Anxiety and Communication: Talking Through Pain (Part 2)
Talking through Anxiety: Too Much of a Good Thing?
Talking through anxiety and depression is a good thing. In fact a great thing. The benefits are many. The upside is tremendous. And talking about pain, suffering the emotional turmoil is crucial for recovery. Thoroughly discussed in Talking Through Anxiety Part 1, communicating helps others understand us, more importantly it helps us to understand ourselves. It gives others the opportunity to support us. Talking can alleviate stress and it opens the door to learn from coaches, counselors and those that have recovered.
Is There a Catch?
The truth is that for our own good we must be conscious of our conversation. Bluntly, it is possible to talk too much about the wrong things. Which can be harmful.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Talking feels good. Sharing feels good. It is healthy and healing. Indisputably, talking through pain and suffering is the key to recovery, but can it be harmful? Although talking is important, there are a few cautions. Typically, anxiety is extreme. The feelings of pain are extreme, the differences from highs to low are extreme. Along with this, often times how we think and how we behave can become extreme. When we find something that makes us feel better we want more. And more. Until it is no longer helpful. Becoming even harmful. Realistically this can apply to most things. Exercise (to be talked about in a later topic), food, sleep, all can be tremendously beneficial, but over-done can be counter productive. Talking is no different. But why?
Talking to close friends, partners, loved ones about how you are feeling is a great thing. A really great thing. Loved ones and those that care will listen and talk about what we are feeling. Just having someone to listen is so helpful. Having support from people who care makes such a difference. Most likely they will listen. They will feel with you. They will empathize and they will support. This is so important. This is why they are your loved ones. Talking to them is great and highly encouraged, but the key to healthy talk is ask ourselves what is the context of our conversation. More specifically, how are we talking, what are we talking about, and how much. But communication is communication, right? Why does this matter?
Narrative Loops
One of the cautions for those suffering anxiety symptoms is talking excessively with a negative narrative. This self-talk narrative can become detrimental. Without us realizing it what was once helpful can now become harmful. Understanding the powerful relationship between the conscious and subconscious mind is key to this. With this understanding, we gain insight on the impact of our words on our thoughts, feelings and beliefs and ultimately actions.
How do Narrative Loops Work?
Our words are powerful. For positive or negative they are powerful. As a result of our internal or external dialog, we can create a cause and effect type of loop. What we tell ourselves and the messages we broadcast influences what we believe. In turn, what we believe affects our behavior and ultimately how we interact with the world around us. The outcomes of this interaction, does a full circle in reinforcing what we originally told ourselves. Even if the message is not true, it can begin to confirm itself and repeat in this loop, becoming more entrenched in our belief system along the way. This narrative loop can become self fulfilling and self-perpetuating. Depending on the message, this can be a positive thing or potentially detrimental and damaging.
Example
Here is a quick example. A competent and confident person is feeling impacted by a life event. Loss of a job, breakup of a relationship, whatever. From here, this confident person now starts analyze. We humans are great at this. When stressed reality can become murky so a negative thought enters. This person now starts to question. From here they verbalize that people don’t like them, they are a failure, or that they don’t have worth. If they continue to repeat this, what may happen is that they will start to become influenced by this. Their active language now begins to mimic their verbal language. With this uncertainty, they may withdraw from conversation or take on a protective mechanism assuming that people are going to reject them.
From this point, they may become more abrasive or confrontational as a defense to what they are now perceiving as a world that is unfriendly. This of course impacts the response of the world around them. People may start to retract from them or become less conversational. Now this once confident person says to themselves “Ah ha! I knew it! People don’t like me and this is the proof!”. The cycle of verbal messaging starts again only now with unrealistic “evidence” backing up the negative belief. This can go on and on in a downward spiral. Until of course, the person breaks the communication cycle (Future Blog).
For this reason, it is vital that we monitor our dialog, internal and external, to ensure that we are not feeding a negative narrative loop.
How to Control Anxious Conversation
Although anxiety symptoms can at times dominate our thoughts, we do have a choice on their influence on us. Knowing what to talk about, how much and when is really important. For example, letting people like supervisors, coworkers, members of organizations and others who depend on us know what is going on is a good thing (Part 1). Is it good for them to know what is going on? Absolutely. Do they have to know all the details? Probably not. Sharing with our partners, family, friends, loved ones is a great thing. Should it be kept in check? Most definitely.
What is the Point?
