Anxiety Is Felt In The Body, But It Is In The Mind
After an episode of anxiety, patients usually arrive at the consultation with a fairly precise story about when the anxiety crisis occurred, and they are able to give all kinds of details about the bodily symptoms they felt (palpitations, breathing difficulties, sweating, intestinal disorders, sleep disturbance, feeling of death, etc.); The anxious experience develops predominantly in the body.
However, the affected people They can’t find their way back to that initial moment of anxiety. Or if they find it, they don’t understand why it causes them so much discomfort. That is why psychotherapy, and in particular psychoanalysis, which promotes the exercise of putting into words that “I don’t know what’s wrong with me”, is a highly effective tool to retrace the steps until finding the origin of that state.
Somatic symptoms are not the cause, but rather the indicator of something not working well in another scenario. We can think that anxiety, with its string of bodily effects, is like the wrapping of something that nests inside, and removing that covering will help to understand the origin of anxious symptoms.
It is important to remember that anxiety, and especially anticipatory anxiety, along with pain and fear, are warning systems that inform us of dangers or threats against our bodily integrity; These systems are protective and essential, not only for survival, but also for maintaining health, as counter-intuitive as this may seem at first glance.
The body functions as a translator of what actually develops in the psyche (we could say in the mind). Just as a fever tells us that something is causing it, Anxious symptoms tell us about what is happening in another scene.
What gives better, and more lasting, results is to ask where those fears that trigger anxiety attacks come from. We can use anxiety as a sign, a compass for our psychic life. It is not something pathological, which must be cured or appeased in any way possible. Anxiety is a structural affect of the human being we all feel it, and it only appears pathological when it exceeds certain levels.
Every time a situation disappoints us (that job that I thought would fulfill me and now is not how I imagined it, that person I wanted for so long and now it turns out that he also has defects, those objects – the 4K television, the car or the latest model cell phone, whatever—that I longed for for months and that doesn’t satisfy me either, the loss of a loved one…), in every experience of frustration, of fruitless search for complete satisfaction, there is anxiety. It happens every time something we thought would be perfect breaks.
Anyone who finds themselves faced with the need to make an important decision, for fear of choosing the wrong option, is a candidate for suffering from anxiety. They are situations in which one is distressed, without suffering from an anxiety disorder; The anguish will disappear when the real reason that generated it disappears.
But At other times one is distressed, feels anxious, and does not know why. If fear or fear is in reality, we can escape from them, but… How can we escape from the anguish that comes from ourselves? We can not. This is the time to ask for professional help.
Psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis in particular, offers a highly effective tool for bringing the unconscious to the surface, so that the person consulting knows why they are distressed.
The fact of being able to put words to your anguish makes it possible for the patient to stop experiencing it as something unpleasant. That is to say: the psychotherapist places that compass that is anxiety in the hands of the patient, as a navigation instrument so that it is he, and not his unconscious, who decides what direction he wants to give to his life, so that he becomes empowered in taking of decisions without fear of error. Because error is a characteristic of the human being, since perfection is not of this world; It is good to aim to achieve it, since with this we enter a process that will lead to improvements, but knowing that this will not be entirely possible.
Changing those scenarios that cause us discomfort, accepting that we can make mistakes, tolerating the frustration caused by some aspects of daily life, is a path that is opened through psychotherapy and that leads to significantly reducing the unpleasant effects of anguish and anxiety.
