Want to be loved
Talking about a hardworking student, E is probably the number one. He has been studying with me over a few years now and always brings in the questions that he runs into in his learning process.
He has progressed a lot in the past 2 years, finally is able to face his anxiety in a more relaxing way. He had developed 3 psychosomatic symptoms that had caused him severe physical and psychological torment for over 20 years. Due to his hardworking learning attitude, we had eliminated 2 of them in 6 months, and reduced the last one in the following year.
E’s case is a good example talking about psychosomatic issues. Where does his anxiety come from? We can look into a session that we had a while ago. He wanted to talk about his relationship that day,
“I would like to work on my relationship.”
“What happened to you guys?”
“I talked about an very interesting scientific phenomenon with her the other day. After I was done, she said to me, ‘Why did you tell me that? What was the point?’ I was quite hurt by her reaction. Because I had so many things that I wanted to share with her. ”
“How did it hurt you? Can you help me to understand it more?”
“I tried to share my passion with her, but she did not seem to appreciate it.”
“I understand that. Wouldn’t it be so wonderful if someone we love enjoys our passion too? ”
“Yes. but she was not interested.”
E and I went on to discuss the topic. We wanted to see whether we had to share our passion with our partners and ended up agreeing on this:
When it is about the significant meanings and values for life, we have to have some common ground with our partners; when it is about personal interests, it is not necessary for them to love our passion.
Getting to this point, I wondered if E was ready to explore the subject deeper.
“Would you like to explore further? Do you want to know why you had to share so much with her?”
“Okay. I would like to know.”
“What is it like for you, if you don’t share so much with her? What would you feel?”
He furrowed his brows and stopped for a moment, “I feel anxious. It is like that if I don’t try so hard to show her how smart or how special I am, she would not love me. She would abandon me.”
“Stay here”, “and simply feel your relationship with her from the button of your heart. Do you feel that she loves you?”, I stopped for a few seconds and continued, “Really feels it carefully. Have she loved you more when you wanted to prove how smart and special you were?”
E followed my direction being with question for a bit, and answered me with a smile, “ I feel the same. She loves me the same, regardless of how much I wanted to prove to her. And actually, she loves me really quite a lot.”
“Since you are already so loved, do you still feel the need to share so much, in order to fight for the love that you want? ”
“Probably not.” He felt funny about what he was doing with her girlfriend.
“Well, enjoy her love for you then!”
E later had a deeper realization, he did not need to “try hard” to win love. The major part of his anxiety came from wanting to be seen and to be loved.
If he did not have the opportunity to see the origin of his anxiety, where would he be taken by his anxiety?
Would he be close to love, or away from love?
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If we do not have the opportunity to see the origin of anxiety, where would we be taken by it?
My real voice
My client H was very troubled by his worries today.
He came in wondering how he was able to be so happy in the past few days and to be so worried today.
“What is going on?”
“I am very stuck in my worries.”
“What is it about?”
“It’s about my future.”….
We discussed what really worried him and found out that he was struggling between two voices in his head: The Voice of Inner Critic and The Voice of Inner Worrier.
Inner Critic did not agree anything that he decided, “You could never do that!” “You will have some serious problems!” “Things would never work out for you!” “You are too weak for this!”, etc. It was basically telling him that “You are the problem! So you will screwed things up no matter what.”
On the other hand, Inner Worrier was on his back, “This is too hard for me.” “I don’t think I can deal with it.” “What if I get into serious problem?” “I might lose my safety forever.” It was generating overwhelming self-doubt, basically got him to belief that “I am too vulnerable to handle any challenges.”
The funny thing was, he clearly understood that neither his Inner Critic nor his Inner Worrier made any rational sense but did not seem to have any power to stop them from talking to him. (Aren’t we all familiar to this phenomenon?) He went on a bit explaining his struggle to me and was disappointed by his dilemma.
“I finally have progressed so much and felt so much more confident. I just want to have some adventure in my life. Why does life have to be so hard? ”
“Since you know that both your Inner Critic and Inner Worrier don’t make sense, if you push away your Inner Critic and Inner Worrier, what are you really saying? What is your real opinion?”
“I am more confident and want to some adventure.”
I saw a smile on his face. He realized the expression from his real voice. He was happy about it.
*****
Without all those noises in the head, what are we really saying? What is our true opinion? Our refection? And our expression? Don’t mistake our noises with who we are. Try to quiet all the noises and listen. You might be surprised by what you really want to say. You might get to know who you are.