Can My Relationships Affect My Mental Health?
Yes, relationships can absolutely have an effect on your mental health, be it in a positive or negative way. If you're searching for a relationship therapist in Champaign, IL or just trying to understand why a certain connection in your life feels draining, you're not alone in asking this question.
The relationships that we have and maintain with others are often linked to our emotional and mental well-being. This is due to supportive relationships helping in providing connection, companionship, and emotional support while negative relationships can often enhance feelings of stress, anxiety, and contribute to depression and lower self-esteem. The people we spend time with can influence how safe and valued we feel, which makes it so important to recognize the importance of being in good company.
This is not always so obvious or direct, so if you find yourself feeling anxious, emotionally drained, and/or unsupported, there may be a chance that a relationship could be contributing to those feelings.
To dig into this a bit deeper, the American Psychological Association (APA) emphasizes that relationships are one of the biggest predictors of mental health. Regardless of whether it be family, friends, romantic partner(s), coworkers, or any other person with whom you have a connection with, the people in our lives can have an influence over our emotional and mental well-being. Research in psychology has consistently supported the connection between supportive relationships helping us deal with daily stressors and cope with difficult situations while unsupportive relationships can have the opposite effect. Paying attention to how you are feeling in your relationships is an important starting point in knowing how your mental health is being affected by them.
The Connection Between Relationships and Mental Health
The people we interact with in our lives can influence how we perceive ourselves, respond to difficult situations, and how supported we feel when faced with struggles and stress. Our environments and the people we keep around are important, as close relationships can provide support while you are undergoing a difficult situation while a less supportive relationship can lead to disconnection and conflict.
It is important to recognize that it is okay to have disagreements or differences in opinions with those in our life and that conflict does not automatically mean that a relationship is a negative one. The APA says that most relationships are “complicated,” where they can offer both support and stress, but the quality of connections matters more than the quantity. What this means is that even healthy relationships can have disagreements and hard times, but what matters most is how the relationship makes you feel overall.
A healthy relationship does not require both parties to agree on every single thing they discuss or wish to do with each other. It is important to acknowledge that perfection within a relationship is unreasonable & unrealistic, as well as that it is okay to have differences in opinions and/or desires sometimes. What matters most is communication and the ability to listen and respect each other’s boundaries. This helps us in being able to work collaboratively on dealing with difficult problems and repair the relationship when conflict arises.
Relationships that provide a sense of belonging and/or ease can help in reminding us that we don’t have to navigate challenging experiences alone. A few examples of this could be:
A good friend listening to you vent about a hard day at work and offering support,
A partner encouraging you to take care of yourself and offer their help as well when you’re struggling,
A coworker letting you know you can come to them for help if you find yourself feeling confused or lost.
Healthy relationships also provide opportunities to listen to someone else’s needs, hear their perspective, and be able to have a better sense of understanding and connection with one another through effective communication. In other words, conflict can be worked through but it is important to try and recognize if it comes at the cost of your self-esteem, self-worth, confidence, and/or safety.
When Do Relationships Harmfully Affect Your Mental Health?
A relationship can start to negatively affect you in ways that show up as behaving differently, feeling down more often, or feeling discomfort in your body whenever you're around a certain person. Some signs worth paying attention to:
You frequently question whether your feelings are valid.
You find yourself apologizing even when you're unsure what you did wrong.
You are withdrawing from other people you care about.
You spend significant time replaying conversations with a specific person or worrying about conflict with them.
You feel emotionally exhausted after spending time with the person.
You regularly feel anxious before or after interacting with the person.
If you are experiencing one of these feelings with another person, it does not automatically equate the relationship being harmful as everyone has difficult days, disagreements, or may be in a stressful headspace. However, if you are experiencing multiple symptoms like these consistently with another person, that is worth paying attention to and taking the necessary steps to take care of your mental and emotional well-being.
Sometimes, these relational patterns can be hard to recognize if they are familiar to you or you are used to feeling this way. What is important to know is that familiar does not equal health and that you are deserving of relationships that provide you with support, care, and collaboration. Often, the ways in which we communicate and experience new relationships come from what we learn from our childhoods and/or previous experiences. An example of this could be if you faced criticism often early in life, you may feel more hesitant expressing your needs later in adulthood. This is not a character flaw or anything to feel ashamed of, but rather an understandable response to a previous experience. It is also not meant to blame the people from the past, but instead it provides an opportunity to dive deeper into recognizable patterns that may be correlated with your present relationships. Therapy helps to become more aware of these thoughts and behaviors.
How Can Therapy Help With Recognizing Relationship Patterns?
Therapy provides a safe space to openly discuss your feelings and look at relationship patterns that may be hard to recognize on your own. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help in identifying thoughts and beliefs that influence how you respond to relationships. CBT has been proven effective in helping to recognize behaviors that maintain anxiety or difficulties within a relationship. It also includes analyzing recurring thoughts such as “There must be something wrong with me because we keep arguing” and looking at the situation in other perspectives to see what other ways the situation could be understood. Depending on a person’s needs and what they are hoping to discuss in therapy, treatment could focus on a wide variety of topics such as emotional regulation, communication, relationship patterns, boundary setting, and more. Bodhi Counseling has many clinicians that offer this type of therapy within the Champaign, Illinois area if this sounds interesting to you.
How Can I Tell If My Relationships Are Affecting My Mental Health?
Relationships can be very nuanced and complicated, which can make it much more complex in knowing whether it is harmfully affecting your mental health. Rather than trying to label a relationship as “toxic” or “healthy”, it may be helpful to ask yourself these questions:
How do I usually feel before spending time with this person?
How do I feel afterward?
Can I express my needs honestly?
Do I feel comfortable saying no?
Can I disagree without fearing the other person's reaction?
Do I feel supported and valued?
If you are feeling unsure about any of these questions, that is completely okay. Just noticing your thoughts when thinking about these questions is the first step to take in recognizing how a relationship makes you feel. Patterns that were difficult to recognize at first can become easier to notice over time when you look inwards.
When It Might Be Helpful to Talk to a Therapist
Understanding how relationships and mental health are connected doesn't mean blaming yourself or someone else. It means becoming more curious about the patterns that influence how you feel.
If you find yourself consistently feeling anxious, as if you’re walking on eggshells in order to not upset another person, you feel emotionally exhausted, low self-esteem, or any other changes similar to this, therapy can be helpful in exploring what’s happening. If you are feeling unsure or cannot pinpoint exactly what’s wrong, that is completely okay as we can unpack and work through your troubles together.
If you're in the Champaign-Urbana area and looking to explore your relationships, boundaries, or mental health, learn more on the Bodhi Counseling page where resources are readily available for you to access. If you are interested, you can explore Kayla McNeil’s approaches to working with clients and schedule a FREE Consultation.
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