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Are You Facing “Autumn Anxiety”?

September 9th, 2019 · Anxiety, autumn anxiety

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autumn anxiety

Autumn anxiety is very common. As we know, the autumn season often involves major life transitions.

Young people go back to school or post-secondary education, fall activities re-commence, and the days grow shorter, while we feel the approach of winter. All of these things can make autumn anxiety a profound reality. As Westchester Medical Center psychiatist Stephen Ferrando this can be an agitated and anxious depressive state.
There are very specific things that individuals can do for such anxiety. For instance, children or young adults experiencing anxiety around return to classes can learn various breathing and relaxation techniques, which can be tremendously helpful. If the shortening days trigger depression/anxiety, often there can be great benefit from properly using tools like light boxes, which expose the individual to very bright light for specific daily periods.
Yet, beyond these types of experience, adults may experience other kinds of autumn anxiety, which are very specific to the adult journey.

Passing Time, and the Unlived Life

With shortening days, the sun lower in the sky and falling temperatures, autumn reminds us powerfully of the approach of winter. It can be a very powerful symbol of the passage of time in the individual’s life, and it can lead us to ask some very searching questions.

The whole autumn season gives us the message that we should be getting ready, making preparations, doing more. Sometimes that can resonate with a powerful feeling that I’ve somehow missed out on my life or that I’m somehow not on the right track. These can be intensely disturbing, extremely anxiety provoking feelings.

We may need to really focus in our lives and identify where such feelings come from. We may also need to grieve lost opportunities, but also seek for ways in which the deepest yearnings within us can find some way to come to life, and to be made realities in our present lives.

Ignoring Our Inner Voices

We can keep trying what we’ve already been doing, and hope for a different, better outcome. Yet it’s likely that ignoring the pressing questions that life asks us about our success, our failure, our dreams and aspirations and about getting older, will just make the questions get louder.

Sometimes our autumn anxiety can be rooted in a deep anxiety about ourselves, and about intuitions that whisper to us that life has more for us than what we’ve experienced. Yet such intuitions can be deeply unsettling and anxiety-provoking. They may require us to move away from our preconceptions of who we are, so that we can let in the reality of who we are, and how we most deeply feel about our lives.

What About You?

Some people might tell you that it’s selfish or narcissistic to look at questions about meaning, about what I value or about living out the creative purpose of my life. Yet, it’s a psychological truth that, unless I can value who I really am, and listen to my own deepest self, my capacity to give to others is likely to be very limited. Compassion for others starts with self compassion, and as Jung would tell us, self-compassion starts with accepting who we really are.

So who am I, really? Who are you? What are the desires and abilities that have been locked up inside of you, never acknowledged or expressed, or perhaps just forgotten? Finding these things is all part of our journey towards wholeness.

Depth psychotherapy can help us to answer fundamental questions like these. It can be of tremendous value to sit with someone positive and non-judgmental, who can help to find self-acceptance, self-knowledge and the deep places within ourselves that carry the precious awareness of who we really are, and what we really desire for genuine fulfillment.

Brian Collinson, Registered Psychotherapist and Jungian Analyst

Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional

Certified Telemental Health Practitioner


© Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive Oakville, Ontario (near Mississauga)

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Counselling for Anxiety: the Deep Story, 1

January 12th, 2014 · Anxiety, counselling, counselling for anxiety

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Counselling for anxiety is a matter of vital importance for a people who live in anxious times, but anxiety mustn’t be approached superficially.

counselling for anxiety

Certainly, in our era, we live in the midst of a wide range of anxiety-provoking factors.  There are economic issues, environmental issues, educational issues, social and technological change, issues concerning health — a multitude.  Yet the profoundest forms of anxiety are connected with our sense of our selves.

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A Depth Approach to Counselling for Anxiety

We will never escape anxiety entirely.  It will always be a part of life.  But to the degree that we are connected to the depths of our personality, and aware and accepting of who we are in depth, to that degree the factors that cause anxiety in our outer lives become more bearable, and manageable.

As Jungian analyst James Hollis tells us;

The willingness to open to depth is the chief way in which dignity and purpose return to life.

The Top Priority of the Ego is Security

The ego, that part of our personality that is aware and conscious, is involved in a continual search for certainty and security.  The ego has a story it tells itself about its own life, and about the world, a way that it puts things together.  The ego, which is to say, that part of you or I that is conscious, tends to be highly invested in believing this story. But what if, as is very often the case, the story that the ego tells itself, is either incomplete, or simply not accurate?  What if my “certainties” aren’t really as certain as the ego would like them to be?

