How Anxiety Is Born

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

"Anxiety and how to deal with it" is a favorite topic at a psychologist's consultation, which is why specialists write about it so often. They come with both a direct request (about anxiety) and indirect ones (about irritation, procrastination, apathy, etc.). All these themes, meanwhile, are united by one foundation.

What is anxiety?

How does it appear?

What does it consist of?

First, it should be noted that we all have the same Eros and Thanatos described by Uncle Z. Freud - the instincts of life and death. Every creature in nature wants to live and lives as long as it is useful to nature, flock, species, etc., etc. As soon as it gives up, ceases to be useful, or for some other reason can no longer adapt to external conditions, the death instinct takes possession of it and does its job. Nothing personal - the law of nature.

Thus, Eros leads to life, love, pleasure, creation, while Thanatos leads to death, direct aggression and auto-aggression, breaking ties and destruction.

During the crisis periods of life and in the process of experiencing trauma, Eros and Thanatos temporarily become equal opponents in the struggle for a human being, and it depends only on him and the conditions prevailing around him which instinct will win. With age, we learn to control our instincts ourselves, therefore the more mature a person is, the more role he himself plays in this struggle, the less - the conditions. For example, parents create safe conditions for a three-year-old child to go through a "I myself" crisis, but for a 40-year-old adult who sums up the first results and evaluates his life, it is to a greater extent he himself.

It would seem that everything is simple - there are instincts, and they themselves lead us along our path, and also … stop! What does anxiety have to do with it?

But, at what. When we find ourselves in a new situation that we have never dealt with before, we inevitably face anxiety. These experiences can be of different intensity and direction, but one way or another they reflect the excitement in front of the unknown that we met on the way. We do not yet know at this moment what limitations, givenness, and obviousness await us ahead. We can only know or not know how we used to deal with the unknown. How can you not know? We know, of course, always, but we do not always accept and integrate our experience, we are not always sure that we will cope in the same way, we do not always want it to be the same, although we know that in 99% of cases it will be so.

So what happens at this moment if dominates Eros? Eros affirms life, love, creation. In this case, we perceive the coming turn with interest and excitement. We do not yet know how it will be there and how we will get out of it, but we know that we will do everything as we can and know how, we believe that we will cope, are ready to make any decision and adapt to it, relying on our experience and skills. In this case, there are no overestimated expectations either from ourselves or from the conditions - there is faith and hope that we will find a way out, there is resignation with the result that happened, and the strength to try something else. Uncertainty + Faith, Hope = Interest

And if Thanatos? Thanatos ignites strife, rupture, destruction. The more expectations we have for a result that is beyond our control, the higher the level of experience. In this case, anxiety arises (uncertainty + expectation = anxiety). Further, anxiety can be transformed into aggression, and into procrastination, and into apathy, but this is no longer so important which method of effective or ineffective coping you use - anxiety is primary. We predict various options for troubles and misfortunes that the situation may entail (the more of them there were in a similar experience, our own or introjected, the more such expectations can be), or are ready to accept only an ideal / very positive result, not putting up with the unpredictability of conditions, we spend energy to fight the future, spend energy on denying what is happening, spend energy on bringing into view "how it should be", spend and spend the energy intended for us to adapt to the environment and ignore the real possibilities of adapting it ourselves.

Reading the article and discovering the manifestations of both instincts in yourself, you, of course, ask a logical question: "And what to do with this?" And here the answer is very individual, it very much depends on the case, on the possibilities, on the abilities and characteristics. As we all know, there are times when humility is not the best tactic, there are times when nothing can be done about it, and there are times when both strategies are correct. And only you decide how to act in each specific situation. Nevertheless, knowledge of your strategies, goals, desires, opportunities, strengths and weaknesses helps a lot in this, which can be acquired both in observing yourself in various life situations, and in the process of psychotherapy, in the gradual recognition of yourself together with everyone with their faces.

I would be glad to have questions and comments under the article. They warm me very much and motivate me:)