My cat needed a bath…she’s getting older and less able to look after the hard to reach parts.
What does this have to do with anxiety—trust me, LOTS!! You shoulda seen her. Her style…frozen while she knows she’s trapped, and then lightening quick at the first opportune moment. And oh, lots of crying…Lily can sound almost human when she gets going. Her eyes have this stricken victim look that could break your heart. But when she sees her chance, she can move pretty fast for an old girl. This is her MO: still and appearing cooperative, pleading with her eyes, and always on the lookout to make a break. That’s our Lily!
Did’ja ever notice how most of us have a style of what to do when we feel like the heat is on? And did’ja ever notice how far back that style can go?
When you were a kid, remember how vulnerable you were? Needed to make your way into adulthood. Some are fortunate and grow up secure in the knowledge that we will receive all the essentials from our parents—consistency, food, shelter, love and learning what a kid needs to learn. Other kids find the grown ups in their lives are abusive, inattentive, depressed and absent, addicted to something because of an unknown pain in their lives, or otherwise well-intentioned, but can make the world a tentative scary place for a kid. Meals not quite so predictable, or love expressed only with “strings attached”.
So the cute cooperative girl knows that her parents respond to sweetness, cuteness and so learns to be coy and appealing to keep her parents engaged–feeling like they get preoccupied with the country club and work, but love showing off their adorable princess.
The confrontational boy knows that no one is gonna protect him except him, and so he takes on the world as an enemy and lets no one in—that way no one can hurt him.
The helpful hardworking girl realizes that’s how she can sustain an overworked exhausted single mom and ensure there is some room at the end of the day for some TLC for her.
The little boys figures out that when he disappears during conflict, the fight doesn’t escalate, he doesn’t get as hurt, doesn’t have to see his mom get pushed around (how scary is that for a kid!) and it will be quiet when his dad passes out in a drunken stupor.
Kids aren’t consciously manipulative…just trying to get through life in a world that seems scary and is perceived as unpredictable. Kids, without a lot of resources, develop a tool that works and use it—generally effectively. The family system absorbs and adapts to this strategy. The examples are very clear, often a child’s fear, and their coping strategies are much more subtle than the above circumstances.
Problem is that when you get to adulthood, the types of situations a person encounters requires more than the one standard approach that worked over and over again earlier in a person’s life. It’s like having a hammer—works well when your problem is a nail, but not every challenge is a nail. Suddenly what worked so well as a kid, now does not address the adult situations successfully.
When we are anxious, our default position is to go back to the “tried and true” strategies that we learnt were essential (and successful) to our survival over the decades.
So the cute, adorable girl finds that being cute and adorable attracts men easily and she is well cared for but sets her up to be manipulated by men who take advantage of her.
The confrontational boy becomes a man who becomes defensive whenever challenged–his wife has no way to raise a concern without him blaming her…and gradually she learns to be quiet and not “ruffle his feathers”–though she loves him, she pulls away over time as a matter of survival.
The hardworking girl discovers there are only 24 hours in a day, and when her marriage is in trouble, she can’t fix it by working harder—she’s already exhausted by her efforts—and so she becomes yet more unavailable to her husband as she pushes herself even harder.
The withdrawing little boy loves his wife dearly, but pulls away and retreats to his workshop when she needs to process a disappointment, or flashes anger towards him—and she is left feeling alone and abandoned—and he can’t understand why she becomes disengaged over the years.
It can be a profound revelation to a spouse to realize that what is happening during conflict is actually a response to anxiety…an anxiety response gone awry. Imagine going from: “My husband abandons me when I need him the most” becomes: “My husband distances from his feelings of anxiety when I challenge him on something”. The goal of therapy is to have the individual (or couple) be able to stay in the situation, understand that the behavior is an anxiety response, and to calm oneself in other ways so as to reduce the anxiety enough that alternate strategies can be employed.
Many times, couples come in to “learn communication skills”…which has me chuckle. These are people who are highly competent communicators professionally and with friends. They have all the communication skills that they need. What they don’t have is access to all these communication skills during times of conflict with their spouse…because the anxiety of not feeling fully loved and accepted by a spouse has them going back to the basic skill they used most earlier in his/her life.
It’s not communication skills that are needed in that situation, it’s safety—ensuring that each partner is aware at a profound and deep level that they are loved, safe and deeply accepted by their partner…and with the anxiety out of the way, a couple is free to communicate effectively.
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