The essence of healing from anxiety disorders is growth, not returning to the past state

Anxiety disorders are often accompanied by physical symptoms, such as difficulty breathing, tingling in the chest, tightness of the scalp, and irritability of the digestive tract. The symptoms are all kinds of strange. In short, I feel anxious all day long. I am worried that I will see Marx at any time, and I am worried that my relatives and friends will not understand me. It is really painful that I cannot tell you.

However, the above physical symptoms are called somatic disorders in medicine. Before understanding the cause of the disease, here we introduce a psychological concept: Somatization。

What does somatization mean? That is, your emotions cannot be vented and are expressed through your body. This is called the somatization of emotions. That is to say, when you are unwilling to do a lot of things that you are resistant to in your heart, they will often become somatized, because the emotions you suppress through reason will not disappear out of thin air. They will always be expressed through the body in some way.

You can imagine that when you were a baby, you were irrational at this time because you had just been born and had not yet learned ethics and morals, had no legal constraints, and did not know how to treat people and save face. You cried when you were thirsty and made trouble when you were hungry. Your emotions flowed smoothly and you never suppressed your emotions. When you grow up, As an adult, various constraints and labels require you to live your life. Some things you resist but have not learned how to deal with gradually accumulate in your heart. When it breaks out, it will be expressed through your body, leading to hypochondriasis. In severe cases, you may experience panic attacks or near-death experiences.

Any anxiety is essentially death anxiety, and the essence of anxiety is fear of uncertainty about the future.

Let me talk about fear first. You should have seen the animal world, where leopards attack gazelles. When the gazelle saw this, the amygdala of the brain was extremely active, the blood pressure rose rapidly, and adrenaline surged. It retreated with its front legs and rushed out like lightning, changing routes from time to time. Finally, after a fierce chase, the leopard could not withstand the rising body temperature and slowed down. The gazelle also found a new foothold at this time and gradually calmed down. Nature’s feedback loops are so wonderful.

The meaning of fear is to ensure your own safety, and the supporting body will have a series of natural reactions. This is very similar to your panic attack. However, the difference is that your fear is stored deep in your heart, but you cannot escape like a gazelle, because you have to convince yourself with reason. You still have to work, study, and face family and friends. You feel ashamed and carry it on, unable to escape, but your body feels the fear, so your blood pressure rises, your heart beats tachycardia, your adrenal glands surge, you feel sensory abnormalities, you tremble all over, you hyperventilate, and finally you call 120.

After the attack, there is anxiety. Although the hospital emergency department checked your cardiac enzymes and electrolytes and said that you may not have had a good rest and that you should just rest well, you still can't let it go because you are not sure what it was just now? Is it death? The essence of anxiety is death anxiety, and here is the answer. You made an appointment with an expert, and while you were waiting, you took out your phone to look for answers on the Q&A community. After reading this, you felt one step closer to death. Then I started to feel pain in my chest, although it was intercostal pain.

I feel anxious all day long, so I check the Q&A community to find out the diseases corresponding to various symptoms. When the final report came out, there were still no results. All I saw was the words sinus heart rate. You seemed uneasy and continued to check various symptoms and told your family about your symptoms. So, you have one important thing to do every day, which is to worry about your body.

In fact, this is a joke played by nature on you. You didn't care much about yourself before, but this time I will let you care enough! Dependent origination is empty. Anything can be born due to harmony, or it can become empty (that is, perish) due to harmony. All because humans have reason, which is their own advantage and the reason why our spirit is far away from the body. The so-called separation of body and mind is caused by our excessive suppression of ourselves. Just like, irrational reptiles will not suffer from anxiety disorders, because they have always been one with body and mind.

You may not like who you are now, you are very sensitive, and you worry to death when you notice something strange about your body. You must know that behind any behavior is the evolution of personal experience, and these behaviors were beneficial to you at the time, so you would choose this way. However, as time goes by, you forget why you chose this way in the first place, and it has developed into what it is now.

This is like a shortcut to computer software. After using it for a long time, you forget to install it on that disk. However, the shortcut can check the installation location and uninstall it at will. The shortcut that triggers the idea has long become a habit and solidified in your heart, but you cannot find its origin.

Suppressing your emotions for a long time will lead to somatization of your emotions, and the habit of suppressing your emotions must have had a positive meaning for you in the first place. For example, you have always been a very obedient and sensible child, and you have been praised by your elders, so much so that you cannot take off the label of "obedient and sensible" even when you enter society. So, in order to keep your label, you overwhelmed yourself and broke down emotionally. From then on, your body and mind parted ways, going further and further away.

Therefore, if we want to get rid of anxiety, we must first understand ourselves. Here we introduce a method that can help us travel to the past and retrieve the body that has gone further and further away. I call it mindfulness of the past, and it has three steps: Awareness, beingwith, and choice are referred to as the ABC rules. . mentioned here Mindfulness , a simple explanation is to focus on the present state without any judgment, and mindfulness meditation has a very good effect on relieving anxiety.

aware , is to be aware of what you were experiencing when your physical symptoms first appeared at the moment? Then ask about your thoughts and feelings at the time, and why you insisted on doing it reluctantly or were forced to do so. It can even be traced back to my own experiences as a child.

This process is a bit like peeling an onion, because personal experience is not achieved overnight. Your innate talents and everything you have experienced in the past have shaped you now. The growth process of the onion is path-dependent, and it will not be what it is now if any layer is missing. At the end of the strip, we return to our mother's womb, a place without anxiety and, of course, without the colorful vast world.

However, when you are born and cry for the first time, announcing that you are coming to the human world, you are destined to experience everything. Since you are so anxious and have such a strong desire to survive, then put aside all complaints and accept it all.

accept , that is, you are aware of all the roots of why you are like this, and can truly understand yourself. Everything you experience and every choice you make are destined to be different, so don't expect others to understand everything about you, and don't complain that your family doesn't understand your physical symptoms. This is you, and you need to accept yourself.

A psychological concept needs to be mentioned here: self . Self is the core spiritual resource of us humans. We think that we have free will because you can perceive yourself. There is a saying that goes, "It's good to be alive!" ”, just because you can perceive the existence of yourself.

However, you have to know that self-growth cannot escape the environment. However, no matter how bad the environment is, there is still a wonderful life. First of all, you need to expand the boundaries of yourself. If you experience misfortune, comfort yourself and include it as part of yourself, because the environment and body are the true self, not the self you wishfully think of. Therefore, the essence of healing is ultimately the growth of the self, rather than being obsessed with returning to the past, or even returning to a carefree womb.

choose , when you accept yourself, you will play a powerful role at this time, because you can choose the optimal path based on the environment and your own conditions, and embark on your own wonderful journey. Medication is an option, and at least you enjoy the benefits brought by modern science. Exercise therapy is also an option, which can make you produce enough dopamine and strengthen your body.

Of course, the most important thing is that you have to change your behavior to make up for your character deficiencies. Rejecting others may not necessarily bring bad results, it requires enough wisdom in life.

Having your thoughts straightened out is a good start. More technologies for treating anxiety disorders are already on the way. Again, The essence of healing is growth , since you don’t want to end your life carelessly, then you have no other choice, grow up!

(The article comes from the "Youlai Psychology" public account, follow it to get more popular science. )