All of us are bound to be under various kinds of anxiety throughout our lives. For example, death anxiety, anxiety about having a certain disease, separation anxiety, test anxiety, sexual anxiety, etc. This is an emotion that will accompany everyone throughout their lives, and anxiety appears in all aspects of Life.
In the parent-child relationship, we can clearly see the existence of this anxiety phenomenon. There is a phenomenon called “your mother thinks you are cold”, which means you are not cold, but your mother thinks you are underdressed and need to wear more. Or you are too thin and need to eat more. Then we know that this is often a situation where the mother has some anxiety and cannot really see the needs of the child.
And then there’s the anxious mother who needs to feed her little baby on Time, if it’s once every three hours, and she believes in some of the parenting books. In fact, sometimes the baby is not hungry, but the mother thinks it’s time and how can the child not eat. So feeding at that moment is not the baby’s need, but the mother becomes very controlling in order to relieve her anxiety. She is not able to really see the characteristics of this little baby and cannot trust her own intuition as a mother. If she trusts her own intuition as a mother, it is necessary to endure some anxiety, such as not knowing what the child’s needs are and whether her own care is appropriate, and then slowly observe it, to see the interaction between herself and the child, and to follow the rhythm of this child to take care of it.
Anxiety is also common in intimate relationships. Recently your boyfriend has not contacted you and is not prompt when responding to tweets. This is when so much anxiety arises, such as whether he doesn’t love me, whether I’m not as important. So some people get caught up in their own thoughts and don’t even have the heart to deal with their work.
You know you have to hand in your paper and work report next Monday, but for the past week or so, you can’t do anything and have to put it off until Sunday night and stay up late to do it.
In a very anxious situation, you will lose sleep, sometimes fall asleep and dream interrupted, wake up suddenly, and have very light sleep. Some people will have diarrhea, nausea, panic and palpitations, and other physical reactions. Some of them worry about having various diseases and keep going to the hospital for repeated checkups. The reason for this is and inherent certain anxiety that cannot be processed and expressed, which has many effects on the individual’s body and sleep.
I. Unraveling the fog of anxiety, touching the spiritual space and connecting with the real self
- Anxiety is an emotion that is the worry and fear of unknown dangers.
In ancient times, the worry and fear of danger and the unknown protected people from surviving. The ancients used to say, “If you don’t have long-term worries, you must have near worries” and “If you are born with worries, you will die with worries. “Born in worry, die in peace”, all tell us the positive effect of anxiety.
Psychologists have shown that there is an inverted U-shaped curve between anxiety level and task completion, and that low and high anxiety levels are not conducive to task completion. Athletes need to have a moderate level of anxiety before a game or during an exam. If anxiety is too low, the emotional state cannot be mobilized, while if anxiety is too high, you cannot focus all your attention on the exam and need to divert some energy to deal with anxiety.
When anxiety is present, it can be experienced and surrounded by anxiety. It is by nature an uneasiness in a diffuse state, vague and diffuse in nature, with no relatively clear object or content.
Fear is a reaction to a specific danger. When someone is afraid of a dog, the danger is lifted by moving away from the dog, and there is less fear. When you are anxious, you often can’t leave the thing or situation that triggered the anxiety, such as taking an exam, writing an essay, or evaluating a title, you can’t help but do it, so the relationship with this thing is glued, you are afraid of it, but keep the relationship as if it were.
Because it has to be done, you can’t take your eyes off it. For example, you are very anxious about finishing your thesis, you don’t want to touch it for a while, you don’t want to think about it, but that thesis is always there, and you can’t play with it without worrying about it.
Even if you do other things, there are worries lurking in your heart. So for a period of time, it is in a state of stagnation and stalemate, experiencing a very strong sense of helplessness.
From this we can see that the difference between anxiety and fear is whether the object of fear is clear and whether there is a sense of control. If the object of fear is very specific and clear, the person can know how to respond and has a sense of control. When it is not clear, there is often a sense of uncertainty, which can bring a strong sense of loss of control and helplessness. This is what makes anxiety so annoying.
Anxiety is like a fog, and when engulfed by it, a person’s cognitive function and judgment are greatly affected, when they are unable to make accurate judgments about external objective reality, dangerous situations and their own abilities. At this time, people can easily experience the emotions of childhood, feeling that they can not do anything, can not do anything, self-esteem, sense of self-worth, etc. are seriously threatened.
