Fear and anxiety are emotions that help us survive, motivate us and also determine our boundaries. For example, if we see a lion coming towards us, we become afraid. Our body begins to react intensely and prompts us to run away. The purpose of fear is to keep us alive. Anxiety helps us anticipate dangers and take action. The aim is to protect the person from situations that he or she will have difficulty coping with, that is, to prevent harm from a physiological perspective. A certain amount of anxiety even allows us to grow and move. For example, if a student who has an exam has no concerns about passing the exam, then he will not have a source of motivation to study to pass the exam and he will not study for the exam.
So why do some of us have intense anxiety, while others worry less?
Every experience we have throughout our lives is recorded in our inner world and involuntarily governs our reactions to the people we encounter. By looking at what happened in the environment we were in when we were babies, we learn which emotions are accepted, which forms of communication are preferred, how we should talk, behave and even feel, by imitating and repeating what we see in the family. Since childhood, our brain records many memories and information, but we are not even consciously aware of their impact on us. However, our memories, especially those in which we experience emotional distress, are recorded in our minds and can emerge beyond our control. For example, we consciously know that our relationship must end and that the person we are with is not suitable for us, but even the thought of breaking up can make us extremely anxious. Again, although we know that being alone at home is not actually a problem and that many people are not afraid of being alone at home, we may not even be able to stand the thought of it and become very anxious. Basically, many of our emotions and behaviors that prevent us from feeling happy, peaceful, comfortable and free stem from our past experiences recorded in our unconscious, and we often do not remember them.
For example, overreacting to sudden sounds and enduring continued loud noises. He remembered that while working with a client who was having difficulty in school, he got his head stuck in a window bar at a very young age, and after hours of effort, he was able to escape by cutting the iron with an electric saw. The discomfort he felt when he heard the loud noise was the same feeling of fear and discomfort he experienced in this incident. The loud sound caused the current emotion to be experienced again. Therefore, sudden loud noises both frightened him and made him angry.
Even though we are not aware of it, we actually experience these and similar connections all the time. These connections form the basis of what we like, dislike, irritate, and hate in ourselves and the people around us.
How does EMDR work in anxiety?
It is important to understand the cause of the troubles. However, this is only the first step in eliminating our troubles. EMDR Therapy enables the reprocessing of past and unfinished memories by activating the brain's information processing system. Thus, useless and incorrect information is replaced with useful and correct information and stored in our memory in this way. There are situations in which every person suffers. However, if our pain continues even after a long time has passed, or if we experience intense anxiety, then this memory continues to exist vividly within us. Because our minds are actually programmed to forget. If we describe this situation physically, for example, when our arm is cut, it hurts a lot at first, then it gradually forms a scab, the pain begins to decrease, then depending on the size of the wound, either a scar remains or it disappears completely, but even if a scar remains, it does not hurt us when we touch it. Our experiences are like this too. After the event is over, we experience our emotions, we continue our lives by learning what we have to learn, and our negative experiences do not bother us. If this does not happen, then this memory is not processed in our memory. Processing this memory helps us get rid of the distressing emotion.
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