Life is an interesting journey. Throughout life, we experience joy, love, and support. But we also experience loss and threat. This is a perfectly normal part of life. Unfortunately, the wider understanding is that when we experience loss it is a bad experience and this causes us pain. One of the mind’s functions is to keep us away from experiencing pain.
Anxiety
Our brains have got the fantastic ability to keep us safe. This is done by remembering the threats and pains we have been through. Regardless if these were threats to our life or losing something or someone. Regardless if the pain was emotional or physical, our mind remembers everything. A lot of that pain has been pushed down and we do not even realise that we keep on reliving it. A lot of the fears we have had, live in our subconscious mind and drive our behaviour, without us even realising it.
The more we fear and pain we have been through, the more our subconscious mind is trying to protect us. This protection usually takes the form of us being constantly on the lookout for dangers.
And it is understandable because our ancestors lived in a really life-threatening environment. Their survival depended on how vigilant they were. These fears have been passed through the generations, to ensure the survival of the species. However nowadays we do not live in such a dangerous environment, at least the majority of us, but these fears are still with us whether we realise them or not. And because of these fears, we feel anxious.
The brain is on a constant lookout for threats and when there is none, around us, the brain starts to create these threats. This is how anxiety is born.
But why? You might ask. And the answer is: To make sure we will survive.
But why our mind will create an imaginative threat? The answer to that question is because of our thoughts.
Roots of Anxiety
We live in a society. A society of lots of people. A lot of people have been raised in fear. In their good intentions, people try to warn us about some threats we might face. That is good, at least we are aware. But in other cases, people threatened us, simply to get what they want. And if we do not behave, as expected, we will be cast out. This is the real threat: being cast out. That meant certain death in ancient times. Now, not so much.
Another reason for us, to fear being left out in the cold, is when we were criticised by those who had to take care of us. This criticism we have internalised and we have adopted an unhelpful way of thinking. This is the root cause of the anxiety we experience.
Prime examples are when our caregivers told us (and this is not an extensive list):
“You are going to be the death of me”
This is a cruel and extremely selfish statement, that damages the child’s psyche. The child becomes more and more afraid of possible damage that will destroy the caregiver and ultimately the child itself. The child becomes really careful in their behaviour. The driving thought is “I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone”. These people quite often become people pleasers. People pleasers see themselves as loving and attentive, but there is an underlying fear of losing the attachment to the caregiver and subsequently the attachment to others.
“If you are not a good boy/girl Santa will not give you a present”
Here we can clearly see the threat of being the odd one out. Everyone will receive a present and will be happy but me. This will be the death of me. When people were rewarded for good behaviour and chastised for “bad” one, they start to alter their behaviour in order to fit in. They put on a mask, whenever necessary and with time, they get so used to it, they forget how to be authentic. As time goes by, the fear of others seeing them for who they are, grows exponentially.
“Why can’t you be as good/slim/cute/clever etc. as XYZ?”
Being asked this question simply emphasises our shortcomings from the ideal, that the caregiver, holds for us. Being constantly told that we are imperfect has really damaging effect. We start to look at our imperfections and we start to resent ourselves. In this resentment, we tell ourselves that we do not deserve love, yet we crave it. We tell ourselves that we will be happy if we lose weight, or get breast implants, lip fillers and so on. Happiness is only around around the corner, but we never reach it, because we feel as if we do not deserve it. And if we do not deserve happiness, love, and connection ….. this is the death of us.
When we are riddled with fears we tend to develop addictions as coping mechanisms. These could be drug and alcohol addiction, shopping addiction, sex addiction, food addiction, or even addiction to us giving care to another human being. The purpose of these addictions is to deflect the emotional pain we feel and to reduce the anxiety we carry inside. But this is a short-term solution and it doesn’t help us in the long run.
The only solution is to look at the emotional pain, accept it and reframe it. Does it hurt? Yes, it does, but only for a few minutes. Once we accept it and incorporate it within us, the pain goes away but the lesson stays. We grow in emotional maturity and become more balanced in our mindset. Once we feel more balanced within ourselves the anxiety has got no reason to stay with us and it goes away on its own. This doesn’t happen overnight and it takes some time but with the right tools, we can free ourselves from anxiety within only a few weeks.
If you can recognise yourself and you want to learn how to incorporate emotional pain, book your session with me.
