those things tremendously difficult.  I mean I plan on working on that more, but I already know that and am trying to figure out how best to do that.  I just hate the feeling that my brain is conspiring against me, and I can SEE it doing just that, but it's still so hard not to let it get to me.