What is the real reason why we are distressed?

Anguish, that sensation so particular that it is clearly different from the sadness, boredom, fear of something, is not similar to anxiety either, but has its own manifestations and its own causes. Today we are going to see what distinguishes them from the rest of the bodily sensations and what is characteristic of them in themselves.

Although from what has been said it seems that it is easy to recognize when we are distressed or distressed, the truth is that there are moments prior to that recognition in which we cannot perceive its presence or even its presence. we know; And at one point it happens that we realize that this feeling has been with us for a long time: days, weeks, months, or even years! A feeling of compression in the chest, a mixture of nostalgia and longing, the most common manifestation of which is a frequent deep sigh.

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Why the feeling of anguish

Happens that it is much more difficult to recognize an internal sensation than an external one

. We can think of the receptor organs in charge of perceiving the world (sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell) as when we want to know the outside temperature on any day; It is not necessary that we expose ourselves totally naked to the rays of the sun or to rainwater to take dimension of the climate, but it is enough to carry out a small test, either sticking your hand out the window to observe the temperature of the day.

Well, exactly the same thing happens with perception, we do not perceive things as they are in all their dimensions, since our organs have a certain range of stimulation, and outside that threshold we cannot catch any of the signals of reality. For example: the voice emanates certain frequencies, the ear captures a certain range, and radio stations broadcast a certain signal and a certain frequency is received (a particular device is necessary to be able to capture these waves).

With these considerations, we can extend the idea to the emotions that come from our internal world. We agree that some sensations are presented more clearly than others and sometimes we can easily recognize what our mood is, be it joy, anger, annoyance, pleasure, etc

What is particular about this situation is that these sensations are similar to those we perceive from the outside world, that is, news of our emotional state barely reaches us from certain indications that we perceive in consciousness.

There remains a whole ocean of psychic processes that we are unaware of, which result in what we feel. The most common metaphor for the idea would be that of an iceberg, where only a portion of it is perceived above the surface.

Self-awareness centered on emotions and feelings

Generally it is not easy to see clearly what we feel in certain situations or with certain people, but also, when we see it, we may not know why what we feel happens to us.

Aristotle He said: “Anyone can get angry, that's a very simple thing. But getting angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that's certainly not so easy.

We see that ignorance of the reasons for certain affections has crossed humanity since primordial times, and even the most enlightened people, showing that Emotions are not "controlled" with knowledge or intelligence, but rather it is a learning process of its own, the fact of knowing why what happens to us happens to us, and psychoanalysis and the therapy it proposes intervene precisely in this area.

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Anguish is not an affection to be eliminated

It is erroneously considered necessary to eliminate what hurts us without asking why. Well then, in that question that it is possible to open through therapy is the truth of each one, what were and are the necessary conditions to reach the current point in which we are distressed. It is not a malfunction of our body, but rather a signal emitted by the psychic apparatus indicating the fact that be acting out of our true desire.

This is generally due to the fact that sometimes we make important decisions in our lives without knowing why, and these decisions, although in some point we feel that they do us good and we assume that they are what we really want to be happy, they may be holding the desire of another significant person in our lives, or old desires that no longer correspond to what we necessarily need today to us.

It should be noted that, although anguish is a sign par excellence of this process, it often happens that the same situation is manifested through other symptoms such as discomfort, pressure, anxiety, etc. There are several signs that work as an alarm.

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The importance of psychotherapy in the face of anguish

Therapy allows you to give rise to these sensations through words; words that were not said or did not take place in oneself for not being able to recognize something unwanted at the time, or simply because we are now aware of certain other people's desires that are no longer the our.

It is never too late to work through situations and give ourselves room in our lives. After all, the only debt we have is with our well-being and our peace of mind. The external world is a reflection of the internal world, if the reality we live in is usually dark, it is possible give it color by opening the space of desire with its multiple possibilities of creating another truth in which to inhabit.