Working with Dynamic Patterns of Distress
Transforming an Experience of Anxiety
Lots of us experience anxiety at various times. Much anxiety is appropriate and serves the purpose of activating our awareness to avoid or minimize a potential threat of some kind. For many people, though, anxiety can become more chronic, disrupting our lives in major ways.
What’s going on in the actual experience of anxiety? By bringing our awareness to the underlying field dimension of the anxiety experience, psychotopology fieldwork illuminates the dynamic that can set anxiety up for longer-term persistence. It also gives us the means to undo that dynamic and relieve the anxiety, restoring our access to greater resourcefulness and appropriate responses to the actual realities of our lives.
Let’s take a look at how this works in the following example.
From Black Hole to Love Is Everywhere
I worked with Kelly over a period of about a week, perhaps four or five long sessions. Here's an image she drew of one of the states she felt trapped by, which she called Black Hole:
In addition to Black Hole, here is the list of other states she worked with, with illustrations below.
Anxiety / Panic
Despicable
Angry Teenager
Shame
Parental Judge
Tears of Sadness
Needs Not Met
Not Seen
Black Hole
The names of the states give you a sense of what this entire experience of what she referred to in summary as anxiety was like for her, and some hints about its origins. Read through this list and sense into the images. Try to imagine the experience of what it was like to be her, holding those reactive states as a set of distinct parts of her experience, all combining into this “weight of anxiety” as she describes it in her reflections below.
From this, it becomes clear that her anxiety does not exist in isolation. It is not a thing in and of itself, but a relationship among a family of parts, each carrying some portion of her history and her response to it. When we can break things down at this level of detail, we get to peer into the complex dynamic that makes the anxiety a persistent dynamic in her life.
The Shift
In working with these reactive states, one at a time, Kelly’s experience shifted dramatically. For example, Black Hole turned into a state she called Love Is Everywhere. Here is her drawing of it.
Overall, we worked about fifteen hours total. Here are the names of each of the ideal states that emerged, paired with their original, reactive version.
Anxiety / Panic ⟹ Divine Innocence
Despicable ⟹ I Exist, Therefore I Am Loved
Angry Teenager ⟹ At Choice
Shame ⟹ Inherently Lovable
Parental Judge ⟹ Supportive Wisdom
Tears of Sadness ⟹ Radiant Love
Needs Not Met ⟹ Full, Warm, & Comfortable
Not Seen ⟹ Standing in the Flow of Grace
Black Hole ⟹ Love Is Everywhere
And their drawings:
As before, we have nine states, but this time they are working together to give her a very stable experience of comfort and aliveness in her life.
“A profound shift in my being”
Here is what Kelly wrote to share her experience a few months later:
“Since working with Joe, I have felt a profound shift in my being – physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. I feel like the weight of anxiety (big, dark, gray and black) has been lifted off of my shoulders. This weight that I have felt for a majority of my life has been replaced by a sense of lightness, vitality, and a deeper sense of compassion for myself and others. I feel a sense of calm, centeredness, joy, profound love, and positive energy.
“In my past, my pattern has been to be very fearful of conflict, as I quickly would go to a place of shame and blame and I would be engulfed entirely by my own feelings (anger at myself, shame, feeling of worthlessness, projections of how the other person might be viewing me negatively, etc.), that there would be no room for the other person to have their feelings too. I experienced what effects this had on my relationships, as they were never sustainable within this pattern of relating. It was so frustrating for me, because I knew what I was capable of! I knew I had emotional intelligence and strong abilities to communicate.
“But why couldn’t I get over this pattern? It just seemed more powerful than me…beyond my own ability to control it. I wanted to get rid of it, to fix it, to make it go away so that I could be ‘normal’. I have spent years in talk therapy, trying different forms of energy work, workshops, meditation, etc. And although these were all helpful, the patterns were still hanging on for dear life.
