Anxiety lesson 6 – Expression of feelings, those pesky things!!

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Anxiety lesson 6 – Expression of feelings

Its not uncommon for people with anxiety disorders to withhold their true feelings. There are many reasons for this, one common one is the need to be in control and a fear of losing it. When feelings have been denied over time, anxiety can start to manifest. I wrote about this briefly in Anxiety lesson 1 potential causes https://helenharveycounselling.blogspot.com/2017/10/anxiety-learning-potential-causes.html

Because people with anxiety/phobic tendency tend to be emotionally reactive and have very strong feelings, the expression of them is even more important for their emotional well-being.

When I did my degree in Person Centred Therapy, it was a requirement that you checked in with yourself and others in the morning, also a portion of the day was dedicated to personal development. Again, this is a discipline that requires practice, to notice and name feelings and the memories/events that are contributing to them. Sometimes this stuff sits on our edge of awareness (meaning we have a sense of it, but not a concrete image or thought)

The blob tree can be a useful introductory resource for identifying feelings, some colleges use these with their students, but not in the right way as they don’t give the student enough time to explore why the student identifies with that particular blob. It works well with young people as it is visual and simple in its presentation. It is worth noting that we used it in a therapeutic community for substance misuse where residents (before they came into treatment) had spent a lifetime denying and hiding feelings through alcohol and drugs. It worked for them as a gateway to start to communicate feelings. You can access it here and print it off. Pip Wilson’s work is genius and there are lots of different versions of blob trees.

http://www.pipwilson.com/p/blob-tree.html

Every feeling we have holds a charge of energy, when we do not give expression to it, there is a tension that exists. Some school of therapies believe that depression is anger turned in against the self. It may be worth exploring if you feel remaining anger from earlier periods of your life. Loss and disappointment sometimes contribute to anxiety, the loss may not be somebody, but a goal, status, position, loss of trust ect.   

 We need to ask ourselves “where in the body does this feeling live”, if we cannot get the right word for it then please refer to this PDF document of feelings here https://www.cnvc.org/sites/default/files/feelings_inventory_0.pdf

Individuals who are prone to anxiety are sometimes people pleasers, they are unable to express their true views and feelings for fear of appearing angry or oppositional, these trapped feelings and the need to express them manifest as anxiety.

Before you express your feelings to someone, you need to be able to express them in the right way to ensure you are understood and emotionally held.

“I” statements are the first place to start. “I’m feeling” or “I feel” not

 “you make me feel” expressing feelings this way means you own them.

If you are trying to express how you feel due to someone else’s treatment then it is going to go smoother if you say “when you say blah blah, I feel as if” or “When you do blah blah, I’m afraid I will be left on my own.”

Think about what messages you received as a child about expressing anger

Does it feel ok for you to feel angry?

Are you being aggressive/assertive/stubborn/complaining

Think about what messages you received as a child about sadness and loss

Does it feel ok to feel sad?

What messages were you given as a child about crying? Where you afraid you were burdening an already overwhelmed parent?

Do you feel relieved or ashamed about crying, I am weak etc.

Writing a letter communicates feelings (whether sending it or not) and you can do this in conjunction with the blob tree. You can enter these into a nice scrap book with the corresponding blob and it becomes a journal of feelings.  This is the first step in recognising and acknowledging unprocessed/unexpressed feelings. Once you have got used to recognising the feelings and acknowledging then you are better able to communicate them to another person.

For adults communicating feelings to our parents is a tricky business and something I will be covering later in the blog series.

Just a short one this week, I will be posting again this week, the subject…What do teenagers really want to tell their parents, how should we respond best ?