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.

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

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PHOTO: Some rights reserved LouisvilleUSACE

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

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

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.

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.

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PHOTO:  © Bortn66 | Dreamstime.com

Help for Anxiety in Major Life Transitions: Shock

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

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Major life transitions are often a very important time for individuals to seek out help with anxiety .

This often includes help with the sense of shock and overwhelm that can surround such events.

 What Is Shock?

Psychological shock is not the same thing as physiological shock, but it can have a profound effect.

Shock occurs in highly emotionally laden situations in our lives.  Situations where shock comes together with major life transitions can include:

• death of a loved one, or loss of a key relationship;
• a traumatic event, such as accident, or serious crime, large financial loss, or sudden loss or dramatic change of employment;
• sudden discovery of major life changing illness, or learning of the serious mental or physical illness of a loved one;
• spiritual crisis; or,
• suddenly feeling the emotional impact of apparently positive or neutral major life transitions (e.g., moving to a new community or country, finishing a serious program of academic study, empty nest, retirement)

What Happens in Us When We Experience Mental Shock?

Numbing.  When people confront the kind of overwhelming emotional impact that can be associated with major life transitions, it can often result in a kind of mental numbing.  We may simply find it hard to feel any of the emotional impact the event is causing for us.

Detachment.  Akin to numbing, we may find ourselves completely removed from the event, as if it had happened to someone else.

Derealization.  Even more, we may react to the overwhelming character of major life transitions by a strong sense that the whole event is just unreal.  Events can seem as if they were in a play, or happening to someone else.

Avoidance.  Whether consciously or unconsciously, we simply avoid the situation, or avoid contact with others that might bring us to acknowledge what we have been through.

Moving Beyond Shock

It’s essential that I get the help with anxiety that will enable me to move beyond the shock that can be so powerfully associated with major life transitions.  Shock is a kind of a liminal state or “between” state where I stay until I am ready to absorb and accept the emotional impact of major life transitions.  Ultimately, I need to incorporate these events and to make meaning out of them, as a part of my journey into the mystery of the self.  But the immediate need may be to acknowledge that I am in shock, which often reflects the magnitude of the impact of major life transitions.

Next post in the series: Denial.

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PHOTO:  © Dphiman | Dreamstime.com