For example, there must be some anxiety when a leader asks you to do a job that you have never handled before. Because it has never been handled before. If this anxiety is very great, you may not be able to sleep, you feel helpless and incapable of doing anything. But as the anxiety decreases, one may know, oh, it turns out that doing this job requires interfacing with other departments, what one can handle, what are the parts of past work experience that can be used.
What are the reference projects, do you need the leadership to help you to coordinate some resources, and what people you can ask for help. Then slowly clear up, know how I, step by step to complete the project.
- Anxiety is present from the moment a person is born, and the early adopter’s digestion of and response to the child’s anxiety is very important for the individual to deal with it, and also facilitates the formation of sufficient mental and spiritual space within the individual to connote it.
The Latin etymology of anxiety means narrow and the German meaning is lacking, a bit tight.
In both interpretations, there is a sense that one does not have much inner mental space. The experience and acquisition of anxiety is associated with the loss of one’s mental space.
Associated with the ability to withstand the absence and loss of love. Internalized parental ability to process emotions plays an important role in the individual’s later development of the ability to emotionally contain and to think, which in turn further contributes to the development of mental space.
Psychoanalysts view human birth as a trauma, where the little baby comes from the warm, safe womb of its mother into a cold, boundless world, a dramatic change of environment that often brings intense death anxiety and separation anxiety from the feeling of being one within the mother to the sudden cut-off.
This indicates a very strong sense of anxiety within the individual from the moment of birth. At this time, if the mother can take care of the baby very gently and do her best to understand and take care of the child according to his needs, it can somehow relieve the strong anxiety within the child. We can imagine, if the mother herself is very anxious, constantly stuffing the child with Food, obviously the child does not want, what will happen?
The child must feel bad, its own rhythm is disrupted, there is a feeling of intrusion, control. If the mother is depressed and will not hug and coax the child when she is anxious, the child will feel neglected, have a strong sense of despair and powerlessness, and will not be heard no matter what he shouts or does. Because we can learn that if early adopters do not help children to digest and respond to their emotions, those anxieties will not be relieved, but will be amplified.
For young children, without parental help, it is difficult for them to digest and process their anxiety, and those feelings are left behind and cannot be resolved. Later, when they encounter similar situations that cause them great anxiety, it is difficult for them to resolve them because they did not have the experience of being helped and successfully coping with their anxiety early in life.
Imagine a child who is anxious about going to school, and an anxious mother might say, “You have to go to school. If you can’t get into college, how will you live if you can’t find a job? “
Then we know that this little child is even more anxious because his mother doesn’t know how to solve this problem, and it brings him a lot of anxiety, and he won’t be able to survive. So this child’s inner feeling is, I can’t solve it, and the inner mother is not able to help him solve it, so he falls into anxiety and can’t get out of it.
As an adult, when he encounters difficulties and anxiety, he will constantly think about all kinds of bad outcomes, just like his mother, and he will worry that he will lose his job and not be able to survive, even though he only made a small mistake at work. It is impossible to get caught up in the anxiety. The early experience of dealing with anxiety will have an impact on the characteristics of his relationships and problem-solving patterns later on.
- Frustration itself does not necessarily bring inner conflict, but when it threatens one’s own values, self-esteem security and relationship patterns, it brings conflict, conflict brings anxiety, and anxiety brings repression and defensiveness.
As the pace of society becomes faster and faster, the utilitarian nature of modern society, as a unique part of individual value becomes less important, and often becomes more instrumental, a term now popularly known as “instrumental man”.
Individuals are easily replaced as screws in a certain part of the mass production machine. Anxiety is often a worry about the future, and the present lost connection. People are born, grow old, die, and get separated, which can bring a strong sense of scarcity, life and time are limited, and will always bring someone I have not done enough, the lack of love, money, power and happiness are not enough, which makes the individual anxious and want more. Wrapped up in life and society, their own values are lost in it, and what they do is what the society thinks is good, what others think is good, so people become greedy and have more seizures of nature, others and society.
This can actually bring a problem, it is difficult for a person to follow the rhythm of their own life and take certain risks to live. For example, once you go to college, you have the anxiety of finding a job, the 996 phenomenon, the anxiety of getting married when you are 30 years old and not married, the anxiety of getting married, followed by the anxiety of having children, and the anxiety of having children. The anxiety of getting married, followed by the anxiety of having a child, and then other anxieties after having a child. So life seems to be in an endless anxiety.
