Distinguished colleague: honestly, we don’t like it, we understand that you’re trying to help us in a very private way, we’ve changed a lot since we met and we need a new place to put it.
This anxiety letter seeks to discover the current relationship we have with this symptom, we have changed a lot and it may be time to redefine anxiety and place it in a new space that allows us to feel more comfortable and honest with ourselves.
- Our relationship with anxiety has always been very complicated.
- Sometimes tortuous.
- And has also often given the momentum we were losing.
- This anxiety letter is about how much it hurts today and.
- Above all.
- Asking questions that may have gone unanswered.
Letters usually start with something like “dear or dear friend,” but it’s an anxiety letter. It’s hard to treat anxiety like a friend and even more so to love her. People keep repeating that love should not cause suffering and, in this case, Anxiety has a very sharp blade, capable of reaching the depths of our being.
So let’s start our anxiety letter again. Perhaps with a ‘distinguished companion’. Companion because he accompanies us at different and different times, because there is no doubt that his presence is at least special and noticeable among the different experiences.
Distinguished Companion: I’m writing this letter to rediscover how I say it internally right now, how much it hurts now or what you have to do with the present moment, I’ve changed a lot and I need a new space to think about.
In this letter of anguish it is difficult not to refer to our first encounter, if anything has in common with the romantic loves of cinema is that it leaves a deep mark on our memory. business is often as surprising as it is unexpected.
Suddenly, he cruelly shook our bodies, a sense of suffocation, dizziness and a beating heart to escape a death that suddenly seems imminent, has penetrated our appetite and sleep, pain throughout the body?To say that we’ve lost control is an understatement of what it was.
After a long time, someone finally gave it a name, wasn’t it the heart, it wasn’t a deadly disease as we imagined, full of fear?She was the recipient of this letter. And the unanswered questions and the pain began: “Why is it now, if I’m okay?”, how can anxiety do all this?What should I do to get rid of him?
Long before this distress letter, it’s intense to remember how much we hate her and try to expel her by shouting a thousand times: “What do you want from me?There’s no shortage of reasons to hate him: pain, fatigue,” and isolation. It’s hard not to hate when it separates us from the people we love the most, with their implicit vow of silence forbidding us from saying your name.
But hate is not an emotion that can last long, its intensity exhausts us and we were already very tired, in fact we were exhausted after so much anger, then we accepted with great difficulty that she would stay with us indefinitely. listen and ask ourselves these unanswered questions, with all the patience we could find.
And anxiety tends to respond by repeating, “Are you sure everything was okay?”This echo revealed something, we finally learned something about it: it was there to amplify our long silent voice. A voice always interrupted, which he decided to be heard, in any form. Even today, we asked reluctantly, “Was all this really necessary to be heard?
While in this letter to anxiety we still can’t call this intense companion a friend, we have won a good ally on this difficult path, the name of this friend?Listen? And it’s very versatile, sometimes it requires external listening, and sometimes internal listening.
In fact, Listening is a true friend. It’s present when they say good things that we don’t know how to appreciate right now, but also in those situations where we do stupid things and need a call for attention. She’s our friend, but she’s also friends with this conflicting anxiety. We must respect this friendship, even if we do not love it.
We end this letter of anguish by sharing what we think right now, which is one of the reasons for this text, now I speak directly to you, anxiety:
Anxiety partner, honestly, I don’t love you. But I also understand why you exist and that you have come to help, in your strange way, I know that when I join forces with Listen, you are less likely to visit me, even if you come back, I will try not to be too angry or not want to evict you until I understand your visit, but understand that it is difficult I do not promise you anything.
Writing an anxiety letter means engaging in internal dialogue with this symptom and opening new paths to self-knownness, plus symptoms such as anxiety are often the tip of an iceberg submerged in the darkness of the unconscious. the psychotherapeutic healing process is to discover the underlying psychological conflict.
Narrative psychotherapy, with techniques such as the anxiety chart, can facilitate the process of turning subjective feelings into words. Therefore, we encourage you to write your own anxiety letter at this point, trying to define your current relationship with this symptom. How would you start?