Lost in a Whirlpool and not escaping
All of our serious mental problems have the same basic causes. And the routes to recovery are also not that different.
Always there is the Whirlpool of emotions out of control.
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- When emotions and stress are out of control, this means that your coping strategies are not working. Not only are they not working, but they are actually making things worse.
Its time to introduce ORWED….Origins….Whirlpool of emotion…Emotional Distress
This is Feelbetter Counselling’s attempt to represent what we find is the common source of most (if not all) mental problems.
And to make the point that anxieties, depressions and addictions are not that different really.
They are just different responses to the Whirlpool of Emotions, which in turn are the consequence of a life not working.
Lets looks at each of these three bits separately
Origins
Building blocks – mainly fixed.
What you are born with – unhelpful genes.
Early attachment experience
Values and expectations from early on – to age 5 or thereabouts.
Life Events
Stories of failure and stress –> childhood coping that embeds.
Experiences of Trauma -> a further embedding that can do real damage.
Strategies and Feedback loop
Life’s accidents and emergencies – how do you cope, adjust and make sense of it all?
And then fitting it all in the stages of life – schooling, partner relationships, work and career and retirement– and especially before or after mid life.
Whirlpool of Emotion
The great unravelling – drowning in emotions out of control.
This is the typical response to a life not working.
Emotional distress
Depressions, Anxieties and Addictions are related ways of coping with the Whirlpool – emotions out of control.
Anxiety is the central channel of the image – as anxieties covers all the variety of limbic system responses – and there are many.
Addictions are a move toward excessive pleasure and depression stays stuck in a self absorbed trance.
Depression – rumination, leading to exhausting sleep and hopelessness.
Anxieties – active flight and fight, leading to hyper vigilance and avoidance which feeds generalised anxieties, phobias and much else.
Addictions – seeking pleasure to escape, leading to obsessions, personal abuse and the risk of destruction.
