What is "Working Through?" In Detail, Please!

I asked my T this very question in session; I'm not sure if I got an answer because sometimes I don't shut up long enough to let him answer me.

I'm still trying.....struggling, to figure it out. But I wish that I knew so that I could get it over with already.

Would it be accurate to say that one way of characterizing "working through" would be the grabbing hold of some thread of emotional reaction, like the giveaway tail of a hiding cat, and then just following and following that thread to see where it leads? In other words, if I suppose (as I do) that somewhere in there there's lots of anger, then if I find a hint of anger in something I do all the time, I should ponder and poke at that, trying to see where it leads?

by all means, ygrec! re your thoughts in last post. that would be a good start. and as i mentioned before fear, a primary emotion, results in anger, a secondary emotion, according to my T.
BTW i have had EDMR therapy at one point too. it did help.
also hypnosis might be an option to give your T insight and it's a safe way for you, imo.

Ygrec, I just want to share my thoughts about emotions, because it sounds like feeling emotion may be the next step in your journey. This past year for me has been incredibly emotional. First a series of events occurred that basically cracked me wide open emotionally. This was incredible - it's like all my inner protective walls were destroyed at once, and the emotions just came pouring out - for months. All sorts of emotions that I'd been holding back for years. And pain - lots and lots of pain. This was before I started seeing my T, and the way I survived was to just let them come and feel them and let them wash through me. Like a tree bending in the wind, like a surfer on top of a wave. Somehow I knew that if I tried to hold them back, I would be destroyed. I kept telling myself that the pain would not kill me - it's pain, it hurts, but it's not death.

Anyway, this was what sent me screaming into therapy. At some point I realized that something really big was going on and that I needed help in dealing with it. Deal with it we did, T and I, and now it's therapy itself that is making some strong emotions kick in. Once again, I just let myself feel them. I cry, I throw things, I do whatever I have to do to get through it, but I don't hurt myself .... not anymore.

I hope that if emotions start to surface, that you can just feel them and let them wash through you. To me, they come from my core and through my body and then out - the flow through me and then are released out into the ... air. It hurts, but I'm still intact. I may feel battered and bloody, but still standing.

Sorry for babbling on, but I've been at this for a year now and don't know when I'll finally reach the end, and it's a big thing with me. I just thought maybe sharing with you might give you something to think about.

Take care. You're strong and you're a fighter - I know you'll get through this, and your life will be so much the better for it.

I thank all of you who've posted here, whether on getting in touch with emotions or other aspects of "working through." I'm paying very close attention to what you have to say and to your experiences. I met with T this morning and asked her about how I should do "working through," from her perspective.

She replied that if, instead of "running away" when anxiety hits, I investigated the anxiety and peeked behind it, I would find emotions that have survived from infancy and should explore them. She said that in every case the anxiety is prompted by emotions that are no longer relevant to my adult situation. These are the leftovers of the "big bang" that took place in infancy and toddlerhood. She said that since there are no words connected with these emotions, it would take me some time and experience to be able to describe them even to my own satisfaction, but that I should not expect perfect descriptions from the beginning.

We then talked about a rather frequent pre-sleep fantasy that I use to calm myself down and dissipate anxiety before I go to sleep. She said it was an excellent example of my anger (though I feel no anger in the fantasy) and also deserved detailed and concentrated attention to find out exactly what I was angry at.

Since I'm anxious many times a day (if not all day long) I don't think I will lack opportunities to carry out her first suggestion. I'm a bit confused about what to do with the second suggestion, but we'll meet again on Monday and see what we can do. Just giving you folks an update. Thanks again! Take care!

Because you noticed you were anxious most days I wanted to share something my T said to me....

Anxiety is not in and of itself the problem and may actually be motivating.

You strike me as very very motivated on this journey, and I wonder if that is part of the reason WHY!

Just a random thought!

I also have questioned whether my anxiety is a defense.
A defense to keep me from looking deeper to where it begins and what it's about.

I easily go from anxious to overwhelmed and lost and then I'm really a wreck.
And it seems that those are the times, awful as they are, that lead to some good work and understanding.

I go from anxious to either:

*Numb or
*Overwhelmed

This stuff is not easy!

Sometimes numb is a relief!
Sometimes depressed is even a relief.
.......

Well, YEAH! Anxiety is terribly painful! It's HIGHLY motivating! You want to do whatever you possibly can to get rid of it! And you flee! And that doesn't work! But you do it over and over and over again and it STILL doesn't work! And that's why you go see a T! Who tells you that conquering anxiety means going into it not running away from it! Counterintuitive but it may just work!

Absolutely!

Take care!

I don't think so. I don't think anxiety is a defense. I think anxiety is a high intensity instruction, an order: There's something really bad around here, scram! Don't ponder on the dangerous stuff, it's more important just to get out of here fast! If our evolutionary ancestors spent time thinking about the underlying dangers, they'd have been eaten! So anxiety jumps in and says, forget the facts, get out now!

Well, I go from anxious to totally dissociated, which doesn't help anything.

Take care!

But we are not just our Amygdala!

http://www.brainleadersandlearners.c...your-amygdala/

I think what you are describing is a "survival response" or the initiation of the fight or flight reaction in humans. That's what people do when they believe they are in jeopardy of losing their lives or something very close to it.