There is an ancient Chinese term called “plucking seedlings to help them grow,” where Parents‘ intense anxiety pushes their children to do things that are beyond their age and level of mental development.
For example, some parents let their third-graders enter a fourth-grade Olympiad competition. It is important to know that this tends to bring anxiety and frustration to the child, and is a relatively large detriment to narcissism and self-worth, and makes it difficult to help the child see his or her value correctly.
So we know that moderate frustration is good for human development, and this frustration is too large, more than the individual can bear and solve the range, will bring a self-esteem blow, narcissism frustrated, long-term, will bring the individual’s sense of self-worth is low, self-efficacy is reduced, and even will produce learned helplessness, once the difficulties can not move, do not feel that they have the ability to solve the problem.
Freud said that anxiety leads to repression. If we encounter anxiety in life, we always go around it or avoid it, and once this pattern of behavior is structured, it becomes a psychological symptom. Over time, many people don’t know why they are anxious, they just experience feelings of anxiety.
This is because the conflicts that generate anxiety are always repressed, and anxiety generation and coping becomes an automatic response. You will find that in life, anxious people often, as soon as the work task is scheduled, before they think about it, the anxiety arises first. This is an automatic response. You will also find that he is looking for a job, work, exams, relationships, all this reaction, a situation arises, the first is anxiety. Then go to avoid, and finally as a last resort to deal with.
Second, understand the classification of anxiety, deeper understanding of anxiety
1、Freud’s classification of anxiety
(1) Realistic anxiety: anxiety about real, objective threats, disasters and dangers. The general reactions are panic, avoidance and fear, anger and aggression. It comes from people’s feelings about real, objective dangers in the external world, which can be solved from the objective side by taking some necessary measures or actions. For example, people do not feel the same when they see a tiger in a park as when they see a tiger in a deep forest. People can take actions or measures to eliminate and reduce the realistic anxiety.
(2) Neurotic anxiety: The objective threat is not so great, but the individual feels a great threat subjectively. This anxiety is often not in line with the objective situation, it is an anxiety that is repressed in the unconscious, and the threat that causes the anxiety comes from the inner conflict of the personality. This means that it is not the objective vulnerability that prevents the individual from using his strength, but his internal mental patterns and conflicts. These conflicts often come from early in life.
Although repression begins in early parent-child relationships, it can persist throughout life in the form of repressed threat. Repression of fear of threat leads to an inability to identify the source of anxiety. The inability to discriminate and assess danger can contribute to a sense of personal helplessness, resulting in diminished personal autonomy, i.e., a significant limitation in the development of personal power.
(3) Moral anxiety: This anxiety stems from moral, legal, and self-ideals. For example, the ego demands too much of itself, demanding perfection from itself, etc. If the ego’s behavior does not meet the superego’s requirements, the superego will punish the ego, thus creating moral anxiety.
- G O. GABBORD is divided into the following five types of anxiety according to the order of human development.
-Loss of integration anxiety: (This is an anxiety in which one feels that one is going crazy or breaking into pieces, often on the verge of schizophrenia or breakdown, schizophrenia and certain major depressive disorders have similar symptoms) It originates from the loss of the sense of self or the loss of the boundaries of the self-other due to integration with an object, or the loss of the integrity of the self due to the failure of others in the environment to provide mirroring or idealization and the disintegration of the self.
-Persecution anxiety: (Feeling that there is a lot of danger in the outside world and that other people are bad people and will hurt you. For example, other people may talk about them behind their backs, and there is always a feeling that someone is watching them and can be intrusive. (Persecution anxiety is stronger in schizophrenics, and some may have persecutory delusions, for example, when someone looks at them on the road, they seem to be plotting a persecutory plan.) The paranoid splitting bit originated from the Kleinian school, in which the primary anxiety when an external bad, persecutory object will invade the self and destroy it internally.
-Fear of losing the object (separation anxiety): Fear of losing not only the love of the object, but also the object itself. It often occurs with the loss of love or the death of a Family member, a move, or a change of school. For example, in the case of loss of love, one feels that no one will ever love one again. Separation anxiety can be seen in young children on their first day of kindergarten and can manifest in different ways for different children.
