Anxiety in Thought

We live in a time when our thoughts are experienced as intruders in our mental reality. This reality is one already overloaded by the frenetic speed of everyday life, concerns about the future, regrets about the past, and discontent with the present. 

Modern man experiences anxiety, and the predominant area where anxiety flourishes is in thought. It starts as a light physical agitation that perseveres. This agitation takes root in our body through neurotransmitters and will gradually begin to arouse our thoughts. Our thoughts will then start to focus on a specific issue. The point is that any issue we choose to focus on, will lead to an impass in our mind.  Essentially, we want something in our lives to change. We may wish for an opportunity to be given to us or for something negative in our lives to disappear. We may want to normalize and smooth the rough edges of a relationship we are in. But this is impossible – or so it seems. At this point, our thoughts then accelerate and overwhelm us. These accelerating thoughts impose an ambiance of permanent discontent which gradually transforms into a perceived threat. It may be the case that if we were to think things through we would forestall the bad circumstances we imagine, in due course our very thoughts become the bad we need to forestall. These thoughts become autonomous and quite separate from our conscious will. They will arbitrarily intrude and take hold of our mental life in the worse possible manner. If, in addition to these effects, a person faces a traumatic reality, as is the case for the millions of people around the world facing the Covid-19 pandemic, then the person’s mental state can deteriorate dramatically. 

It is at this point that our thoughts end up transforming into a symptom: the symptom of anxiety. Our thoughts cease to guide us, to assist us in processing and explaining facts, or to protect us against fear. They are transformed into a pure symptom. As is the case with all symptoms, anxiety appears suddenly and hinders our ability to live a life that is properly reconciled with reality. At this point, anxious thoughts run in our heads continuously. These translate the neurological stimulations that spring from anxiety into overpowering mental associations. In this way, anxiety passes from the physical to the mental level; even then it remains physical since our thoughts inflict pain on our body. Thoughts exhaust our bodies. They make them suffer.

Without Pleasure

The most prominent characteristic of anxiety is the total lack of pleasure to be found in our thought. Our free associations cease to promise beautiful landscapes, happy gatherings with people we care about, successful plans, or to inspire creativity. Thought ceases to be the refuge of our childhood dreams. It ceases to provide this immediate therapeutic reaction in the face of the frustration that springs from reality. Why does this happen? In the field of thought, there is always an imaginary fluidity, where nothing is entirely certain. Because everything is uncertain, everything is also possible. When thought is influenced by anxiety, the possibilities we imagine acquire a darker shade, a whirling, almost threatening sense: anything bad can happen since everything is possible in thought.

Fixation

In this whirling circuit of immense neuro-mental intensity, thoughts sometimes get stuck on something. They start to focus on, and constantly revolve around, particular issues. Tormented by this, we will try to escape these thoughts but they will keep coming back. It seems impossible for thoughts to be eliminated. As a result, fixations develop. A previous dispute or conflict may keep returning to our memory, once more resulting in feelings of being wronged, offended, unappreciated, or outraged. There may be cases where we may want to achieve something but we constantly think of the potential obstacles. At other times our thoughts might even present a situation that is dreadful and where our body is paralyzed by danger, taking our breath away and eventually bringing us to a state of panic. We may then try to organize our lives so that to escape this supposed danger. This could involve obsessing over every detail in our everyday life and essentially avoiding living according to normal patterns, all to avoid putting ourselves in danger. And yet, no matter what protective measures we take, the danger is still lurking very close by: it is inside our very thought.

In the Past

When thought interferes with our “mental continuum”, we may unconsciously return to an earlier time when we were powerless and in need of others. We may return to moments when others, our caregivers, were either absent and did not provide the protection needed or were present in a way that felt excessive and almost frightening. At this earlier point, and within this elementary way of thinking, we may have desperately tried to elaborate on the fear we were experiencing by creating mental representations (mentalising) of the inconceivable situation. We would do this to render the situation more compatible with the elementary consciousness of our early years. It is these registered facts that we relive when, in the present time, our thoughts relentlessly consume our mental life. 

Alternatives and Propositions

A Change of Field

If a person were to remain within this field of anxiety-permeated thought, nothing would change. Any recommendations and advice to not think about the perceived fear or danger or to think positively are simply ineffective. When thought has become a symptom (anxiety), it cannot be detangled by trying to train or transform it. It should rather be seen as a symptom of the suffering of a human being. What a person should do is to give it up (perphaps by letting it in the hands of psychoanalyst) and move on. It is better to shift our interest away from the “mental” and to change our field from thought to action. Anxiety thrives mainly in the body and it is through action that we can best communicate with the body. 

Pleasure

It is important to allow ourselves to feel pleasure through undertaking practical actions. It is most helpful if these pursuits occur in the context of play. In the field of play, we can occupy our minds and bodies with something that helps us connect with our elementary primary experiences, the ones we have in our childhood years. There is immense therapeutic value in such activity as it is an alternative way to connect with ourselves. Our body and psyche may resist at first since the neurotransmitters have an entrenched addiction to the state of anxiety. These  will, however, gradually become addicted to pleasure sensations and the spell of anxiety will begin to break.

Contexts

We should also look for other contexts that can provide stimuli that are different than those to which we are accustomed, such as from being with people or groups that display peace of mind or creativity. These new contexts and stimuli will allow a new dynamic. There are, within us, different dynamic flows. If we permit these flows we can then transform our mental response to adversity. 

Identificatory Challenges

We should also try to find pastimes that stimulate our creativity. This allows us to occupy our thoughts pleasantly as another side of us is being acknowledged. The pleasure experienced from these personality-enriching creative activities is profoundly transformative. 

After all this, after this journey that takes us away from being attacked by our thoughts, other kind of thoughts emerge. These protect us from the contexts of fear and panic, in whatever form they appear.