Sick of my anxiety

My go to in relationships that are not going well is to cut and run. If I feel caged in, if the person doesn’t get me, if the person runs from conflict – I run. What I have not realized until recently is running is my form of putting up big old walls. The walls have been my way of “managing” my anxiety.
Walls and anxiety go together for me like peanut butter and Jelley. The tendency to wall up and cut people off feels ingrained in my soul- and I am sick of it. I am so very sick of my anxiety.
After an argument about choosing movie theater seats that revolved around my anxiety of where to be located in the theater, my husband ended it with saying, “it’s a small concern.” Small was said like he was trying to spit a bad taste out of his mouth with forces. Small reverberated in my head over and over again; small, small, small and small. My anxiety feels anything but small.
I realized that he understands my anxiety, but he is sick of it as am I. The result of this interaction builds another wall between us. My overly critical judge says, “must not overwhelm him with the small shit in my head.”
As early as I can remember, anxiety has always been the weight around my neck, my ever guiding force, that voice that is trying to keep me safe. But in truth, it just talks lots of bullshit all day long.
Intellectually- I am great at this, and I get it. I understand why I am like this and I have a big toolbox of things I can do to address it. But there is nothing I can do to resolve my sick of it feeling.
So in a vain attempt to get over the sick of it feeling I’ve been examining what It think is the cause. I know finding the reason will not cure it- but that does not deter me.
I think that maybe my anxiety is a result of my Irish ancestors that starved, immigrated and struggled to live the “American Dream.” My great-grandfather hung himself, leaving my great-grandmother alone with five children. They were hardcore devote Catholics. I can only imagine the level of anxiety so acute that the only out from his pain, he could find was suicide. I can’t comprehend feeling so awful that burning in hell seems like a better option than living with anxiety.
My self-examination brings about the conclusion that starving, burning in hell and imagination are reasons to be anxious. My over critical brain says that I have no decent right to be this anxious and surrounded by walls.
My mother’s parents and siblings are good at walls which I am guessing is also anxiety for them. I suspect that its intergenerational trauma like my own or they all fell apart when my aunt was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver and murdered. Their messed up catholic upbring in the 1960s may have also contributed to the anxiety.
The whole story of my aunt’s murder is confusing at best. Until I was about 6, I thought that she died due to cancer. She was with an African American man and had a baby with him. My grandfather disowned her for being involved with a black man. This action was out of character for him and contrary to how he raised his children.
Two years later my aunt was murdered by someone. That, someone, was never caught, never brought to justice. There was no closure on a violent event and death. The lack of any closure left her family destroyed by it.
Her murder was nine years before I was born, I have the sense that the family fell apart as a result. I have this image of 6 people standing on a frozen lake as the ice cracks underneath them. But at the same time, the ice cracks – big old walls of brick come smashing down between them.
Now I have some understanding of the foundation and the route – I still have no peace about nor any solution. Just have to sit and sit in the shit. But sitting in the shit feels like more movement than walling up and cutting people off. Sometimes what is uncomfortable is healthier.