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4 replies

Confusing Anxiety and Pain

yakusokuyakusokuMember
I just realized that I'm pretty sure the experience I've been labeling as anxiety every time I go to counseling and T asks me how I feel is actually pain. I'm feeling pretty stupid about it. Some of the time, I was actually having an anxiety attack, but other times, it was so obviously something different and I feel ridiculous that I kept just telling him I was "anxious" about being there when the symptoms, though overlapping, were so different. Is this a common confusion? To not be able to label emotional pain?

My body is responding the same way it does to severe physical pain: nausea, disorientation/distraction, inability to focus on anything other than the sensation. I also get nausea and disorientation with anxiety, but it always involves a breathing problem (esophageal constriction just below my throat), and a tightness in my chest, whereas what I am now calling pain is more of an ache down near the pit of my stomach. How is it that it has taken me MONTHS to figure out that I am not anxious/afraid in T's presence, but writhing in pain? Wishing for a face-palm emoticon right here. I never imagined myself to be so disconnected and dense...but I guess he did, since he keeps insisting I have been dissociating hurt and anger consistently. I guess it really doesn't matter what I call it. I don't know what to do with it. T makes me hurt intensely and I can't make it go away. So who cares what its name is...right?
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Attachment GirlAttachment GirlAdmin
Yaku,
I am sorry you're in so much pain. But it is important to be able to learn what it is. Feelings are what tell us about ourselves and how we are in the world. Understanding how you feel is the key to understanding yourself and making the changes you need to in order to heal. I know it's almost unbearable, but you've had so much locked up for so long that it's bound to be intense as you start to let it out. It won't always hurt this badly or so relentlessly. And when it does hurt, you'll be able to endure it better.

FWIW from where I am, you are working very hard and making a lot of progress. I know for you it just feels like it's getting harder and more painful. It's like circulation returning to a limb that's been cut off for a while. It's good thing and healthy but it doesn't feel real good at first.

AG
yakusokuyakusokuMember
Thanks for the encouragement, AG. I really like your metaphor, but a part of me who is angry to be stuck in this experience would rather have amputated the limb than regain circulation in this way...and so slowly. I really am such a child. "We think we can save your limb!" "Nah, just cut it off; the healing process is going to hurt too much!" Roll Eyes

Edit: Also not sure how I learn what it is when it feels like I don't even have words when I'm in it. It literally feels so old, and I feel so helpless and small, that I'm not sure I can do much but flail about in distress. It doesn't seem "productive."
Attachment GirlAttachment GirlAdmin
Yaku,
I felt like that also. I found sometimes it would help to just describe what I could of my body sensations and what I could express verbally of the feeling and my T would help me identify it. (I remember once telling him it felt really hot in the middle of my chest and I wanted to throw a statue on his table at his head and he very calmly said to me, "that's anger, that's what people want to do when they're angry. Big Grin) It's kind of like ice breaking up, it goes very slowly at first, but the longer it goes on, the faster it goes.

And you have every right to be angry and upset about having to do this. It's NOT supposed to be this way. As a child, an attuned caregiver should have helped you to learn what you're feelings where, how to identify them and what to do about them. It's magnitudes more difficult as an adult. You're cleaning up a mess of someone else's making; it SHOULD make you angry. The problem is that you are living in the middle of the mess and the people who caused it aren't going to clean it up.
yakusokuyakusokuMember
quote:
You're cleaning up a mess of someone else's making; it SHOULD make you angry. The problem is that you are living in the middle of the mess and the people who caused it aren't going to clean it up.


AG - So tough for me to be angry at anyone but myself still. I got really angry at my dad the other day for leaving me entirely out of a photo album he entitled "my life," despite a dozen pictures of my stepmom. Then, after about five minutes, I felt angry at myself for being petty and selfish for wanting to be in there. That is about the sustainability of my anger toward others right now. I suppose this too will change, and then, LOOK OUT EVERYONE! Wink

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