Anxiety

Another topic clients often bring in is anxiety. There are probably books written about anxiety. I

haven’t looked. What I feel or perhaps even know about anxiety is that I don’t believe it is an emotion. I

believe it is a state of being created by a combination of emotions that, when combined, overwhelm.

I like to work with clients around five major emotions, normally only five. They are shame, fear, anger,

sadness, and loneliness/abandonment. In my practice, any feeling a client names will usually fit into one

of these five categories. Of course I honor whatever word they choose to use, but I challenge them

when the word anxiety comes in. I use the basic five to explain the feeling of combined emotion

representing anxiety. (Sometimes helpless and hopeless creep in, also, but they are often the baby versions of fear and shame.)

It seems to help my clients, and myself, to realize emotions can be categorized and simplified. The

scientists would perhaps say that this categorizing and naming helps bring emotions into the prefrontal

cortex which moves them from being trapped in the older parts of the brain. When we can move the

emotions, they don’t trigger us and our body doesn’t produce the hormones for fight or flight. Our

digestion and immune system can function normally.

To help clients accomplish this, I’m always looking for a calmer way to explain anxiety, but for now, I use

the analogy of anxiety being a whirlwind which contains at least two of the five emotions. I know, from

years of working with clients, that, when they name the two or more emotions, they break down the

power of the whirlwind.

It seems that the word anxiety is often easier to say and face than fear or even sadness, for example.

However, I believe it affects our body more strongly than a single emption does. I do, however, think we

often jump right over the five to the anxiety when we weren’t taught that emotions are safe to name or

feel.

Perhaps the simple knowing that we can affect the whirlwind by naming its parts empowers us.

Empowerment is always beneficial. I hope this teaching was beneficial to you.

More to come as my clients teach me.

Keep healing. K