Feeling anxious in this broken world is entirely normal. Life in general, since 2020, has been “off” for most of us and it takes a while to feel normal again. We walk around feeling various emotions that we try to ignore. We use willpower to shove thoughts out of our mind. We try to avoid what’s going on inside by distracting ourselves.
What are the ways you try to distract yourself? If you’re completely honest with yourself, is distraction and avoidance actually helping? Or are you just kicking the can down the road?
Think of your emotions like a snowball. They start small, but the more we ignore them, we are pushing them down the snowy mountain. Everything left unaddressed, builds and grows; morphing into a much larger snowball that hits our life later.
No matter how much we avoid our internal world, there is no trash can inside. So, unfortunately, everything we ignore stays trapped inside. Meaning, unnoticed emotions later turn into anxiety. In this episode, Dr. Shannan talks about dealing with anxiety from its root cause.
Curing Anxiety Using Psychodynamic Triangle
The psychodynamic triangle is a way of writing down your emotions and all the times you might have experienced them. It’s a very commonly used treatment for people going through anxiety—this self-help podcast talks about unpacking the source of anxiety and its aftereffects. In addition, Dr. Crawford shares a story of someone who went through anger issues at the workplace but didn’t feel the same way at home.
Tom, a self-made businessman, came from nowhere and became successful. However, during this process, he started to experience these stress symptoms and anger issues resulting from his anxiety. We use the Psychodynamic triangle to understand the root cause of his anxiety.
Top of the Triangle: What’s the Present Situation where I Get these Reactions?
Journal your symptoms. Instead of trying to just “fix” your symptoms. Start by being curious. Write down the events, thoughts, and emotions that happen right before experiencing the symptoms.
For Tom, in his journaling, he noticed that his anger symptoms were more evident at work. So we started to drill down, what about work was drawing up the anger?
A helpful key in processing triggers is realizing that all trapped emotions, when trying to surface, yet our defense mechanisms try to block/deny the surfacing emotions, tends to lead to anxiety/panic feelings. This is because the internal world is in a state of panic as the fear of the “forbidden” trapped thoughts/emotions are about to surface. The feeling of being able to control the internal world is the source of great panic. The internal world then redirects the control efforts to trying to control and micromanage the world outside. That is why you notice, when stressed, “you may start cleaning obsessively” “you may start organizing your inbox instead of working on the work assignment” “you may start obsessively dieting/exercising when you feel out of control in your internal world.
Think for yourself, when was the last time you noticed you were hyper focused on the wrong thing? Perhaps procrastinating on what you really need to do by obsessing on unrelated things that give you the satisfaction of being able to cross off your todo list because they are more readily under your control?
Perhaps you might look at the psychodynamic triangle to start the process of unpacking the source of your anxiety?
For Tom, we realized his anger was due to the fatigue and irritability of his internal world trying to keep the insecurities at bay when at work. Tom felt anxious multiple times because he was unaware of being triggered; perceiving himself through the lens of the inferior version of himself that he has worked so hard to “outgrow” from childhood.
While completely unaware of the fear driving his anxiety that was resulting in his anger, once we started to help Tom acknowledge his feelings of inferiority, he noticed the anxiety and irritability started to naturally subside.
What in your life might you benefit from exploring in your past that may be being triggered in the present that just needs to be honored and acknowledged?
Right End of the Triangle: What Beliefs and Emotions keep Repeating?
Here we write all the emotions, including anger, sadness, annoyance, irritability and all the vulnerable emotions such as shame, insecurity, inadequacy, inferiority. After writing down these emotions, you connect to what you feel at the back of your mind which helps in dealing with anxiety. Tom felt unsupported, alone, and constantly afraid of messing things up. In his childhood feelings of inferiority, his internal world overcompensated by creating the false-self of being competent and capable. He realized how he has sabotaged many of his career advancements because of his internal world keeping him at the level he believes he can succeed. He has not allowed himself to go beyond that point, for fear of his inadequacies being exposed. Without even realizing it was a fear, Tom is crippled by the fear of inadequacy which has turned into imposter syndrome.
What are the fears keeping you plateaued? Even if you’re not consciously thinking them, you can start looking at your life to recognize where you unconsciously limit yourself and sabotage yourself from ever feeling like a failure, unworthy, not good enough, or like Tom, inferior. We all have struggles like these that we block. Healthy people proactively start to acknowledge and work through the fears so we are not controlled by the fears.
Left End of the Triangle: Similar Emotions or Beliefs
Now brainstorm, throughout your life, even though the situation may not be similar, what other times have you felt even remotely similar?
On the side of the triangle, we write about the earliest times we felt these emotions.
We develop our thoughts and beliefs at a very early age which is why studying that phase is very important.
Seeing his father being independent and calm, Tom had developed an unconscious belief that this is how an independent and successful life looks. Although, Tom and his father didn’t have an open relationship which created a barrier between them. Tom felt weak in sharing his struggles with his dad. To feel strong, Tom learned self-reliance as a strategy to defend against ever being perceived as “weak.” We are relational beings and we are made to be in relationship. Many people avoid needing people with the conviction that they need to depend exclusively on themselves otherwise they are “needy.” There is a vast paradigm shift between neediness and self-reliance. Both extremes are unhealthy. There is a middle place between the extremes of interdependence in which we consciously choose safe people to allow beyond our walls and facade to see the real us. To allow people to be strong for us on the days that we feel weak, discouraged, and run down. We are not made to be codependent in which we freak out at not having someone there. Nor are we made to go through life as with a tough exterior that no one gets to see beyond your facade.
Have you developed a mindset that it is “safer,” “easier,” “better” not to rely on anyone? Have you learned to defend against your vulnerability by relying on yourself? Perhaps some of these old beliefs of unrealistic self-reliance may be driving your anxiety?
-
Analysis
After analyzing the triangle, Tom realized that he stunted some of his emotional development and consequently the opportunity to develop coping skills for anxiety because he shut down his emotions and turned himself into a human doing instead of a human being. His belief of not being vulnerable produced anxiety every time he didn’t know what to do and was too insecure to ask for help.
When we deny our insecurities and hide behind perfection and performance, we learn to create the facade of being “the strong one” for everyone else and deny their own weaknesses.
As a result, we develop imposter syndrome, in which we want to see ourselves as having no issues. We want others to see us as perfect. Obviously this is a lot of stress and pressure to live up to the unrealistic expectations of perfectionism that he has created for himself.
As a conclusion to this study, to become a good leader in today’s world, you need to be relational. Obviously, we need to choose wisely safe people we can trust to lower our guard. It’s okay to be vulnerable, you can have a bad day, too, and it’s okay to sometimes rely on others. But that doesn’t mean you overshare or become highly dependent on others. Be authentic, don’t fake out.
You today have great potential. Go through your triangle and identify every root cause of emotions that disrupts your everyday life.
Wrap Up
In this podcast episode, we talked about the psychodynamic triangle. Dr. Shannan deeply explained how to cure your anxiety by analyzing its root cause. Your past experiences shape how you deal with actual life incidents. A person develops this fear that they project on similar life experiences. Psychologists use the psychodynamic triangle to cure such cases that may have a root cause attached to them.
Stay connected with Dr. Shannon on our Unlock U Podcast series. Additionally, we offer self help therapy in Texas, and self help coaching in Dallas For any queries, you can contact us here.
Listen to the whole podcast here: Uprooting Anxiety Pt3.
