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?