-Castration anxiety: Oedipus period, potential destruction or castration of genitalia from vindictive biparental images.
-Superego anxiety: a sense of guilt or pain of conscience for failing to satisfy an internal code of moral behavior.
Constructive coping with anxiety, transforming it, and living a creative life
Anxiety is very difficult to tolerate and accept. Many very anxious people have been enduring tormenting emotions and struggling to live with their inner anxiety and conflicts. Dealing with anxiety comes with past experiences of dealing with this emotion and an automated way of reacting to it. To cope with anxiety, we need to try to deal with it in a constructive way and change our old way of coping with emotions.
- Experience, respect and accept the emotion in the moment in a non-judgmental and dismissive manner, assess and understand the message it sends to you, and at the same time see what you can do about your emotions.
There is a need to be aware, understand and assess your anxiety and if it is beyond what you can bear and handle, it is time to seek help from a relevant professional. We know that there are many times when many people feel anxious and just suffer and deal with it on their own. In their growing up experience, parents and the nurturers around them are unable to help their children to digest the anxiety and over time, some of them pass by enduring and suffering.
Because for a person, if you have some difficulties in life, it is a good way to find other people to help you. Like we mentioned earlier, if things like neurotic anxiety, disintegration anxiety, persecution anxiety and separation anxiety are very severe, one needs to see a psychiatrist and take medication according to medical advice, as well as work with an appropriate counselor to deal with the internal anxiety issues.
- In a relationship, when emotions are intense, avoid dumping emotions directly and try to communicate after calming down. Take a constructive approach rather than a self-protective one to deal with anxiety. Open communication can facilitate the resolution of many problem situations and emotions.
(1) Replace old, habitual, protective reactions with positive ones
When people feel anxious, they often take the approach of either avoiding it and still its development, or they will engage in protective behaviors such as blaming others and attacking each other.
From this, we can see that in families, when parents are very anxious about their children’s learning, instead of trying to deal with their own emotions, they dump their anxiety directly on their children, and in some cases, scold and criticize them directly.
I remember reading a news report before, a mother, life is very hard, with their own children in the ground special, the child lost the money, so the mother was very angry, in the subway station scolded the child, and then people around can not see, go to help the child.
If we think about it, we know that this mother she is very difficult, must be very anxious, do not know whether they can survive, the child and the trouble, the only ticket money to lose. But this mother needs to go suffer this anxiety part on her own and see if she can ask for help with the people around her and help them a little. And her child needs to go to the house and communicate with him properly when the emotions have calmed down. So it actually requires the mother to have a strong cultured effect on her own emotions in order to help her child to digest them.
(2) Not dumping anxiety directly in the relationship and communicating your anxiety and emotions openly.
For example, if you feel anxious about your lover ignoring your needs and always rejecting you, sometimes you tend to scold and criticize the other person, feeling that the other person cannot meet your needs, or even feel that he is worthless.
First of all, when this anxiety situation arises, you need to first conceal and digest your emotions, and then when it calms down, communicate with your lover to see where the problem lies. Is it that you are too anxious, and what can both parties do to deal with these problems. The poet William Blake talked about anger and wrote, “I am angry with my enemy, I hide my anger, but it grows, I am angry with my friend, I speak my anger, but it stops. “.
(3) Responding to your emotions with care and emotion, like a good mother
A mother must have anxiety if her own child is not in school. How would a mother who is not so anxious respond? This mother might say
— “Honey, why don’t you want to go to school? Talk to mommy.”
— (this young child might say) “I’m having some difficulties, interpersonal or academic. “
— (the mother would say) “Oh, so you must be unhappy at school and that’s why you don’t want to go to school, right? (hugs this little kid). Mom can’t go to school with you and face the interpersonal and academic problems you’re facing, but mom will always be there for you, and let’s see if there’s something we can do to change the situation” (and then mom will analyze the specific problem with the child). ).
–Mom will always love you and be there for you, and we’ll get through this together. It’s okay. No matter what, mommy is here. When you need mommy or need me to do something for you, just let me know. “
If the mother can respond to the child in this way, the child will slowly have the courage to face those difficulties, and will not be so overwhelmed, and will not avoid these difficult situations, and when he later encounters similar things and feels anxious, he will calm himself like his mother and find resources to help him solve the difficulties.
