It All Came Down To Anxiety

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

At some point in the practice and work with myself, I went into a deep state of anxiety.

No matter how deep I went, no matter what problem I tried to work with, I always came to this feeling of deep loneliness and impossibility, very close to a depressive state. Whether working about health, about money, about overweight, about depressive states, all the ways have led me there, this layer has always remained unaffected. In regression practices, he was also with me. In fact, each time I also had to go through a layer of anxious loneliness, when in a situation I was alone, and there was no resource for the necessary changes and solution of the problem. The technique of essential transformation gave many tips, in which one / several of the deep basic (essential) states are achieved: 1. integrity, 2. peace, 3. acceptance (approval), 4. a sense of being, 5. love. These states were so both mature and childish at the same time that it boggled the imagination, albeit natural. The spread of states into contexts changed the perception of contexts, added resources for a more productive existence in them. But this feeling of loneliness and powerlessness, filled with anxious expectation of something incomprehensible, came back and forth from time to time. At some point, I practically formed a thought-virus that loneliness and anxiety lie at the basis of existence and life, and any of our activities is just a way to cope with this savory couple. This gave rise to despair, because I began to perceive and see this disturbing loneliness itself, and attempts to cope with it through various activities, and all this was projected into infinity. In fact, I was overwhelmed and dismantled by this, nothing remained of my feeling of power and the destruction of the possibility of a calm and happy life. It's time to turn to friends. Tatyana Solovyova, Mavka Ivardzh, Natalia Nekrasova, thank you. With the help of friends, I turned to the base, to infancy, where ways are laid to cope with the changes in the environment for which anxious expectation arises. You helped me to come to the conclusion that at the heart of everything is serenity and peace. It is present in the womb when all is well with the larger system (mother). This continues with a nursing infant, serenity and peace when he is fed, warmed, and the mother is completely at his disposal. Anxiety starts when something goes wrong. Frozen / overheated, wet in the diaper, I want to eat, gurgled in the tummy … The first expression on the baby's face when something goes wrong is sadness and anxiety. Then other emotions come - anger and sadness, and he starts to whimper, and then cry louder. And here, according to my impressions, the foundation is laid, the foundation of how in the future a person will react to changes in the external environment, to stressful situations, his stability or tendency to failures. If the mother reacts to these sound signals and comes, begins to satisfy the baby's needs, then the anxiety goes away, and he gradually returns to a calm state, begins to just be and sleep peacefully or go about his infant affairs: move arms and legs, examine hands and rattles, gag … That is, connection, merging with a larger object gives the baby a sense of peace and security. Remember, this is very important, because it is one of two global ways to cope with anxiety. Another way is structuring future reality, learning to identify / assign structure, content to it, and acquisition of interaction skills. What happens when the baby's needs cannot be satisfied: either the mother is absent, or something hurts him, and try to understand what exactly. This leads to the fact that the baby does not receive the response he needs to the call, and he sometimes cries in horror to such an extent that he falls asleep powerlessly, in the impossibility of satisfying his needs for peace and comfort. You can look a little into the baby in this state. Discomfort appears and it builds up. The psyche is designed in such a way that more attention is paid to discomfort than to comfort. Therefore, when something hurts or bothers, the baby is immersed in it, and is no longer able to hear, perceive the response to his call, even when it comes, and thus falls into loneliness, horror, isolation from the mother. What does this impossibility of satisfying the need in the infant's psyche lay down? Feeling vulnerable? Powerlessness? Loneliness, regardless of the number of people nearby? Is it laying the foundation for depression when you just disappear into this loneliness and impossibility of being? What happens when this is repeated over and over again? What foundation will the image of the world receive? Will the formed neural connections remain unchanged? How will the psyche generalize this? But, let's say, we found, brought out this state of horror and loneliness. What to do with it next? The natural way we use, almost without exception, is to associate ourselves with something bigger. My class, my school, my institute, my country, my planet, my universe. Business, faith, current, sect, science. That is, we recreate in our mental conditions, when someone is bigger, who, if something happens, can take care. Such a global light image. There is also a tendency to addiction and codependency. When, in the presence of a substance or a person, one can relax and "transfer the control of the uncontrolled" to this object, while experiencing relaxation. True, I see here disadvantages in this method. 1. The more we assign strength to this light image, the more we are hit by the "midlife crisis", when the acquisition of inner strength, the final reorientation to oneself and one's inner resource should take place. Again, this is a marginal note, i.e. a topic for a separate conversation. 2. Decrease in criticality in relation to more. It is easier to inspire, harder and more painful to lose faith. Acceptance of dogmas, which replace their own developed strategies. Any religion requires to some extent rejection of itself and its needs, replacing them with their own. Any boss at work will be simply glad of the diligence shown to the detriment of family and free time. Returning to the basic, basal (K. Horney) anxiety. An important point that my friends pushed me to. There is a state of calm, immutability, to which we strive. In infancy, this system is formed by the mother: the baby felt hunger, discomfort, anxiety. Crying of the child, the arrival of the mother and reassurance. That is, any change in state initially causes anxiety, and only a stable state is peace. And then I came across another realization: the state of life is constant change. The heart is beating, the wind is blowing, the temperature is changing, various sounds are heard. Thus, anxiety is a natural reaction to the uncertainty of the future. How do we deal with it? I have already written about one method, merging with a large object. The second natural way to deal with anxiety is through cognition and structuring of reality. Finding resources in yourself to interact with her. We learn to read and write. We learn to walk on two legs. We are learning to speak. When we get to work, we learn the rules of the community, as well as our responsibilities. Getting on the saddle of a bicycle, we learn to keep balance. We learn that there are shops where you can buy food, schools where you can learn useful and not very knowledge, friends with whom the sense of security and control of the environment increases, and so on, so on, so forth. We populate our inner world with objects and their functions, and include them in our calculations. That is, we structure our understanding of reality, we begin to consciously predict how to respond to future events. When this skill is pumped, a person knows how to make plans and implement them, feeling safe. And even discrepancies with the forecast can be taken into account, and based on them, build your forecasts. There are also such masters. For them, the world is stable in its instability, balanced in instability. Well, or at least a part of the world where they are competent. There are also disadvantages here. You can go into planning and modeling, transferring life to mental space. You can start rebuilding the world to fit your idea, using aggression. You can build fantasies without correlating them with reality. And moments of happiness are when expectations coincide with reality. When I prayed, and the situation improved. I turned to the authorities, and they showed their favor. I came to my friends and they gave me peace of mind. This, as we understand it, refers to the first way of responding to uncertainty. For the second method, this will be the achievement of the goal, the behavior of others as planned, getting what is planned. Interestingly, different behaviors can be observed in different contexts. Someone in work and business will have a forecasting strategy and achievement, but in personal relationships - on the contrary, the expectation that someone will come and "give 500 popsicle". And vice versa. And they can also remotely fantasize that "a little more, and I can cope with it, take control." Summarizing the above, I want to note that life is dynamics and changes, and ways of responding to them are laid in infancy. For some it may seem like a constant, and for them it will. As usual, it is often uncomfortable to the point of unbearableness, but you can live with it. Those who decide to change their perception of the world, and the perception of themselves as part of the world, can engage in deep research of themselves in meditation, self-hypnosis, with the help of a psychotherapist. Yes, anxiety is not going anywhere, it is the main driver of our activity. But it will cease to be destructive, leading to a feeling of powerlessness and loneliness. Nothing is lost as long as we are alive and able to perceive, think, predict, act. PS. Dear readers, if you have anything to add, write, comment on, I will be glad for the constructive.