If your partner is involved in the conversation about fixing this, at some point you're probably weighing whether to bring in a couples therapist or handle it yourselves first. Here's how I'd think about it.
When Couples Therapy Is the Right First Move
If the anxiety has already created real tension in the relationship, resentment building, silence replacing honest conversation, or your partner feels shut out of what's happening, a couples therapist can help both of you communicate about something genuinely difficult in a structured, supported way that's hard to replicate on your own.
When Self-Directed Work First Makes More Sense
If the relationship itself is solid and this is genuinely an isolated pattern that hasn't yet created distance between you, doing some individual work first, understanding the mechanism, building your own regulation and communication tools, often makes any conversation with your partner land better. Chapter 7 specifically points out that partner communication tends to work better once you've built some personal regulation foundation first, so you're not trying to have an important conversation from inside an acute anxiety spiral.
The Order That Tends to Work Best
Understand your own pattern first. Build the basic tools. Then bring your partner into it with actual language prepared, not raw anxiety dumped into a conversation neither of you is ready for. That sequence often produces a better outcome than jumping straight into couples therapy before you've even named what's happening for yourself.
When to Skip Straight to a Couples Therapist
If communication has already broken down, or your partner has expressed real frustration that's affecting the relationship beyond this specific issue, don't wait, get support sooner rather than later.
Performance: Unlocked walks through both the individual groundwork and the partner conversation itself, in that order. $39, instant download, in my Shop.