Anxiety is felt in the body, but it is in the mind

After an episode of anxiety, patients usually arrive at the office with a fairly accurate account of when the anxious crisis occurred, and they are capable of giving all sorts of details about the bodily symptoms they felt (palpitations, breathing difficulties, sweating, intestinal disorders, sleep disturbance, feeling of death, etc.); the anxious experience develops predominantly in the body.

However, the affected people fail to find their way back to that initial moment of anxiety. Or if they find it, they don't understand why it causes them so much discomfort. That is why psychotherapy, and in particular psychoanalysis, which promotes the exercise of putting into words that "no I know what's wrong with me", is a highly effective tool to retrace the steps until you find the origin of that problem. state.

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understanding anxiety

Somatic symptoms are not the cause, but just the indicator of something not working well in another scenario. We may think that anxiety, with its rosary of bodily effects, is like the packaging of something that nests inside, and removing that cover will help to know the origin of the symptoms anxious.

It is important to remember that anxiety, and especially anticipatory anxiety, together with pain and fear, are alert systems that inform us of dangers or threats against our bodily integrity; these systems are protective and essential, not only for survival, but also for the maintenance of health, counter-intuitive as this may seem at first glance.

The body functions as a translator of what actually takes place in the psyche (we could say in the mind). Just as a fever tells us that something is causing it, the anxious symptoms tell us about what happens in another scene.

The origin of the discomfort

What bears better, and more lasting, fruit is wondering where those fears that trigger anxiety attacks come from. We can use anguish as a signal, a compass for our psychic life. It is not something pathological, which must be cured or appeased in any way. Anguish is a structural affect of the human beingWe all feel it, and it only appears as pathological when it exceeds certain levels.

Every time a situation disappoints us (that job that I thought would fulfill me and now it is not how I imagined it, that person that I wanted for so long time and now it turns out that it also has defects, those objects —the 4K television, the car or the latest model mobile, whatever— that I longed for months and that do not satisfy me either, the loss of a loved one...), in every experience of frustration, of unsuccessful search for complete satisfaction, there is anxiety. It happens every time something we thought would be perfect breaks.

Anyone who is faced with the need to make an important decision, for fear of choosing the wrong option, is a candidate for anxiety. They are situations in which one is distressed, without thereby suffering from an anxiety disorder; the anguish will disappear when the real reason that generated it disappears.

But at other times one is anguished, feels anxious, and does not know why. If fear or fear is in reality, we can run away from them, but... How to escape from the anguish that comes from ourselves? We can not. This is the time to seek professional help.

The efficacy of psychotherapy

Psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis in particular, offers a highly effective tool for the unconscious to surface, so that the person who consults knows why they are distressed.

The fact of being able to put words to his anguish makes it possible for the patient to stop experiencing it as something unpleasant. That is to say: the psychotherapist places that compass that is anguish in the hands of the patient, as a navigation instrument so that it can be him, and not his unconscious, who decides what direction he wants to give his life, so that he is empowered in decision-making without fear of mistake. Because error is a characteristic of the human being, since perfection is not of this world; it is good to aim to achieve it, since with this we are entering a process that will lead to improvements, but knowing that this will not be entirely possible.

Change those scenarios that cause us discomfort, accept that we can be wrong, tolerate the frustration caused by some aspects of life. daily life, is a path that opens through psychotherapy and leads to significantly reduce the unpleasant effects of anxiety and anxiety.