| I have already written that anxiety often hides a long-suppressed strong feeling, for example, anger.Especially often women have such a “feeling about feelings” – they are forbidden to be angry, aggressive, active from childhood. The girl should be calm. And so often, against an even emotional background, in a state of absolute calmness, anxiety suddenly arises and covers.How a suppressed impulse of anger triggers anxietyA young woman approached me, outwardly calm with a sudden feeling of anxiety, manifested by a squeezing lump in the center of her chest, insomnia for a week and the inability to swallow food, especially sweet ones.The day before the appointment, the alarm released her, the woman for the first time in a week was able to eat normally and slept well.Request: The client is afraid of a recurrence of a sudden attack of anxiety, wants to prevent it. She intends to understand the cause of her bodily symptom. I suggest that the woman listen to the body and catch some unusual sensation in the focus of attention, which, as it were, flirts with her.After listening to herself for a minute, the woman discovers a subtle tremor in her arms and legs.I suggest that she be an actress of the theater of the absurd and tremble with her whole body, increasing the trembling, especially in the arms and legs. She accepts the challenge and, from a reclining position in a chair, shakes her arms, head and legs at the same time and very intensely.I am amazed at her spontaneous response. As if her body had been waiting for such an offer for a long time.In just a couple of seconds, tears appear in her eyes. She stops shivering. She sharply straightens up and crushes crying with her facial expressions.Then she begins to tell, after which and how her anxiety stopped. The night before the session, she begins to get angry at the alarm. She is so dispersed in anger that she has an urge to vomit. Suppressing it, she burst into tears with surprise for herself and fell asleep.There was a spontaneous release of anger. I regard her anger here as an impulse of excitement, prompting action.I ask her about what action, aspiration, she recently suppressed.And then she recalls that about a month before the onset of the anxiety state, she realized her need to grow up in her career and try herself in the role of a leader.Eichar invites her to start with self-study and gives her books on managerial psychology to read. And so, in one of these books, she finds the author’s idea that often people who have come to power do not cope with their duties and are engaged in anything, but not managing people.She thinks about it, and suddenly she will not succeed. Then you know.Thus, the vector of anger that arose towards the seizure of new territories was stopped, suppressed and driven inside. The tension of holding back this strong impulse was the main cause of her anxiety. Leaving my office, the woman decided to defuse the remnants of suppressed anger with sobs – after watching films that always make her cry.I suggested that she additionally go through the exercises of my free YouTube marathon “Stress Detox” – one of the videos of which is at the bottom of the article.Conclusion: almost always anxiety hides a suppressed impulse of some kind of strong feeling, such as anger or fear. Recommendation: If you want to catch the impulse feeling, try to increase the sensations of the body associated with it. It is better to do this with the support of a psychologist. |