2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Excitement, anxiety, anxiety, concern … These experiences can accompany us every second. After all, human life is a series of all sorts of dangers. We are exposed to them when we leave home, go to work, to the store, cross the road, drive in the car … We are vulnerable and vulnerable when we build relationships with others. As we approach them, we become more and more at risk
It is about the fact that there is a risk situation around, that there is some danger (moral or physical) around and our anxiety tells us. We learn about this feeling when we notice an increase or interruption in our breathing, changes in the rhythm of the heartbeat, a feeling of tension in the chest, in the body, in the legs, arms.
Anxiety and anxiety is one of the most difficult to bear experiences. After all, this feeling is not clearly addressed. It is diffuse, blurry, and therefore it is difficult to avoid what causes it.
As soon as we find the cause, the addressing of the anxiety, it immediately ceases to be all-encompassing and has such power over us. After all, then we can make a plan for how to calm ourselves, dealing directly with the causative agent of this experience.
For example, when we understand that there is a crawling snake or an angry dog approaching nearby, and this is most likely the cause of anxiety. We can protect ourselves, for example, by running to the side. Then the anxiety will be situational, and will subside as soon as the danger passes or becomes less likely.
But there is another kind of anxiety - personal. This is an experience that is always with us - like a fuse in the power grid. It intensifies depending on the situation, but never completely disappears.
Between life and death
There are three types of personality anxiety.
The first type is existential anxiety or the anxiety of being.
This is the feeling of anxiety that is "built into" us and reminds us every moment that life is finite and death is inevitable. It is the anxiety that regulates our instinct for self-preservation, and behind which lies our basic need for safety and comfort.
Existential anxiety increases every time we find ourselves in a new and unfamiliar place for us. We change our place of residence, kindergarten or school, work. When we meet strangers …
Everything unfamiliar and unidentified provokes an increase in the degree of anxiety of being, in order to mobilize our internal energy resources for orientation in space, for understanding what is a threat for us and what is not.
It is the difficulties in experiencing and sustaining existential anxiety that provoke people to the so-called pseudo-suicidal behavior - games on the border of life and death: riding at speed, parachuting, diving, etc.
Deliberate exposure of oneself to risk creates the illusion of victory over the personal anxiety of being and belief in one's own immortality. And ultimately, it devalues life itself.
Overcoming the anxiety of being is some skill to live with it and the recognition that life is finite and that is why it is valuable. That our options are limited. What is important to take care of yourself - ensuring your own safety, navigating and exploring the new and the unknown.
It is impossible to completely calm the anxiety of being. We could not have survived without her. It is important to learn to live with it, recognizing its nature and not protesting the existence of this experience.
When the Other approaches
The second type of anxiety is separation anxiety. This is anxiety associated with the appearance of another person nearby. Anxiety of approach and distance in relationships.
The nature of this experience is laid down in early childhood and is associated with a relationship with the first important object for us - the mother.
In adulthood, this anxiety regulates our contact with others when we worry about losing their affection. It is the separation anxiety that is the basis of all addictions, and the intensification of this type of anxiety often provokes depression and psychosomatic illnesses.
Overcoming separation anxiety is the achievement of maturity and clearly formed personal boundaries. Ability to endure loneliness and rejection of others without falling apart or collapsing.
In personal therapy, we often deal with this type of anxiety, supporting the formation of a mature identity of an adult who is able to take responsibility for his own life.
Depreciation anxiety
The third type of personality anxiety is the oedipal anxiety or devaluation anxiety. Each of us needs a sense of our own worth for other people and is afraid of losing it. It is the anxiety of depreciation that drives people to achieve social success - to get a prestigious job, good income, gain status in society, and establish connections. Oedipal anxiety is actualized at the stage of adulthood, when there is a child's competition with parental figures and the fear of punishment from significant adults. If the passage of this period is due to trauma, the adult will experience a constant need to prove his worth to others.
An increase in the degree of devaluation anxiety leads to a constant race for success, a continuous increase in reasons for confirming one's own significance, which will not be enough for saturation and relaxation all the time.
Anxiety client therapy
Psychotherapy, of course, is aimed at reducing the experience of overwhelming anxiety, support in resolving the internal conflicts of the individual. Any kind of hard-borne anxiety is a marker that tells us that the adaptation of the body to real life is impaired, that a person needs a resource and skill to effectively build his own safety.
Depending on what type of client's anxiety is dominant, a strategy of therapeutic work is built. In any case, this is support in being aware of those experiences that lie behind anxiety and more accurately mark internal mental processes.
Expanding and deepening the client's awareness in different areas of his life forms the skill of recognizing anxiety, determining its addressing, as well as finding effective ways to meet the needs that lie behind this experience.
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