If the objective is to inform people of what is going on in the context of work, verbalizing is a good thing. Similarly, if the objective is to seek support from friends, family, partners, supervisors and coworkers, talking is a really good thing. If we are looking to share and express our feelings with our close confidants, this is awesome. Actually, essential. Alternatively, if we are looking for those in our workplace or personal relationships to continually verbally discharge on or use a dumping ground this may not be the best venue. Continually feeding negative loops can significantly impact our well-being. We need to be watchful of this. Communication of this nature is unhealthy for us and unhealthy for the people around us.
Aside from the feeding negative loops, there is another element of potentially negative conversation. Looking to friends, family, loved ones, and those that we interact with through the day to communicate with is good. Looking to them as counselors is not.
Firstly, to emotionally compartmentalize is often difficult for the people who care for us. Our support people may find it difficult to hear and see us suffering. As much as they would like to help they also need guidance in doing this effectively and safely for them and for us (See Support Blog). They want to help. The reality however, is as much as our loved ones want to help there is only so much they can do. They cannot make the pain go away. As much as they would like to, they can’t. They can walk it with us and help us to keep balance, but they rarely have the tools to help us repair.
Finding the Right Audience
The caution in sharing excessively with friends, family and loved ones is ensuring we are protected and they are protected. As those that care about us, they may find it difficult to re-frame conversation to prevent us from engaging in negative narrative loops. While they are trying to support us, by allowing us to talk without helping navigate out of negative narrative loops can be detrimental. Without having the tools and strategies to guide us through we can begin to walk down the wrong path with no road map to get us back to healthy talking.
When looking for avenues of communication, it is very beneficial to seek the right people. People who can help. Finding people who have gone through anxiety and have recovered are great people to talk to. Finding these people is so beneficial because not only will they be able to relate to what we are going through, but they have experience in recovery. These people can give us strategies for recovery while giving us encouragement through the journey of healing. Knowing people who have recovered and getting their insight on what worked for them is great. Even if their advice or strategies don’t work for you, knowing that healing is possible can really invigorate our work on the path of recovery. Optimism is key. Having insight to what is healthy talk and unhealthy talk is essential.
Coaching and Counselling
There is no substitute for good coaching and counselling. Good coaches and counselors are able to listen to what we are going through and navigate us back to healthy talk and thinking. They are able to analyze our communication and strategically encourage peeling back the layers of pain in a controlled and safe manor. This is essential with PTSD. Good counseling is able discern how deep to explore to gradually get to the root of pain without causing damage along the way.
Working with therapists and coaches that specialize in anxiety is vital in this process. Specialized personnel ask the right questions, recognize response signals and can structure the conversation to lead toward non damaging discovery. With complex issues like PTSD and early childhood incidents this can be tedious. Patience and careful navigation is needed in these cases. Counselors, coaches and therapists are essentially teachers. Notable, they teach us about anxiety, and what elements in our lives cause anxiety. Most importantly they are teachers who help us create our own strategies to reduce anxiety while building healthy lifestyles to keep us free form anxiety in the future.
Our Experience
When my family was suffering through anxiety and PTSD, all we wanted was for the pain to go away. We wanted our lives back to normal. Although we wanted a quick fix, it wasn’t to be. The path to recovery was getting the right tools for recovery. That meant learning. Fortunately for us, we worked with an amazing counselor. Although we wanted to talk about the core issues and get right to the heart of it , this was not the right path. It took a great deal of leadership from the counselor to carefully guide us through the pain. Working in small increments that were digestible, we were able to reveal and understand the root of the suffering without throwing life into a catastrophic tail-spin. Along this journey there was tears, teaching, learning, self-discovery and essentially building mechanisms for recovery. Long term recovery.
Through healthy talking and communication we were able to get guidance in recovery. Equally important, we were also guided in building a positive lifestyle going forward. With prevention being king, we learned what is healthy communication and what is healthy lifestyle. In hindsight, the path was slow and painful, with a lot of hard work. As difficult as this was, the end result was building a life with insight, deeper compassion for those that are hurting, tools to help ourselves and others and a deep faith in God’s healing power.
Some Strategies of Communication
- Provide information to those that need it. (Partners, family, supervisors, key work people, friends, etc.). Allow them to know what is going on.
- Share what you are going through with partners, close friends, family, etc. It is OK to cry and be honest with these people and ask them for support.
- Monitor talk. Self talk and verbalization are so important. Recognize and avoid negative loops.
- When monitoring talk, ask: what is the objective? (Who, When, Why, How much is healthy?)
- Find the right audience. Talking to loved ones, although beneficial, should not take the place of professional coaching and counselling. A good practitioner has years of experience specializing in providing strategies and a road-map to recovery.
Keep talking. Continue sharing. Be patient with yourself and the process of healing. Know that things will get better.
To speak to Lilana email liliana@horizonshealth.com or to book a consultation/session click book session.