My girlfriend (26F) has anxiety. I (26M) have anxious attachment. I'm unsure how to broach the subject and talk about my triggers without sending her into a spiral.
For context, this is both of our first relationship of about 3 months. It's painfully obvious to me that we're both inexperienced, and I've learned almost immediately that I have an anxious attachment style. It's gotten better over time, but nowhere near where I want it to be.
The big trigger is texting. If I don't hear back from her for a few hours after I text her, the anxiety kicks in. On a good day, I can hunker down and play a video game to distract myself until she eventually replies. On a bad day, it ends up being a functionally paralysing panic attack. She is... not a fast texter, to be honest. This means almost every day I'm somewhere on the continuum of slightly anxious to completely non-functional mess. It's honestly pretty pathetic, and I don't like seeing myself like this.
I've mentioned the anxiety in passing, but not the full extent. And because I'm actively holding back from spamming her or being needy, I think she does genuinely think I'm much more secure than I am.
There's a big problem, which is that she has actual diagnosed anxiety, and she's very much a people-pleaser. She has mentioned that she kind of sees me as her emotional rock. She has also said that she also has a tendency to catastrophise about whether or not I actually like her or am going to break up with her, which is I guess is where I am.
This means that I'm pretty uncomfortable being truly vulnerable with her, because:-
I'm worried about popping her bubble about who she thinks I am; and
I'm very worried that if I mention it, she'll end up bending over backwards to try and placate me; and
I'm very, very worried that I'll end up pushing her into her own anxiety attacks if she thinks she's doing something wrong.
But I can feel myself burning out. She's currently a week into a 2 week holiday. I kind of saw this as a bit of a trial, to see how far I'd gotten w/r my anxiety, and as far as I'm concerned I've failed the test. I didn't want to say anything before the holiday because I didn't want to ruin it for her with her anxiety, and I also want to be really careful not to ruin it in retrospect.
But she was texting me every few hours in the first week of her holiday, and that's slowed to once or twice a day. I feel like the constant anxiety is slowly chipping away at my feelings for her, to the point that... I've been left on delivered for 15 hours, which is by far the longest time period she ever has. And it's like my heart has kind of just given up, I don't really feel that anxious.
Everything else about the relationship is really good, she ticks every single box I have bar one, and I don't want things to fizzle out or blow up over this. How do I bring this up with her without sounding like a psycho or making things worse for her?