“What I have been experiencing since working with Joe is an ability to more easily speak my truth and express my needs, even my anger, without feeling the shame, blame, or worthlessness. There is a spaciousness for the anger or frustration and there is space for the other person’s feelings as well. I can have my feelings, express my needs clearly, and still have the love inside for myself and this other person all at the same time. I can more easily see and experience (and be aware of) our humanness, our mutual need to feel loved and worthy, our fear of rejection, etc. It feels so much more encompassing. Perhaps the lightness I feel, and the joy and the love, is about feeling more of a sense of Oneness with others, having more awareness that we are really the same inside, having similar wants, needs and desires that are basic to our humanness.
“Words cannot express my gratitude for what Joe (and the process he has developed) has helped me to open myself to. I do believe it was there all along, just waiting to come out and be expressed. The weight is not necessarily something that has left me, but instead there is a lightness that has come over me and embraced me. And in that, it has lifted me up! The lightness of my being is ‘embracing’ the shadow parts of me, so that I can experience all parts of me with compassion and love. By embracing this in myself, I am more able to embrace the shadow and light in others too. What a relief this is, to know that nothing really needed to be ‘fixed’ or changed, just seen and experienced from a different perspective. I am able to see that these shadow and light parts just wanted to help me survive, to have my basic needs met, to feel loved, and to feel safe.
“Thank you so much, Joe. I feel my life has been forever changed as a result of our work together. It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out in my life. I am excited to be creating my life from this new way of being. How fun is that?”
Accessing What Is Possible
I want to call your attention especially to that next-to-last paragraph. Here, Kelly describes the experience of restoring a set of parts to its natural functioning. The fact is, the shape of Kelly’s life still has a residue from the way she assembled it while under the influence of the Black Hole and the others. There are some things to feel uncomfortable about at times.
At the same time, she now has access to the ideal states for each of these parts. These serve as a compass, pointing the way to what is possible, helping her see the purpose of these “shadow parts” and respond in ways that support her highest well-being. This also enables her to “embrace the shadow and light in others, too.” She finishes with, “I am able to see that these shadow and light parts just wanted to help me survive, to have my basic needs met, to feel loved, and to feel safe.”
This is something we learn over and over again as we do fieldwork. Every part of us, no matter how deeply burdened, no matter how dark the shadow, is actually striving to serve us, fully and completely. Every part is doing the best it possibly can. What separates us from the truth of wholeness are the experiences that suggest that our needs cannot be met, that we are in essence separated from our world in some way. Restoring these parts through fieldwork heals that separation and revives our natural wholeness.
Dynamic Sets of Interrelated Parts of Being
I also want to come back to this idea of anxiety as a thing-in-itself. When we think of anxiety as a thing, as the problem to be solved or the disorder to be corrected, we miss the bigger essential picture.
Yes, there is the experience of anxiety. But anxiety — and any other state we choose to name — does not exist in isolation. Ever. And when we privilege what we have named (for whatever reason) and push the rest of our experience into the background, we set ourselves up for difficulty no matter how we attempt to address the “problem.”
Here are Kelly’s words again: “I have spent years in talk therapy, trying different forms of energy work, workshops, meditation, etc. And although these were all helpful, the patterns were still hanging on for dear life.” The patterns were hanging on, and those patterns included far more than the anxiety itself.
Psychotopology lays this bare, and calls us to step up in our work to support others’ well-being. If we are to be effective in helping people relieve suffering of any kind, we absolutely must open our field of attention to include the full dynamic of not just the focal state but all the other interrelated components that hold the pattern in place. Fieldwork gives us a straightforward, systematic, and efficient method for doing that.
Reflections
Here’s your chance to influence how I move forward by adding your reflections in the comments below.
How does this post land for you?
What in you feels like it is being spoken to in this post?
What questions are you left with? What are you most curious about?
What feedback would you like to offer me, in service to my being able to share this new work with you and the world?
What feedback could you offer toward improving my writing of this post?
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Thank you.
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