THE HIDDEN FACES OF ANXIETY - PART 3 - understanding the cause of anxiety to better deal with it!
Welcome to Part 3, the last one of the article series about anxiety.
In this part you can read about the possible connection between anxiety and childhood trauma, attachment and shame. Moreover I write a few words about our today's environment and it's influence on anxiety.
If you have not read Part 1 you can read it here:
PART 1 covers:
Introduction
Signs of anxiety
Some points that I challenge about anxiety
How I approach it
What is anxiety and what might be behind anxiety - it's functionality
Anxiety from an existential point of view
PART 2 covers:
Anxiety as a sign of stres
Anxiety as result of a traumatic experience
ANXIETY AS A COVER FOR EMOTIONS CONNECTED TO OLD WOUNDS - CAN CHILDHOOD TRAUMA BE THE CAUSE OF ANXIETY - THE CONNECTION TO ATTACHMENT
In our childhood, in the relationship with our caregivers we learn:
how to self regulate our emotions
how to navigate relationships
how to perceive the world around us
who we are in our integrity and how to relate to it - that includes our boundaries and needs, and how to take care of them.
Everything we learn as kids, we take it with us into our adult life. There is a big probability that we will repeat the patterns but also look for them in the relationships, because that is what is familiar, that is what gives us safety (even though it is unhealthy).
It is useful to consider once again her the conflict between integrity and collaboration that Jesper Juul talks about. I have written about it in Part 1 in the chapter about the existential perspective of anxiety.
So, if we as kids have over collaborated on the cost of our integrity, we will probably do the same as adults - in different contexts - work, relationship with friends, relationship with the loved one and with our own children.
We over collaborate because we have to adapt to the conditions of the environment and the relationship we grow up in, in order to preserve the attachment which is fundamental for our survival. That usually results in a discrepancy between our inner world and outer world, between who we really are, our emotions/needs and how we are perceived and what we show to the external world.
As an adult, that discrepancy continues - and that can be accompanied by anxiety. Here anxiety can have multiple roles - one is to cover that discrepancy, another is to cover the pain that the discrepancy creates and other emotions connected to it - helplessness, fear to be discovered for who we really are,,
shame for who we are, etc...
The result of over collaboration as a kid meant one had to give up own integrity/one's self. One of the prices was to be left alone with containing ones emotions - loneliness, sadness, rejection/abandonment, shame and guilt etc.
Considering what Sørensen says about anxiety (that it covers other emotions that are difficult to feel - see Part 1) - then anxiety will cover all of those emotions you had to deal with alone/as a result of the experiences you had as a kid.
We can imagine a pot with a lid with high pressure. All the years the body (the pot) has been storing inside all those emotions connected to old wounds. Anxiety has been the lid to that pot so you can function (mostly survive). With the years, it becomes harder and harder to keep the pressure - anxiety grows .... more pressure - more anxiety ....
The body uses enormous amount of energy - 1. to keep under control the emotions by numbing them; 2. to manage the lid.
Sørensen writes that anxiety is also connected to those reasons that in its time (in the past) made the feelings impossible to feel (f. eg it was not allowed to feel sad or fear). That means that we need to look after the source of anxiety in the forbidden/banned/prohibit, dangerous, the unthinkable - which often will be the same as the circumstances of rejection or missing emotional containment/care.
To complicate things more, I will add Schibbye's description about the connection between attachment, survival and the anxiety for disintegration and annihilation of the self, which becomes a primary emotion in us.
The baby is directly and concretely dependent on others care for its survival, physically and psychologically. The mother's (or another caregiver) availability, susceptibility, predictability and physical care/nurture reduces the child’s anxiety. This primary organically, bodily safety forms the foundation for a later conscious experience of psychological safety.
Because anxiety is connected to the need for the other, it becomes obvious to perceive attachment as a fundamental need, and respectively, unsafe attachment (rejection, unavailability, indifference, etc) as a fundamental threat.
From the perspective of attachement, anxiety connects to the threat to be invaded and to the threat to be rejected.
Regarding the threat to be invaded - a mother becomes too invasive, when excessively busy to react to all of the child’s expressions and when she cannot differentiate between her own experiences and the child’s experiences or between her own needs and the child's needs. As a result, the child can have difficulties to develop there own boundaries and inner reflections and cannot understand which experiences belong to whom - the boundaries between them are too unclear. From here develpes the anxiety to be invaded which we cary with us in our adult life in our relationships. It can show up as difficulty to engage in serious connections, difficulty to trust someone.
Regarding the threat to be rejected - it transforms into anxiety that covers the fear to be rejected when a mother ingnores a child and does not respond to their expression and need for communication/contact/interraction, when a mother threatens with leaving the child, etc. It can show up in difficulty to ask for help, difficulty to take initiativ or not expressing ones needs.
One the one side, the individual risks to be abandoned or helplessly left to themself, and on the other side, its delimited self (identity) to be dissolved/disintegrated (because of the invasivness of the other).
The child’s self is formed in the ways that assure the attachment and the boundary setting/delimitation that is possible in the relationship with the caregivers. So the creation of the self becomes a compromise between the necessary adaptation to maintain the attachment and, at the same time, the establishment of the best possible self delimitation.
An unhealthy compromise prevents the child’s access to aspects of the self …
So the creation of the self (the inner world and our integrity in other words) can be viewed as the the result of the conflict between collaboration and integrity.
