Anxiety traps

Psychiatrist Robert Leahy begins one of his books on anxiety and worry asking the readers quite a particular question: if you had to explain to a martian what anxiety is and how an anxious person resonates, how would you do it? 

Usually we are so trapped by our worries and anxieties that we tend to get hooked on a sense of danger and urgency, not thinking about the thoughts that are causing and/or maintaining this psychological state.

Let’s see which are the common “rules” of thought that anxious people usually obey and that can be themselves, as a matter of fact, anxiety traps. These traps are considered by cognitive behavioural therapists the main constructs of anxiety, thus targeted by treatment.

1.  Personal responsibility: “if something bad could happen, it is your responsibility to prevent it”. Very often anxious people perceive an excessive sense of responsibility, stronger than the actual one.
2.  “Uncertainty is intolerable and there is no space for doubt”. Anxious people tend to avoid situations characterised by uncertainty, as usually they forecast negative outcomes out of it. Getting control over situations is very often the preferred mean to overcome uncertainty.
3.  “Negative thoughts are true and real facts”. This is the so-called thought-action fusion; a cognitive bias where thoughts can be confused as actions and facts, and not as just mere interpretations and subjective constructions of reality. People using this bias often believe that having a negative thought may have a strong (and unrealistic) impact on the actual realisation of that thought in the real world.
4. “If a negative thing happens, it reflects me as a whole person”. Anxious people usually tend to negatively judge themselves generalising a single bad result or behaviour to their person as a whole.
5. “Failure is unacceptable”. Failing, instead of being perceived as a possible source of learning, is seen in a very rigid way, often with no alternative explanations. Making it scarier than what it could be.
6.  “You must get rid of negative emotions straight away, because they are dangerous and you are not able to deal with them”. Painful emotions are often considered as useless and source of further negative emotions. As a consequence, one of the aims of anxious people is often not to feel negative emotions, locking down such important information about their inner world.

If you suffer from anxiety and you recognise yourself in obeying these “rules of thought”, you may start questioning how useful they are and start to change your approach.

Cognitive behavioural therapy may help you change the way you resonate and cope with anxiety in a different way.

References:

R. Leahy, “The worry cure: seven steps to stop worry from stopping you”, 2006.

Counselling and psychotherapy

Psychotherapy and counselling are talking therapies, based on the assumption that talking and reflecting about our own thoughts, emotions and experiences are powerful tools to feel better and change. In particular, the role of emotions is fundamental in our daily life and too often they are not considered, mistreated, denied or swallowed. Emotions on the contrary are our own individual compass that indicates how well we are dealing with our life and our goals. Paying attention and taking care of them is a way of assuring a balanced and mindful psychological life.

Emotions’ psycho-education

In cognitive behavioural psychotherapy and in counselling, if the patient happens to be confused, overwhelmed or simply not used to pay attention to emotions, one of the first steps in therapy is acknowledging them. This process is called “emotions’ psycho-education” and it implies getting to know each of our emotions, their role, aim and physiological activation in order to discover how our mind is functioning. This usually works by monitoring everyday our affective reactions and discovering which thoughts and goals are related. Therefore recognising and labelling the emotions we perceive is the prerequisite for regulating them in a healthy way. 

What scientific research is telling us?

Despite being a technique that has been used since the birth of counselling (and even earlier), it is only in recent times that scientific research has found the biological proofs of the powerful effect of labelling emotions. A research carried out by Lieberman et al. in 2007 clearly showed that affect labelling impacts the functioning of specific areas of our brain that are responsible for emotions’ processing and regulation. Specifically, translating feelings into words decreases the activation of a little region of our brain, the amygdala, that is responsible for automatic emotions activation.

On the contrary, affect labelling seems to increase the activity of a specific region of our pre-frontal cortex (the right ventrolateral area) that is responsible for a high-level processing of emotional information. A decrease of the amygdala’s activity and an increase of that specific aerea of the pre-frontal cortex help alleviating emotional distress.

If you find yourself in a period of strong emotional distress, you may consider talking it through in psychotherapy or counselling; talking therapies are an useful tool to better understand what is going on and to find different strategies to better deal with it.

References:

Lieberman M.D, et al., “Putting feelings into words: affect labelling disrupts amygdala’s activity in response to affective stimuli”; Psychol Sci. 2007 May 18(5):421-8.

Intimacy

Creating intimacy with a person, either a partner, a friend or even our therapist, is not always a smooth and easy process for everyone. In this instance, the word intimacy means not only a relationship characterised by physical closeness, as we may spend a lot of time with a person without being intimate with them. For an intimate relationship is meant as an emotional relationship connoted by affection, familiarity, mutual support and sharing of our thoughts and emotions. Being intimate with someone entails revealing our deepest secrets, weaknesses and vulnerabilities: this is the reason why it is sometimes hard to get so intimately close to someone.

Emotions

It is strikingly interesting how past scientific theories on the functioning of the human body have remained so deeply rooted in our common sense.

For example Cartesian dualism regarding the differentiation between body and mind is sometimes still supported; on the contrary, body and mind are deeply interconnected and they should not be considered as two separate entities.  As a matter of fact, our body is littered with receptors that constantly report to our brain the activities of that particular area, in order to grant a better control of their tasks.

Another theory that is usually misleading is Aristotle’s concept that our heart is the centre of emotions; in the last decades plenty of scientific data widely showed how the origins of emotions rely in several and very specific areas of the brain, that activate our body for a very rapid reaction.

Emotions are internal states that accompany us in our everyday life, carrying very important and precious information about ourselves.

Every emotion implies 3 different components: a cognitive, a behavioural and a physical one.

The cognitive component is about the evaluation and the thoughts on the emotion; the behavioural is about the reaction that we will adopt as a consequence of the emotion, while the physical is about the change in our body functions that prepare our body to action.

Contradicting Aristotle’s theory, emotions rely in the body as much as in our brain.

Primary and Secondary emotions

In psychology we talk about primary and secondary emotions.

Primary emotions are:

• fear;
• joy;
• sadness;
• anger;
• disgust;
• surprise.

These emotions are called “primary” because anthropologically they have been present since the very beginning of the story of the human being, we share them with primates and they are universally experienced and recognised, as showed by scientist Paul Ekman.

On the contrary, secondary emotions are more recent, as they appeared when our forebears started to live in social groups; therefore they are “social” emotions: guilt, shame, envy, jealousy, …

Emotional Intelligence

The ability to recognise one own’s and other people’s emotion, to manage them and to use them in a constructive way is called Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence is considered nowadays very important as it seems that it effectively impacts our work performance and our ability to relate to other people.

Many times relational problems are indeed consequences of a difficulty in understanding the other person’s emotional world and relating to it.

Emotions are very important as they indicate our direction in the world and tell us how well we are dealing in achieving our intimate goals.

If you want to read more about why emotions are so important, click here. 

Related articles:

“Emotions: hello strangers!” by Ilaria Tedeschi

If you want to know more about the relation between emotions and eating habits, read:

“Overeating as a coping mechanism: Binge eating Disorder”, by Ilaria Tedeschi

Suggested links:

http://www.paulekman.com

http://www.danielgoleman.info/topics/emotional-intelligence/