This isn’t obviously pertinent to the topics of this specific post, but the idea of chronic or frequent, and persistent, anxiety reminds me a lot of the ideas behind Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, namely that the anxiety is a strategy by which a ‘protector’, a cognitive and emotional part of you, is protecting one or more ‘exiles’, other parts that in a sense ‘encapsulate’ trauma.
The IFS practices seem, on their face, very different from CBT or (Buddhist) meditation traditions, but I suspect they’re leveraging much of the same internal ‘machinery’ of the mind.
In a comment on this post you mention that you “replay the last few minutes, and usually I feel triggered again when I get to the original trigger.”. That reads very much like IFS ideas about communicating with one’s parts, at first protectors, e.g. a part that uses an “anxiety trance” to avoid exposing other traumatized parts to something negative, and then, with the ‘explicit agreement’ of the relevant protectors, the ‘underlying’ exiles.
I’ve never heard of IFS in particular but I really like the sound of it! I have sort of naturally started experiencing my mind as consisting of multiple parts and agents as a result of therapy and introspection (also studying neuroscience and evolutionary psychology). It really helps me to understand and accept my mind as it is when I don’t believe it’s actually one consistent thing, but multiple modules with potentially conflicting goals.
This isn’t obviously pertinent to the topics of this specific post, but the idea of chronic or frequent, and persistent, anxiety reminds me a lot of the ideas behind Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, namely that the anxiety is a strategy by which a ‘protector’, a cognitive and emotional part of you, is protecting one or more ‘exiles’, other parts that in a sense ‘encapsulate’ trauma.
The IFS practices seem, on their face, very different from CBT or (Buddhist) meditation traditions, but I suspect they’re leveraging much of the same internal ‘machinery’ of the mind.
In a comment on this post you mention that you “replay the last few minutes, and usually I feel triggered again when I get to the original trigger.”. That reads very much like IFS ideas about communicating with one’s parts, at first protectors, e.g. a part that uses an “anxiety trance” to avoid exposing other traumatized parts to something negative, and then, with the ‘explicit agreement’ of the relevant protectors, the ‘underlying’ exiles.
I’ve never heard of IFS in particular but I really like the sound of it! I have sort of naturally started experiencing my mind as consisting of multiple parts and agents as a result of therapy and introspection (also studying neuroscience and evolutionary psychology). It really helps me to understand and accept my mind as it is when I don’t believe it’s actually one consistent thing, but multiple modules with potentially conflicting goals.
You may be interested in my article about IFS, as well as this recent talk by its developer which I think gives a good overview of the model.