(4) Mediate anxiety by adjusting thoughts about the emotions that arise
The American psychologist Ellis proposed the ABC theory of emotions, which suggests that the same emotionally provoking event will bring different emotional reactions to different people, and the difference lies in the individual’s thoughts and interpretations of the emotionally provoking event.
Some people have misconceptions and misinterpretations in their minds, and as a result, they have a lot of negative emotions. Some of these negative thoughts have become solidified, so they need to be consciously corrected. For example, a person’s fear that he or she has made a mistake at work that will bring about dismissal and job loss, as well as the idea that he or she will not survive will lead to the creation of anxiety.
However, we often know that usually a mistake does not have such a big consequence, so the “catastrophic idea” is wrong in the whole process, and when the individual perceives the error in the idea, he or she needs to consciously correct it and mediate the anxiety by correcting the idea.
(5) Problem-solving strategies to resolve the anxiety of the moment
Anxiety is often associated with things that bring stress, and it is often found in life that anxiety is greatly relieved when we solve the things we face.
It is very important to deliberately learn to analyze the problem and gain a sense of control in this process. Difficulties need to be made concrete, detailed and actionable first. Organize the fuzzy mess clearly; then gradually analyze each small difficulty can be solved, what are the available resources? What are the parts that you do not have and what are the areas where you need to seek help? So analyze your own resources and the resources in your environment that can be used to solve the problem, and solve the difficulty step by step through certain steps.
It is also necessary to distinguish between controllable and uncontrollable factors in this process. For example, when taking an exam, luck and the difficulty of the questions are beyond control, but what the individual can control is the level of effort.
When the problem is solved, you need to promptly affirm your efforts and value, and at the same time reflect on what lessons can be learned from the problem-solving process.
(6) Live in the present and expand the inner mental and spiritual space
The reason for the small inner space is that we care too much about the evaluation of others and live in the eyes of others.
The inner is filled with various voices, always feeling that they can be better, not doing enough, not being able to affirm themselves. This is often living in self-blame and evaluation of the past, with a lot of worry, helplessness, and even despair about future outcomes: we need to go and connect with ourselves. If you don’t have a parent who can digest emotions well, but there are ways to do self-expansion.
Do a 20-minute daily meditation practice to learn to be aware of emotions, to connect with our feelings in the moment, and to experience them without judgement.
When feeling anxious, learn to distinguish between your own anxiety and the anxiety and judgment of those around you. Define your own boundaries, say no to anxiety given by others, and protect your inner mental space from being violated. For example: your mother thinks you are cold, the leader thinks you need to give more, but it is not what you want, go ahead and choose to reject.
If you have a less anxious friend or counselor, you can relieve anxiety, understand it and bear it in counseling and communication.
Be less critical and harsh to yourself, a more caring way to take care of yourself and forgive faults.
(7) Transform anxiety, take moderate risks, and live a creative life
Anxiety can motivate people to take risks, to experience new life experiences, and to open up new possibilities in life. I have heard that many people who are in mid-life crisis suddenly realize that the financial job they have been busy with is not what they like, and although they can have a lot of income, they are unhappy and their self-worth is difficult to realize, some of them will take the risk to do new attempts, for example, they will go into bakery and live a happy life.
Neurotic anxiety is the result of our failure to deal with early anxiety experiences. Individuals do not have successful experiences in dealing with anxiety, and if we can take moderate risks and be brave in life, it will open up new possibilities. Often some anxiety at work will force people to keep growing and open up some of your other possibilities. Anxiety also reminds us that sometimes we need to step out of our comfort zone and safety zone and use it for experimentation, which will bring different growth.
Only if we have past experiences of facing anxiety can we face the present and future experiences of anxiety without being engulfed by it. How to move on in anxiety situations? Instead of bypassing these situations or retreating from them. Conscious or unconscious combat is far more valuable than avoidance, which means being ready to face the inevitable anxiety constructively, subjectively. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to move forward even when afraid.
Each of us lives only once, at least in this life, and the question of why we live and how we want to live is a question that always needs to be thought about. But I think, according to the original appearance of life, let it grow and bloom, respect its own rhythm, different life journey has its own value and is a kind of life completion.
Finally, I wish you can realize the value of your life, live with anxiety and transform it. Respect your own inner voice and rhythm, take moderate risks and live a creative life.
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