Anxiety is a continuum of feelings from mild discomfort to severe panic to all the way to the survival response. But what sometimes happens for people is that the brain and body's alarm system triggers too easily (with repeated trauma), like the metal detector at an airport triggers for the metal in a wedding ring as if it were a gun. So the task for people becomes figuring out how to distinguish between a mild discomfort and a truly life threatening situation and everything in between. You wouldn't ever want to mess with your ability to detect life-threatening danger (although, because this is built into the body, not the brain, you probably wouldn't be able to. Anxiety itself offers a variety of messages and things to be learned from experiencing it. I don't think anxiety is as uniform as you are portraying it, although perhaps that is how it is for you now. Even if that's the case, I think it would be beneficial for you to unpack the complexities of anxiety and its full range of emotional expression, rather than seeing it in such an all-or-nothing way.

Anne

Of course you're right, Anne: anxiety comes in all shapes and sizes. But here's what I'm hearing from my T: according to her, anxiety in itself is the signal of a conflict. But you can't learn about the nature of the conflict directly from the anxiety (she says). You have to poke around "behind" the anxiety to find out what's causing it, which means that while you're "poking" you have to put up with the anxiety. I don't know about you, but when I'm anxious, putting up with the anxiety is counterintuitive. I just want out, ASAP.

However, I have started using her instructions and, in fact, they actually work! When I do find out what's "behind" the anxiety, and I go through the process of understanding it's a leftover from infancy and no longer a relevant trigger, the anxiety disappears. It really does work. In real situations.

I would have to say, though, that in my experience ALL anxiety makes me want to "be somewhere else." However minimal it may be. To me, that's just the nature of anxiety, which has plagued me all my long life. I now have the advantage of having a pretty darn good idea what went wrong back at the beginning, and therefore have pictures of the specific kinds of infantile triggering situations that set off my anxiety now. That does make it easier to spot what's really going on behind the anxiety.

And even in situations (unfortunately not uncommon with me) where anxiety starts out low and then builds up, T says it's much, much easier if I go looking for the trigger when the anxiety is low, before it builds up. I did this last Friday, in a work-related incident I've been through ten thousand times, and THIS time I was able to defuse the anxiety, trash the conflict and improve my performance. Yay.

Good work!!! How did you first notice the anxiety was coming through? Was it a bodily sensation? A thought? A feeling of backing away...In other words, how did you know the anxiety was low...before it was building up?

Yes! In my version of this, I am able to "sit with the feelings." I'm not sure if I learned this somewhere in T, I suspect from my self help survivors group years ago, or what. For me, it's not just anxiety or fear that I have to sit with, but all kinds of feelings that may be off and running at any given time. But when you STAY with the feeling rather than automatically dissociating from it, you make a conscious choice to engage with it, which I think takes some of the punch or power it has over you. As in, f you feeling, you're not so big and bad that I can't tolerate you, ha ha ha. Actually, I don't think it's quite that hostile for me, but it does give me the teeniest charge to observe the big bad feeling deflate as I make some sense about what this is about.

Best, Anne

mcl: I'm really sorry I didn't catch this post of yours until now. I apologize. I knew the anxiety was starting off by my feeling the need for either dissociation or oral satisfaction. That immediately put me on my guard and started me looking for what was wrong. Because that's what I always do when anxiety strikes at any level: seek some way of being somewhere else in my head or feeling the excessive need to eat, drink or smoke something.

In a sense, I'm lucky because I always follow the exact same patterns. Even if the anxiety hasn't yet come to my attention, I know it's there if certain other things are happening or I'm feeling certain ways. And also, I've been through all these pre-work situations literally thousands of times before. These things don't catch me by surprise. My life is reasonably repetitive (as most people's are, I'd guess). So, I had literally talked these things over with T at 10-11 o'clock in the morning. This was the first time she'd given me these instructions. (Look behind the anxiety). And within an hour I had a chance to put it into practice. My mediation was at 1 P.M. Everything went very well.
Take care!

Ygrec, I'm not sure myself what 'working through' looks like. But I think all the comments about not running away from the feelings and facing them is a good first step. It's our avoidance and our hiding that doesn't allow change or healing. My T constantly tells me to bring my emotions out into the open. Only then can we learn about them and learn how to effectively manage them. It's really really tough and scary too. But I think I'm beginning to see the positive result of grabbing the small bit of courage at my disposal and doing what my T suggests.

You're better than I am, skysblue. For me, those emotions are hidden so deeply, and so covered with concrete and so buried, that finding them and feeling them is something I'm very much still working on. My whole family is like that. Emotions? That's something people have in Uzbekhistan. Feelings? Don't be silly, have a martini. And, as Jack Paar used to say (know Jack Paar?): I kid you not.

Is this somehow easier for women than for men? I really don't know quite what to do. T isn't strongly leaning on me to access these, feel them and get them out. And I'm rather dubious about her attitude. I WANT them out. I WANT to feel them. Hasn't happened yet. The REAL feelings. Not the anxiety, which is familiar and boring. The ones BEHIND the anxiety. You know! Take care.

Ygrec, anxiety is a REAL feeling. And you say that you drink, smoke and eat to try to cope with that feeling. You're doing the avoiding, the hiding, the suppressing.

What if you just allowed yourself to 'feel'? Don't try to get rid of those unpleasant anxious feelings. Plan to take some time alone and sit comfortably in a chair or recliner and pay very close attention to your body. What does your body feel, how does it feel, what physical sensations do you notice?

When I did this mindful exercise at the suggestion of my T, I was amazed at what came forth. The key is to not try to make the feelings feel 'better' but to pay attention to them. Observe them like a science experiment. Don't try to analyze or figure them out. Just FEEL them in the body.

Those anxious feelings ARE your feelings.