HOW AWARE AM I about my painful emotions?

PREVIOUS: T.E..A. & Anxiety (#1)

SITEs: Anxiety Fingerprint (Tool 3)
• Consciousness & Emotions & the brain

BOOK: Freedom From Body Memory : Awaken the Courage to Let Go of the Past….. “a person can accumulate years, even a lifetime of stress in their body from past experiences….”

1. T.E.A defined (Part 1)

2. ANXIETY (cont)
⚑ UNDER: For those of us who try to skate past our anxiety when something sets it off – we’re deeply shocked, overwhelmed, can’t cope, think we’re losing our mind…… And if we unexpectedly get too flooded, without a healthy way to resolve it, it can trigger an anxiety attack, which is very scary & physically painful

ACoAs will do almost anything to avoid feeling our emotions – especially fear. ‘Coping’ styles (escapes):
• keep so busy you can’t feel it (or much of anything else)
• withdraw, isolate from people, refuse help or comfort
• find other ways to escape (internet, tv, sleeping……)
• stay angry so you don’t feel scared
• blame everyone / everything else

⚑ OVER: And then there are those of us who are drowning in anxiety – for days, months, years or as far back as we can remember – as our constant daily companion. We don’t know what to do about it, don’t know the source & have never learned how. It’s one reason why some ACoAs actively try suicide – even though few achieve it directly.

Reactions:
• obsess over that you did wrong when upset or disappointed
• search for answers outside of yourself to fix your problems
• use various categories of addiction to numb any unpleasant Es
• dump on anyone who’ll listen : compulsively go on & on about situations & people in your life that upsets you, without any self-awareness of internal causes,
or else try to make appropriate external changes where possible.

CHICKEN or EGG
Whether anxiety (physically & emotionally painful) has been a life-long black cloud always overhead  which has effected everything you do,
OR an occasional unexpected ‘visitor’, seemingly out of nowhere –
2 important questions come to mind:
Where is it coming from? // What can I do about it?
If you’ve asked yourself these Qs, you may have just shrugged ”I don’t know”.

a. Not everyone is self-reflective. Most people go thru life ignoring or using the list above as defense mechanisms to sidestep emotional pain. They’re just baffled & stay that way.

b. Some see a connection between an event (action) & anxiety, but don’t know what it is, & attribute it to something that shows our imperfection :
√ making a mistake, forgetting something, being late, saying the wrong thing, losing something valuable (even temporarily), making  a fool of ourselves, failing at some effort…..

More often it’s something or someone outside of ourselves that makes us anxious :
√ waiting for an important phone call, being called into the boss’s office, a break up, anticipating an attack or punishment, the death of a family member, someone important turning against us, being verbally attacked or accused wrongly, caught in a character defect …..

c. Emotionally oriented ACoAs feel the anxiety intensely, but will only ‘hear’ obsessive thoughts – “spinning” – & assume it’s a way to explain the emotional distress, after the fact. (Suggestion: Enneagram 2, 4, 6 types, & anyone with a lot Water signs in their Astro natal chart – Scorpio, Cancer & Pisces)

Sensitive /emotional ACoAs may assume that a stressful situation is what generates anxiety, CAUSING the spinning (obsessive thoughts) – as a way of explaining the emotional upset to ourselves. (Posts: “What just happened?“)
We may use this kind of endless ruminating:
• to beat ourselves up, taking on all the blame for a situation
• to identify how bad/ weak/ inadequate… we’re convinced we truly are & in what way
• to figure out how to fix it, but from a narcissistic perspective (“It’s all about me!”), via people-pleasing, groveling, hiding out, being belligerent…. depending on our personal defensive style.

HOWEVER – the reality of our internal process is the reverse : our harmful THINKING CAUSES our anxiety!

NEXT: T.E.A. & Anxiety (Part 3)