In order to protect ourselves from the anxiety for the annihilation of the self, we create behavioral patterns that can have a survival value (f eg we have difficulty in saying no and become pleasing; or we don't trust anyone and keep them at a distance).
According to Schibbye, from a relational perspective the individual can use the other to reduce their own discomfort with feeling the anxiety or, more precisely - we control our inner anxiety by controlling the relationships we are a part of. By trying to influence the other in order to behave in conformity with our needs, our inner experiences can regulate themselves (f eg a symbiotic relationship that has unclear boundaries between the two partners can have the function to keep the anxiety of one or both partners at bay - "we do everything together" or "there are no differences between us". That anxiety might cover the fear of abandonment).
So, concluding - the way I interpret what I read from Schibbye and what I have learnt from working directly with clients is that - when we are born, because we are dependent on the other - existentially, a fundamental emotion such as anxiety for being physically annihilated (death) and psychologically (sense of selv, integrity) annihilated is part of us. We need it for our survival.
The relationship with our caregivers which becomes the fundament for our attachment, will determine how well we know that emotion in us, how we come to navigate it and contain it in our adult life.
A few words about anxiety's relationship to shame - they have a special connection.
Sørensen quotes Wurmser: “Shame is a specific form for anxiety that is activated/triggerede with a real or imaginary danger for being exposed, abused, humiliated - or judged and rejected. Behind shame usually is an overwhelming feeling of helplessness which as a kid was anxious and terrifying to experience all alone.”
Shame comes in form of anxiety also when one does more or thinks more that own self understanding/sense of selv can bare. The paralyzing anxiety has its background in the paralyzing shame. So, anxiety can come as numbing, but also as activating reactions from the autonomous nervous system - high pulse, tremors, alternately cold and warm and problems with focus/concentration, with seeing and thinking clearly.
A person who has these reactions often does not understand that this is anxiety. One can go into hiding behind anxiety and, anxiety also can be hiding (not perceived as anxiety).
The typical connection between anxiety and shame is that a person has moved themselves on the edge of ones sense of self (understanding of selv) and meets the fear to loose themselves. That fear to loose/disintegrate the sense of self triggers shameful anxiety because the person dared to go further than what they usually trust themself or feel entitled (“who do I think I am? …” “Am I imagining I can more that I can”). In such a situation the person feels exposed, with the danger to be rejected - regardless if someone witnesses it or not (part of it can be something called as the impostor syndrom - when someone has done something or received a praise at work - feels shame for it - that comes as anxiety to be exposed, that the boss will figure out that they are not so good as they say - and the rejection will follow - f eg being fired).
When behind the anxiety is shame, we have to take into consideration always the contact and the attachment aspect. It's a delicate balance to meet the shame feelings. It is not appropriate to go against the feeling of shame, to train it away. It’s important to help the person to gain respect for their shame feelings (shyness) because they are decisive for owns self understanding/sense of self.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT OUR ENVIRONMENT AND IT'S RELATIONSHIP WITH ANXIETY
Talking about the connection of anxiety and environment is not the purpose of this article but, I can not ignore the impact that our life environment has on our well being. That is why not mentioning it will leave the approach to the complexity of anxiety incomplete.
When I talk about our environment I refer to:
the devises we use every day - phone, computer ...
whether we live in the city or in the country side
whether we have acces to nature or not
whether we spend more time indoors
whether we have acces to sun/fresh air
the quality of our sleep and sleep rutine
All these factors have a say and can be related to anxiety. Factors like the use of the devises, spending a lot of time indoors without natural light, city life without acces to nature, constant noise and lack of quietness are unnatural for us and our system.
That means that, f eg the use of the devises, especially social media content combined with bluelight screen:
can be the cause of anxiety
can maintain the anxiety (even if the cause is another)
can contribute to the worsening of it.
Because for many people the use of devises functions as protection from own anxiety, a vicious circle develops in time that can be hard to get out of. It functions like this - we use the devises to "regulate" (meaning not feel) our anxiety (whatever the reason for it) and, at the same time, the devises might contribute to creating more anxiety (f eg watching determinate content on TikTok). To work on your anxiety you would have to stop watching TikTok but that would make you feel the anxiety that you are running from by watching TikTok.
You have reached the end of the the Part 3 series about anxiety. The meaning of this article is to share experience and insight that contributes to understanding the complexity of the topic and less focus on fixing it.
Comments are very welcome and I appreciate also if you want to challenge and disagree with what you read here. This would bring more insight and learning, and, at the same time reminds me/us of the humbleness of not knowing everything, but constantly learning.
The literature that I use for inspiration is written in Danish - the translation is mine both of the text and the titles.
Literature references:
Lars Sørensen "Shame - innate and learned/acquired. When shame leads to soul murder" (The original title: "Skam - medfødt og tillært. Når skam fører til sjælemord".) Hans Rietzels Forlag 2013
Anne-Lise Løvlie Schibbye "Relationships - a dialectical perspective on existential and psychodynamic psychotherapy" (The original title: "Relationer - et dialektisk perspektiv på eksistentiel og psykodynamisk psykoterapi") Akademisk Forlag 2010
Jesper Juul "Your competent child - toward a new paradigm in parenting and education" Balboa Press 2011
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