Doubt as Threat and Liberator

An example.  Take the case of someone who in early life is given the message by those who are closest that other people — maybe all other people — are fundamentally unworthy of trust, even though there is no evidence of such general unreliability that the young individual can themselves see.  Nonetheless the parental figures to whom the child is attached continue to deliver this delusory message that is contrary to the child’s own experience.  What may well happen is that the child could absorb the message that, because Mom and Dad  believe that such a  thing is true, even though the child sees no evidence of it, it must be that the child cannot trust his or her own judgment or powers of observation.

This lack of trust in the self may abide in the adult self.  The individual may carry a fundamental attitude of mistrust both toward the world, and toward his or her own judgment — even though such mistrust is actually completely unwarranted.  Jungian psychotherapy recognizes that it is only when the individual can come to the place of “saying no” to such an attitude, imparted quite possibly in early childhood, that any kind of real change can occur.

Return to Instinct

counselling for anxiety

Initially, it might not be very easy to tolerate such “rebellious” thoughts — thoughts that are contrary to patterns developed over a lifetime.  Yet such “doubts” can often be an  essential gift.  They can be essentially related to restoring the individual’s connection to his or her deep, instinctual self, and to the primary things which that instinct knows about the world.

 Counselling for anxiety using the approach of depth psychotherapy is often about the process of connection in a new way to the deep, often instinctual, levels of the self.

PHOTOS: Attribution Share Alike  Some rights reserved by Leo Hidalgo ; Jean-François Chénier ;  mootown
© 2013 Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, Ontario (near Mississauga)

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Help for Anxiety Through Depth Psychotherapy 4: Concern

February 24th, 2013 · Anxiety, depth psychotherapy, help for anxiety, Psychotherapy

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Concern sounds like such a benign word, yet disproportionate concern can be a sign of needing help for anxiety.

help for anxiety

Well, Isn’t It Good to be Concerned?

Yes, of course it is !

Life is full of all sorts of things that need our concern — that’s the source of the meaning in our lives.  However, concern can get distorted into anxiety so intense that it gets in the way of our genuine living.

We have concerns because we value certain key things in our lives.  But when the concern becomes so intense that it destroys much of the value in our lives… well, …that’s a concern.

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Concern for Others

Inevitably, we’re going to be concerned for people in our lives whom we love — children and lovers, for example.  But that concern can escalate to a level where we definitely need help for anxiety.

In such cases,  the line may get crossed between our genuine caring for the security of the other, and other factors such as:

  • unconscious desire for power or control,
  • out of control guilt feelings,
  • unconscious identification with the other, and desires to live our unlived lives through them; or,
  • radical insecurity, and fear of the future.

Any of these, and many other factors, can masquerade as caring, and can get blurred and mixed in with genuine feelings of love.  Concern can get so extreme that it colours everything in my life — and becomes obsession.

help for anxiety

Obsession Colours Everything

We can defend ourselves from our own mixed feelings by wearing the mask of obsessive care — “I just love and care for her/him/it so much!”  Such “love’ can actually push away unconscious feelings about ourselves and our lives that we’d rather not have.

Overwhelming Concern

Where our concern becomes overwhelming, or disproportionate, or it completely violates tour personal boundaries, we need to examine, not only the impact of this concern upon our lives, but also its deepest roots.  In this way, our search for help for anxiety may take us into issues of depth that might not have been at all apparent initially.

This clip from WGN-TV in Chicago masterfully opens up one form of such overwhelming concern: the “helicopter parent” phenomenon:


In this clip, Linda, the mother,  does have very genuine and deep love for her son, Anthony.  However, her feelings of guilt and regret have built up her concern for him to such an extent that she cannot say “No”.  This must surely be debilitating both in her own life, and in its impact on her son.

What’s the Real Concern?

When our concern gets in the way of our freedom, our autonomy and our capacity to fully live our lives, we may very well require help for anxiety.  To free our concern from underlying entanglement with unconscious issues and conflicts can be a key part of our process of individuation, and a key part of work in depth psychotherapy.

PHOTO: Attribution Some rights reserved by [ Roberto Bouza ] ; victoriapeckham   VIDEO: “Helicopter Parents” © 2010 WGN-TV Chicago
© Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, Ontario (near Mississauga)

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Help for Anxiety Through Depth Psychotherapy 3: Worry

February 12th, 2013 · Anxiety, depth psychotherapy, help for anxiety, Psychotherapy

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Relentless worry may well be the reason an individual seeks help for anxiety, and depth psychotherapy may play a key role in the process.

help for anxiety

The Unknown and Uncontrollable

One of the things that we have to accept is that a certain amount of anxiety is a perfectly normal part of life.  We have to expect that we will have — and we need — some anxiety.

