Anguish, that very particular sensation that is clearly different from sadness, boredom, fear of something, is not similar to anxiety either, but has its own manifestations and its own causes. Today we are going to see what distinguishes them from the rest of the bodily sensations and what is characteristic about them in themselves.
Although from what has been said it seems that it is easy to recognize when we are distressed, the truth is that there are moments prior to that recognition in which we cannot perceive its presence or we do not even know it; and in a moment it happens that we realize that this feeling has been with us for a long time: days, weeks, months or even years! A feeling of compression in the chest, a mixture of nostalgia and longing the most common manifestation of which is a frequent deep sigh.
Happens that It is much more difficult to recognize an internal sensation than an external one We can think of the receptor organs in charge of perceiving the world (sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell) as when we want to know the temperature outside on any day; It is not necessary for us to expose ourselves completely naked to the sun’s rays or rainwater to take a dimension of the climate, but it is enough to carry out a small test, either by sticking our hand out the window to observe the temperature of the day.
Well, exactly the same thing happens with perception, we do not perceive things as they are in all their dimensions, since our organs have a certain range of stimulation, and Outside that threshold we cannot capture any of the signals of reality For example: the voice emanates certain frequencies, the ear captures a certain range, and radio stations emit a certain signal and a certain frequency is received (a particular device is necessary to be able to capture those waves).
With these considerations, we can expand the idea to the emotions that come from our internal world. We agree that some sensations present themselves more clearly than others and sometimes we can easily recognize what our mood is, whether it is joy, anger, annoyance, pleasure, etc.
The particular thing about this situation is that these sensations are similar to those we perceive from the outside world, that is, We barely receive news about our emotional state from certain signs that we perceive in consciousness
There remains a whole ocean of psychic processes that we are unaware of, which result in the same thing that we feel. The most common metaphor for the idea would be that of an iceberg, where only a portion of it can be perceived above the surface.
Self-knowledge focused on emotions and feelings
Generally it is not easy to see clearly what we feel in certain situations or with certain people but also, when we see it, perhaps we don’t know why what we feel happens to us.
Aristotle said: “Anyone can get angry, that is a very simple thing. But getting angry at the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way, is certainly not so simple.”
We see that the ignorance of the reasons for certain affections has crossed humanity since primordial times, and even those most enlightened people, showing that Emotions are not “controlled” with knowledge or intelligence, but rather it is a personal learning process the fact of knowing why what happens to us happens to us, and psychoanalysis and the therapy it proposes intervene precisely in that area.
Anguish is not an affect to eliminate
It is mistakenly considered necessary to eliminate what hurts us without asking ourselves its cause. Well, in that question that it is possible to open through therapy we find the truth of each one, what were and are the necessary conditions to reach the current point in which we are distressed. It is not a malfunction of our body, but it is a signal emitted by the psychic apparatus that indicates the fact of be acting outside of our true desire
This is generally because we sometimes make important decisions in our lives without knowing why, and these decisions, although at some point we feel that they are good for us and we assume that they are what we really want to be happy, they may be holding the desire for another significant person in our lives, or old desires that no longer correspond to what we necessarily need for ourselves today.
It should be noted that, although anxiety is a sign par excellence of this process, it often happens that the same situation manifests itself through other symptoms such as: discomfort, pressure, anxiety, etc. There are several signs that serve as an alarm.
The importance of psychotherapy in the face of anxiety
Therapy allows us to give rise to these sensations through words ; words that were not said or did not take place in oneself because we were not able to recognize something unwanted at the time, or simply because we are now aware of certain other people’s desires that are no longer ours.
It is never too late to prepare situations and give ourselves space in our lives. After all, the only debt we owe is to our well-being and our peace of mind. The external world is a reflection of the internal world, if the reality we live tends to be dark, it is possible to give it color by opening the space of desire with its multiple possibilities of creating another truth in which to inhabit.
