I’ve just been reading Anxiety Rx by Russell Kennedy (which applies to troublesome thoughts in general not just anxiety so think it is rather unfortunately titled!) and I think some of the ideas in it might be relevant here.
His assertion is that it is easier to use the body to calm the mind than to use the mind to the calm the body. If you are a very cognitive person it is tempting to do the latter rather the former—you believe (falsely!) that you can talk yourself into feeling safer.
He makes an interesting distinction between anxiety as the thoughts in the mind and alarm as the corresponding sensations in the body. You then have a looping feedback cycle between the two, where they can each make the other worse.
However, the cycle is generally initiated by alarm (and he talks about two different types of alarm—foreground and background, with foreground being the universal fight-or-flight response and background being caused by trauma). Often alarm is initiated unconsciously, and then our brain tries to come up with an explanation for that alarm. It sounds like it your case perhaps you have some unconscious trigger actually related in some weird meta way to thinking or the possible social consequences of thinking.
His solution for breaking the feedback loop involves awareness of the sensations in the body, breathing and self-compassion, but I think other therapies that focus on the ‘alarm’ rather than cognitive strategies might just as valid. For me the ideas in the book fit very nicely with Internal Family Systems therapy and also with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for example. Kennedy is clearly a big fan of Somatic Experiencing Therapy which I suspect has influenced his approach.
I guess that’s broadly the same as the old idea of doing some kind of meditation to calm down when one is anxious, but explained in a much more convincing way, that also sounds like it would make it easier for me to implement it as a technique, rather than just going through the motions of meditating until I get bored of it because I don’t see where the benefits are coming from. Thank you very much!
I’ve just been reading Anxiety Rx by Russell Kennedy (which applies to troublesome thoughts in general not just anxiety so think it is rather unfortunately titled!) and I think some of the ideas in it might be relevant here.
His assertion is that it is easier to use the body to calm the mind than to use the mind to the calm the body. If you are a very cognitive person it is tempting to do the latter rather the former—you believe (falsely!) that you can talk yourself into feeling safer.
He makes an interesting distinction between anxiety as the thoughts in the mind and alarm as the corresponding sensations in the body. You then have a looping feedback cycle between the two, where they can each make the other worse.
However, the cycle is generally initiated by alarm (and he talks about two different types of alarm—foreground and background, with foreground being the universal fight-or-flight response and background being caused by trauma). Often alarm is initiated unconsciously, and then our brain tries to come up with an explanation for that alarm. It sounds like it your case perhaps you have some unconscious trigger actually related in some weird meta way to thinking or the possible social consequences of thinking.
His solution for breaking the feedback loop involves awareness of the sensations in the body, breathing and self-compassion, but I think other therapies that focus on the ‘alarm’ rather than cognitive strategies might just as valid. For me the ideas in the book fit very nicely with Internal Family Systems therapy and also with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for example. Kennedy is clearly a big fan of Somatic Experiencing Therapy which I suspect has influenced his approach.
I guess that’s broadly the same as the old idea of doing some kind of meditation to calm down when one is anxious, but explained in a much more convincing way, that also sounds like it would make it easier for me to implement it as a technique, rather than just going through the motions of meditating until I get bored of it because I don’t see where the benefits are coming from. Thank you very much!