But not crippling anxiety.  The famous therapist Rollo May differentiated between normal and unhealthy anxiety.  The unhealthy type is disproportionate worry that  results from consistent unwillingness to face the normal anxiety of life.  Even if only unconsciously, we know that anxiety is there: there’s nothing in the outer world that we have that we could not lose.  When we refuse to accept and tolerate anxiety as an inevitable part of life, we  set ourselves up for pathological anxiety and out-of-control worrying.

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Worry and Denial of Anxiety

Healthy anxiety is the kind that we can accept and deal with.  We can do something about it, and the anxiety dissipates.

But if we cannot accept the presence of  healthy anxiety in our lives, and of our true feelings, it intensifies, and we set ourselves up for out-of-control worrying.  Toxic worry can bring chronic tension and fatigue, disturbed sleep, headaches, hyper-alertness, irritability, reduced ability to concentrate, bodily problems, panic attacks, or even psychiatric symptoms. It can make us quite sick and quite miserable.  When it gets this intense, we definitely need help for anxiety.

Worry and Persona

Our inability to accept our normal anxiety often relates to our desire to be perceived by others in a certain way.  We get heavily invested in being seen by the world in a particular way.  We frantically guard what Jung called the persona — our image — often driven by fear that others will see us in a negative light.  We worry, often unconsciously, that the world might show us up as other than our carefully constructed social mask.

Is it possible that we’re too invested in this outer image, for whatever reason, and too out of touch with our real identity?

Worry and the Unacknowledged Self

Worry takes us back to the question of our ability to be conscious of, and to accept ourselves and life.

When we divorce ourselves from the hypnotic image of the social self, the persona, can we really accept who’s there?  Can we accept our real situation in life?  Can we get free of the often crushing weight of internalized expectations and perfectionism?

Self awareness and self acceptance is central to therapeutic help for anxiety, and indeed for any approach to therapy that truly has transformative power for the individual’s life, as Rollo May tells us:

The capacity for self acceptance, and for accepting one’s life as it is, without illusion, is at the heart of reducing the level of anxiety in our lives.  The journey of self-discovery that enables such acceptance is a key element in the kind of help for anxiety and worry provided by depth psychotherapy.

What are the circumstances that create worry in your life?

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PHOTO: Attribution Some rights reserved by jonrawlinson ; VIDEO: © psychotherapy.net

 

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Restless: Help for Anxiety Through Depth Psychotherapy

February 3rd, 2013 · Anxiety, depth psychotherapy, help for anxiety, Psychotherapy

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One kind of help for anxiety is to take the restless character of anxiety seriously, and to fully explore it, as depth psychotherapy does.

help for anxiety

Restlessness is a very frequently described symptom of anxiety.  There are many individual experiences of anxiety in which restlessness is prominent — even the most prominent symptom.

What if we were to really examine the restless aspect of anxiety, and approach it from the point of view of depth psychotherapy?  What might we learn about the nature of our restlessness?

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I Cannot be at Rest

In anxiety,  restlessness may be a continual companion.  It may be an inability to focus, or the sensation that I simply cannot be at peace, or relax.  In a restless state, we search for something that we never find.

From a depth psychotherapy perspective, such restless anxiety can often be rooted in what is going on the the unconscious, and the best help for anxiety may well be to help the individual to find what it is that is restless within the more fundamental parts of the self.

Denial of our Instinctual Grounding

Like all things in depth psychology, help for anxiety comes from understanding the uniqueness of the individual and his or her situation.  The roots of our restlessness may not be immediately obvious.  It may stem from living in a way that is fundamentally at odds with who we are in our individual nature.

As we examine ourselves in depth, we may well find that we subject ourselves to inhuman demands.  We may well be living in a manner where we are not listening to our deepest and most fundamental feelings, longings and yearnings — and may not even have the freedom to admit these things to ourselves.

What is it that I’m really feeling, or, really restless or longing for?  What part of me is it that believes that I must “suck it up”, and deny these feelings and realities in my life?

