Oct 21 • EIT New Insights
Anxiety Indentity
Do you identify with your anxiety or with the sensations of your anxiety. I had a client tell me that she chose me because we had so much in common. When I enquired about childhood, nationality, or another common experience, she replied that the similarities had to do with anxiety symptoms.
Many anxiety clients identify with the sensations at such a deep level that the sensation itself becomes the primary symbolic representation of the self, we have what I would call a "semiotic confusion" - the signifier (the anxiety sensation) collapses into the signified (the self). This could indeed contribute to depersonalization, where one feels detached from oneself. When anxiety sensations become symbolically equivalent to the self, depersonalization may emerge as a protective mechanism - a way of creating distance when cognitive differentiation has failed (separating yourself from your sensations). The individual may be caught in what Piaget would term "centration" - an inability to decentre from the immediate, overwhelming sensory experience. They cannot step back and take multiple perspectives on their own experience. Depersonalization involves a disturbance in the object permanence of the self - the individual loses the sense of the self as a continuous, stable object (Hunter et al., 2003; Sierra & Berrios, 1998).
That was psychologist-speak. In layman's terms, when you concentrate on your sensations, you feed into depersonalization and derealization. I hope that provides hope for people, as this means that you are not a slave to depersonalization and derealization. Use the techniques I provided in my Three Elements of Stage One Anxiety video to break free.
Would this be an interesting topic for my next video?
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Anxiety Indentity
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