Why people have anxiety and how therapy helps
I like to categorize anxiety into two different types.
The first type of anxiety is the everyday anxiety of living in the world that everyone experiences but to different degrees and in different ways. Freud says we don’t remember much from our early days. We repressed it. —Especially the unacceptable thoughts, wishes and feelings we had as a small child. And when repressed material such as greed, jealousy, anger or guilty wishes and pleasures bubble to the surface, it’s mortifying and embarrassing. It’s the stuff of ‘little kids’ or is socially unacceptable and we are now adults so we get anxious and want to make it go away.
What can you do to reduce this type of anxiety if it seems to be getting in your way? With the help of a therapist, one can track the source of anxiety. Often forbidden feelings and wishes are hidden behind anxiety and if they can be discovered, acknowledged, tolerated and even appreciated, anxiety diminishes. Everyday common anxieties of repressed wishes and forbidden feelings often appears through something called transference. Someone ‘transfers’ those wishes and feelings that were once directed toward caregivers and siblings in early life onto the therapist or other close relationships. In close relationships with friends and partners, transference will often be the source of relationship strife. But a therapist is trained to look for the transference and talk about it with their client in a supportive and inquisitive way. The individual can then have a window into their unconscious which initially can feel uncomfortable to look at but hopefully can be appreciated and understood by both the client and the therapist. With increased ability to look and tolerate evidence of the unconscious, day to day life becomes less anxiety inducing and relationships become more pleasurable.
Another type of anxiety is trauma anxiety. This type is the result of past relational trauma (Repeated and pervasive failure to attend to a child’s emotional needs.) or blatant physical, emotional or sexual abuse. If the trauma is from the past, someone may experience anxiety because they are re-experiencing a trauma that happened in the past as if it is actually happening right now. And it can be especially challenging when something is currently traumatic and one has a history of trauma. There can also be other types of traumatic experiences that may not be so obvious. If someone is different than what is acceptable in mainstream culture such as LGBTQ or identifies as trans gendered, they may have trauma experiences related to being different. Or perhaps someone is having significant health issues or changes happening to their body that are frightening.
It can be harder to think when one is experiencing trauma anxiety because their body and mind rally to protect themselves from possible danger. And sometimes, there is danger in the present and it’s hard to figure out real present danger from re-experiencing past dangers in the present.
Therapy helps others to understand their triggers, their past trauma experience, cope better and learn to trust others again after understandably being guarded against getting close to others to protect themselves from danger. A therapist can help “think” with a client who has trauma related anxiety when their mind and body has taken over in the name of self protection from possible dangers.