Truths of the Blood

Jung wrote about the the need to align our lives with the fundamental truths of our lives that lie at the basis of the human psyche, which he called the truths of the blood.  As he put it,

Deviation from the truths of the blood begets … restlessness, and we have had about enough of that these days.  Restlessness [in turn] begets meaninglessness… (Jung, CW 8)

I know of no better musical portrayal of the psychological reality of that restless meaninglessness than “The Good Life” by the avante-garde jazz musician Ornette Coleman:

 

So long as we are not listening to the reality of our own lives, our own feelings and our own instinctual reactions, we may experience our lives as restless and devoid of meaning.  The help for anxiety that we need may well be rooted in self-acceptance, and discovering the vitality in ourselves that lies out of sight in the depths — and that is the key work of depth psychotherapy.

PHOTO:  Attribution Some rights reserved bee wolf ray  VIDEO: “The Good Life” © Ornette Coleman © Verve Music Group, UMG Recordings Inc.
© Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive, Oakville, Ontario (near Mississauga)

 

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Uneasy: Help for Anxiety Through Depth Psychotherapy

January 20th, 2013 · Anxiety, depth psychotherapy, help for anxiety, Psychotherapy

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When it comes to help for anxiety, depth psychotherapy can change our understanding and enable healing in depth.

help for anxiety

 Telling Someone to “Just Relax” Doesn’t Work

People with hypertension or other stress-related medical conditions often get told by medical personnel to “just relax”.  That’s much harder to do than it sounds.  While such advice is intended as help for anxiety, very often inf severely anxious or driven people it creates increased anxiety — “getting anxious about being anxious”.  Or else, people rage, either: 1) at themselves, because “I can’t even do a simple thing like relaxing”, or, 2) at external circumstances.

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Everyone Wants to Eliminate Anxiety; No One Wants to Understand It

As Dr. Cara Barker, the author of the “World Weary Woman” study reminds us, in medical literature on driven and/or perfectionist personalities,

“…the emphasis is on symptoms as negative, something to be eradicated.  Anger and anxiety are viewed as toxic, rather than in terms of what they might be trying to communicate.”

Here’s where depth psychotherapy provides unique help for anxiety.  It stays with the key question, “What might anxiety be trying to communicate about my life?”

Jungian Analyst Marion Woodman on “Healing as Making Whole”

Anxious Dreams

Anxiety will often manifest itself in dreams.  In fact, it’s often the anxious dreams that we remember, because they are the ones that wake us up, as Dr. Donald Broadribb reminds us.

Depth psychotherapy can often use dreams as important help for anxiety, because dreams often point to the root situation in the life of the individual that is creating the anxiety.   For instance, if an individual is dealing with a recurring dream that he or she has had since childhood, this may often indicate that the particular anxiety that the person is experiencing now is connected in some substantial way with anxieties or issues that have been present in a person’s life for an extremely long time, and that need to be explored.

The importance of dreams as a help for anxiety can be that they take us into the deeper meaning of the anxiety, and past the place of simply viewing it as a symptom.  Nonetheless, there are many other possible approaches to the meaning of anxiety.

The Meaning of Anxiety Symptom

In our culture, people are socialized to deal with difficulties by applying more and more effort to them.  Often latent, unexpressed perfectionism keeps us pushing harder and harder to solve the problems in our lives, and that keeps increasing anxiety levels.  Often, this is rooted in a deep-seated feeling that we are simply not good enough.  We are often not inclined to look inside ourselves until we encounter anxiety and pain so intense that we can’t use our ordinary strategies to defend against it.  Then we’re forced to realize that effort of will is not going to solve our problems; we really need to get in touch with what’s going on in our heart.  At that point, depth psychotherapy provides the most effective form of help for anxiety.

PHOTO: Attribution Some rights reserved by danisabella  Video: © Marion Woodman ; inspirationandspirit

 

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Help for Anxiety in Major Life Transitions: Security

November 24th, 2012 · Anxiety, help for anxiety, life transitions, major life transitions

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In major life transitions, as we see in Jungian therapy, whether an individual obtains effective help for anxiety often depends on whether he or she can find a rooted, deep sense of security.

help for anxiety

We all want to feel secure…

There are some ways in which a Jungian perspective on security closely aligns with the perspective of attachment theory.  But there are also some important additional factors.

For Jungians, as for C.G. Jung himself, the image of the tree with deep roots is a symbol of the security, rootedness and groundedness of the individual psyche.  How is your tree doing?

External Security

One aspect of help for anxiety that is necessary in major life transitions is to ensure that the individual feels secure from external threat.  With some major life transitions this is superfluous, but for others, it’s very important.  Do I have a basic feeling of safety from external threat?

