Using anxiety in relationships for personal growth
As I studied my own responses in daily life, I began to realize that I had often experienced anxiety but, because of its primal and fleeting nature, I had been largely unaware of it. Only the more developed emotions were strong enough or loud enough to get my attention. It was not until this primal anxiety had metamorphosed into fear or anger, sadness or joy that I realized I was feeling something. But by then my emotional state had already developed to the point where I had little control over it. It had me; it was me: by then "I" was angry; "I" was sad. This emotional energy quickly followed timeworn channels into habitual behaviors, which all too often were far from being the most effective responses to the situation.
Gradually I learned to relax and detach sufficiently to practice self-awareness. I soon found that I was able to "catch" the emotion before it developed completely and to then trace it back to the primal anxiety. This allowed me to ask myself the crucial question, "How am I feeling threatened?" The answer to this question enabled me to choose a response more consciously. For instance, if I found myself starting to feel angry in response to something my wife said or did, I would attempt to relax with the anger and trace it back. Invariably I found that primal anxiety — a vague sense of my self-image being threatened — was my initial reaction. I also noticed that this anxiety almost always had to do with core emotional patterns from my childhood. Some part of me would feel hurt and in danger of further injury. This sense of being threatened would either lead to my withdrawing into a passive, introverted response, in which I would feel hurt, victimized and hopeless, or mobilizing an active, extroverted counterattack using weapons such as criticism and blame.
What I found, to my occasional delight, was that during some episodes I could maintain enough awareness to consciously attend to my primal anxiety. This allowed me to take responsibility for my own inner state, instead of being convinced that the other person was causing me to feel angry or hurt. In other words, I learned that I had choices. I could choose to identify the threatened part of me and, drawing upon psychological and spiritual resources, restore a feeling of existential safety to my threatened inner world. I could identify inner conflicts and take responsibility for resolving them instead of projecting them onto my relationship with my wife or my children. I could also discuss troubling issues more calmly and productively. I discovered that I could be in charge of the energy of primal anxiety and decide how to use it, instead of unconsciously allowing it to travel along certain well-worn channels that always led to the same painfully familiar scenarios.
© Finding Serenity in the Age of Anxiety, Robert Gerzon, 1997.
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