31 days with our anxiety
plummeting below the surface
I have already written that anxiety is not a feeling, but rather a symptom of some deeper underlying feelings. Anxiety is a way that we cope with those feelings.
And I have my own way of coping with my anxiety as coping.
What I find myself doing a lot with someone in the course of a therapy session is trying to help them plummet further and further below the surface of their anxiety.
Because we have a tendency as people to stay at the surface. We want to just focus on the anxiety itself, but that can leave us stuck, simply trying to manage that symptom.
So I have always found it helpful to think of anxiety at the top of a funnel.
I will walk over to my whiteboard and I will draw a funnel with anxiety sitting at the top.
And then I begin the questioning, as if on a journey of curiosity about our anxiety.
And then I begin to add one layer upon another, feelings stacked upon feelings.
Till we get to the root. The core of the matter.
Over the course of an hour session it may flow something like this as an example:
Me: “When you are anxious, are there some other feelings that you think are just below the surface of that? Feelings that might trigger anxiety?”
Client: “I feel like I can’t measure up in my relationships. And when I feel like I can’t measure up, I start to become anxious.”
Me: “What does it feel like to not measure up?
Client: “What do you mean?”
Me: “If you don’t measure up in your relationships, what does that say about you? What’s the message about yourself that you hear?
Client: “That I will be rejected. People won’t want to be around me.”
Me: “And if you are rejected?”
Client: “Then I will be alone in this world.”
Me: “And if you are alone in this world?”
Client: “Then I have nothing. Not even God would love me.”
This is a very quick and rough rendering of the actual, deep and heavy work that takes place in a session.
But here is the point.
When we are dealing with anxiety, it’s rarely about those things that hover at the surface of our lives, but rather a deep underlying feeling that lies at the core of our sense of love and trust.
It’s things we don’t think about often, that lay at an almost unconscious level, but I want to help a client bring them to the surface to deepen their understanding.
Me: “So when you are anxious, it is triggered by a feeling that you don’t measure up. And to not measure up means that you will be rejected in this world from your relationships. And ultimately that means you are alone. Even unloved by God.”
Client: “Yes…when I sit and really think about it. This is at the root of all my anxiety.”
Healing begins when we can get to the root of our anxiety.
Sit with your anxiety a bit.
Draw a funnel with anxiety at the top.
And layer by layer explore what’s underneath it.
As it’s rarely about what we think it’s about.
Getting familiar with your anxiety in this way may be the beginning of you unlocking a deeper understanding, and a deeper healing.