An extreme example of this concern someone who has been through deep trauma, such as physical abuse or the death of a loved one — these, too, are major life transitions.  Sometimes an individual triggered or re-traumatized by external situations that in some way or another remind the individual of the original trauma.  Doing what can be possibly be done to restore a sense of safety can be essential.

Internal Security

By this, I mean something that  many people would not consider when they think about the aspect of personal security.  Am I secure in who I am?

Am I able to value myself — or are there inner critics in me that tear me apart with contempt and self-criticism?

I able to deal with my weaknesses, and accept who and what I am — because I have moved past expecting perfection for myself.  Or, do guilt and shame within me continually engage in self-attack, self doubt and resultant anxiety?

Symbols of Security

There are also important symbols of security, and these involve the archetypal layer of the psyche.  Symbols, many of them “religious”, spiritual, artistic, or from nature, may be essential in providing me with a sense of being secure in the universe.  Am I aware of which symbols are meaningful for me, and resonate with my inner life?  They can provide powerful help for anxiety.

Help for Anxiety: How Do I Experience My Sense of Security in the World?

A therapy relationship can be a key place to enhance the experience of a sense of safety in the world.  Jungian therapy knows that the therapeutic space contributes greatly to help for anxiety.

I also need to ask myself, “Does my story about my life make me feel secure?  or less?  Do I even know what the dominant stories or narratives that underlie my life are?

Have I taken possession of my own personalized, deep story?  The story that brings value and meaning to my life — what Jung would call my “personal mythology“?

Jungian therapy provides concrete help for anxiety on all the above levels, in the midst of major life transitions.

Next in series: Transition

PHOTO: Attribution Some rights reserved LouisvilleUSACE

 

 

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Help for Anxiety in Major Life Transitions: Rage

November 9th, 2012 · Anxiety, help for anxiety, life transitions, major life transitions

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You or I might find that major life transitions can lead to intense rage; and, oddly enough, we might also find that the need to deal with our rage is closely related to our need for help for anxiety.

Rage isn’t a popular emotion, nor an emotion that many people feel comfortable with admitting that they have.  How do we deal with it, if we find it accompanying major life transitions?

 1.  Hard to Acknowledge

Rage has a very bad reputation.  In some ways, it’s deserved, but therapists sometimes make a serious mistake when it comes to rage.  So often, it gets associated with immaturity — even by therapists, who sometimes describe adults’ rage as “having a tantrum.”  In my opinion, such language is not useful, and offers little help for anxiety associated with latent rage.  The raw power of rage deserves more respect than that.

It can be hard to acknowledge our rage, because we’d have to own the vulnerability underlying it: pain so intense that we feel rage about it.

There are people who are rage-o-holics — who rage because they are addicted to the feeling of power in rage.  But there are also people who experience rage because they have been outraged.

2.  Major Life Transitions Can Foster Rage

Clearly, some major life transitions don’t trigger rage.  Equally clearly, some do.  Consider the person who is laid off unexpectedly with insufficient benefits after many years of loyal service to an employer.  Or,  a devoted spouse who comes to divorce counselling as a result of suddenly discovering that a partner is killing the marriage after years of deception about infidelities.

3.  Feeling Totally Justified — & Making Huge Mistakes

The big trouble with rage is it produces a state of God-like inflation — and God-like self-righteousness.

In such a state, I can feel that whatever I do is justified.  Consider the tale told by Buffy St. Marie, in the song “Smackwater Jack” — a grim, ironic tale of two states of rage, that seem like opposites, but that share a sense of out-of-proportion moral justification.

Such attitudes may have had survival value at a an earlier evolutionary stage — but not now.  As individuals, we can’t violently act out our rage anymore.

That can be a problem — because the feelings are so intense!

4.  Yes, but What Do I Do About It?

A rage state must be made conscious, and acknowledged.  Whether help for anxiety is effective often hinges on realizing the incredible intensity of what is there boiling below the surface.

Equally essential is not letting the rage or anger own you.  It’s vital to get some conscious distance from the rage, rather than being possessed by it, despite the sense of power, control and vindication that it may bring.  Often in major life transitions, this means expressing the rage, and bringing its power into conscious awareness and relaionship to the ego.  Often it is the journey of Jungian psychotherapy to bring soulful handling of rage to major life transitions.

