Strong Feelings: gift, not curse

Problem and Goal

Jim struggled with anxiety. Not only that, he struggled with anxiety about anxiety. He struggled with worry about many things, muscle tension, difficulty sleeping, and panic attacks. He wanted to live life with confidence in the Peace of Christ instead.

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In this case, Jim's anxiety was triggered by strong feelings themselves. Think about the typical heart-states that are difficult for men...feeling like a failure, worry about performance, feeling criticized or rejected as a man. All of these emotional states became triggers of his defenses, and subconsciously, his hidden emotional wound.

Inwardly, Jim subconsciously avoided strong feelings by using his intellect to analyze, problem-solve, and ruminate about ways he could stop feeling bad and start feeling better.

He enlisted a few therapists over the years who were happy to give him lots of advice and techniques on how to manage and cope with anxiety. They only fed his intellectualizing defenses.

Outwardly, he sought unhealthy outlets in angry outbursts and addictive behaviors - some that were sinful and led to further spiraling into shame and anxiety. There was a pattern here. He would get mad at his feelings, frustrated when his defensive coping didn't work, then act out to relieve the built up pressure to get rid of his anxiety.

Underneath his anxiety and addiction, he felt vulnerable and out of control. This heart-state reflected the negative core beliefs: I'm weak and powerless with my feelings. Also, I'm never going to beat anxiety.

Origins

Jim seemed to be caught in a control battle with his strong feelings. We determined that, although he had a gruff personality type, he had a sensitive temperament. This sensitivity does not imply weakness, but a hard-wiring for greater subtlety of sensory processing. A sensitive temperament, coupled with family dynamics where strong emotions were avoided like the plague, led to his understandable difficulty dealing with strong feelings.

Integrating Defenses

Since the cognitive-based coping of past therapy had never worked, we took a body-based approach to managing anxiety. He retrained himself to sense into the anxiety, and to use it to identify places in his heart that needed healing / tending. This didn't seem manly at first, so we had to convince a part of him that the masculine heart can feel emotions other than anger!

He also learned to reframe his acting out impulses as cries for help from his sensitive heart, which simply needed healthy outlets and long-needed guidance dealing with sensitivity and strong feelings. Accountability structures and supports also helped him with the addictive behaviors.

Healing the Core Wound

Jim was able to finally get underneath his defenses to do some intensive needs meeting work. Developmentally, he had unmet needs in two areas: emotional attunement when he was upset, and modeling of how to handle emotions in a healthy manner. He was able to do the guided imagery to fill in these gaps so that he could learn a different subconscious response to strong feelings moving forward.

Through some brief psychoeducation and practice, Jim was able to increase his self-empathy and emotional expressiveness. He used imaginal rehearsal to envision directly acknowledging and expressing his feelings whenever he felt anxious or upset. As a result, he was much more gentle with his heart when strong feelings came up.

Spiritual Significance

Jim's newfound expansion of heart allowed him to enhance his relationship with his wife, which helped him to better live out his vocation as a husband, and to experience greater hope in his spiritual life. His relationship to suffering was transformed as well, as he learned to let in Our Lord to areas of pain where he truly had no control. Christ bears our crosses with us, if we let Him.