Next in series: Security

PHOTO: Attribution © Sergey Galushko | Dreamstime.com |   VIDEO: Buffy St. Marie ,  “Smackwater Jack” ©

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Help for Anxiety in Major Life Transitions: Loss

October 23rd, 2012 · Anxiety, grief, help for anxiety, life transitions, major life transitions

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Grief and loss are often fundamental aspects of major life transitions, and individuals confronted with such situations often need help for anxiety of the type associated with such experiences of loss.

help for anxiety

No one wants to experience loss with respect to something that is valuable to him or her — that is, in some sense or other, treasured.

1.  Can I Grieve for What is Gone?

Whether a major life transition is anticipated or feared, there will be feelings about the loss of the old way of life or old state.

Most often, major life transitions involve a big alteration in the way an individual experiences his or her own life.  Even if the change is for the better, there is still often a great sense of loss that accompanies these fundamental changes. Sometimes the loss will be as tangible as losing a home, a workplace or a key relationship.  Sometimes the sense of loss will be just as real, but less easy to identify or describe.   In any case, such a loss will likely be something that we will carry either consciously or unconsciously.

2.  Who Was I Back Then?

In many cases, the sense of loss may pertain to the attachment that I have to an earlier version of myself.  Perhaps I have a sense that I was happier or more secure than I now feel as I undergo a major life transition, and I may yearn to go back to that state.

These feelings may be accompanied by a deep resentment toward any person or situation has disturbed my connection with this earlier time.

All of these feelings may be associated with a question that may provoke a lot of anxiety:  who am I now?

3.  Have I Lost My Innocence?

As the section above suggests, often, often a major life transition leaves us with the sense that our world is now more complex, or more difficult.  Or perhaps, it’s just that I’m now living with certain kinds of consciousness of my world that I wish I was not.  The dominant myth may be that of Adam and Eve cast out of the Garden: innocence lost, and a world suddenly full of shades of gray.  And it’s painful.

4.  Have I Lost My Connection to Others?

In the midst of major life transitions, part of a sense of anxiety may stem from the fact that my experience leaves me feeling that I cannot connect with others in the way I once did.  It may well be that it’s not easy to relate to people who haven’t confronted this type of situation, who simply do not know what it’s like to live through this type of thing.

Is There Something to be Found in My Loss?

Part of the help for anxiety that we need in dealing with major life transitions may stem from coming to accept that such situations combine loss — and finding.  Along with what is lost, the opportunity for new consciousness develops in us, promising a new awareness of the world and a new, deeper sense of our own identity — and of our own personal myth.

PHOTO: Attribution SomeRightsReserved | John-Morgan

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Help for Anxiety in Major Life Transitions: Denial

October 15th, 2012 · Anxiety, help for anxiety, life transitions, major life transitions

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Denial is one of the more characteristic reactions to major life transitions; a key part of help for anxiety is enabling people to gradually move beyond denial into acceptance.

help for anxiety

Denial has been defined as “the refusal to acknowledge the existence or severity of  unpleasant external  realities or internal thoughts and feelings.”  How can it manifest in our lives when we are undergoing major life transitions?

“It Just Doesn’t Exist”

Denial may take the form of a plain and simple lack of acknowledgement that a given situation or set of facts exists.  Sometimes the extent of this lack of acknowledgement can be absolutely breathtaking.  Individuals in the midst of major life transitions may deny the type of plain and straightforward facts, that at any other time they would never dream of denying.  They may even forget important facts that they have been told.

“It Just Doesn’t Matter”

Denial can also involve denying the emotional significance or impact of a state of affairs.  We may acknowledge intellectually the facts of the major change in our life, but still deny its emotional impact.  For example, a spouse may tell us that they are divorcing, or we may learn of the disability of a child, and even though we understand what we have been told, we go on acting as if nothing has changed, and we didn’t know.  An important part of the help for anxiety that individuals need at a time like this is help with facing this emotional impact.

The Gift of Denial

The ability to deny serves an important role in protecting the psyche.  It is a mechanism in the psyche that protects us from the overwhelming pain and anxiety that might otherwise crush us.  In Jung’s terms, we effectively dissociate from what we otherwise know to be the truth.  In this way, our capacity to deny may serve the Self, for a time.

Denial and Individuation

Denial manifests those parts of the psyche that seek to keep us in a good place, and safely away from psychological harm.  The broader Self is at work here, as is the unconscious mind.  However difficult it may be, when the time comes that we are ready to accept the denied into our conscious minds, we become more conscious, more aware …more ourselves.

Meaningful help for anxiety works with denial, supporting us in the pain of that which is denied, and helping us to move into the acceptance we need to move into life.

Next post: Loss.

PHOTO:  © Bortn66 | Dreamstime.com

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