I am frequently use of the term "journey" for describing someone's treatment of anxiety. And why is that, because in my perspective, a treatment for anxiety is something that goes beyond the symptoms. It is something that directly related with the entire existential state of some person in the world. While you may not agree with me, for this specific article I am asking you to think of anxiety, not only in terms of its symptoms but in terms of general state of mind in which symptoms are part of it but not whole of it. You will immediately see why...
Lets go first to the starting point of your journey. This is the moment where you acknowledge the fact that some "problem" exist that requires some solution. I will dedicate my next article for that event, meanwhile, lets. Call this moment - "the event of constructing a complaint". Why is this moment so important, because the following interaction with some psychotherapist, whether this is handled by setting a session or virtually, by taking some program that offer treatment for anxiety, has crucial effect for the direction of your treatment.
I want to show you three (there are more of course) different directions where your engagement with treatment can take you:
Treating the symptom directly
Replacing the Symptom
Change the entire system.
Note that my presentation of the issues is very superficial, and intend to give you the edge of the rope on which you can climb to get more knowledge.
Treating the Symptom
In this direction of a psychological treatment, the therapy put in front of it, the equation problem=symptom, and therefore act for stooping the symptom, on which subject has been complains. When therapy push toward this direction, the treatment contains two main steps followed by complementary support. I will explain that:
Diagnosing: first some level of diagnosis is applied, for finding a profile of phenomenons. If you are taking some kind of self-help program then you will be acknowledge with broader perspective of the symptom and its causes. If this is the case, you are actually (without knowing) requested to diagnose yourself, based on some framework of knowledge, brought to you by the program you take. If however, you are going to a session with some psychotherapist then you may be asked to pass some diagnostic tests.
Preventing the symptom: In the next step you will be guided to follow some program, tactics, techniques, life style and general behavior that it is directly targeted toward controlling and/or preventing the symptom expressed by your initial complaint. Once you learn to do that and succeed, then the treatment can be tagged as successful one. Note however that that you only treated the observed behavior in the root of your complaint.
the support and maintenance is actually giving you the tools, for preventing the symptom, that you are expected by the treatment, to adopt as part of your life style.
Replacing the Symptom
A treatment for anxiety that is directed toward replacing the symptom has a completely different attitude toward subject's complaint. You may notice by the logic of this title, that psychotherapy in this case assumes a distinction between the "symptom", and the actual source of it that may generate different behavior - possibly wanted behavior. The symptom is only an expression of some other source or "drive". The drive is able to harness for generating wanted and more suitable expressions (relative to social norms of a specific culture).
The target of the treatment is to redirect this "drive" that is the source for the symptom, toward some other behavior, that enable productive use of the drive. The symptom is then only a step in subject's journey, that therapy can use and work with in order to expose the hidden source of the problem - on which we currently, at the beginning of our treatment, don't know much.
Treatment in theses terms is path of revelation and the exact technique is depending upon orientation of selected therapy or psychotherapist. In general terms, what treatment do is to expose network of events in someone's life, that are all interconnected, in a way that repetition of the same mechanism can be exposed. We want to bring into awareness this kind of repetition.
The treatment act for moving some problematic internal pattern from the "hidden" state toward the "expressed" state. The expressed state is the ability to verbalize, not just to understand. Verbalization of internal mechanism, or a conflict, or a shame, or a guilt, when it is expressed in nonjudgmental situation, put the "subjective network", exposed to the public. The "subject" is constructed when someone's mental-state is nakedly exposed to the "other", in a non judgmental environment, so that the "power" of the language-culture is not targeted toward repressing the source of the problem, but expressing its drives.
Since the basic assumption is that our mental life are not static but continuously derived by dynamic "forces" the maintenance part of this kind of treatment is to help some person to find a way in which he or she can use those drives for productive behavior. Some call it sublimation. This means dress the drives by legitimate and culturally more wanted cloths (legitimate behavior).
Changing the entire system
A treatment for anxiety that is directed toward changing the entire system goes far beyond the symptom of Anxiety. Actually, it goes far beyond the word "Anxiety" (or any other term that refer to some symptom), as for such treatment, a "term" is only a node in a network of language/physics that compose our existential state. No term is too important, and each terms is highly important.
Think about it in terms of molecules and atoms. The molecule is made by forces that connect the atoms one to another. So we want to know about these forces. Still, each atom is a mass of energy by its own, and this mass effect the other atoms. The molecules create tissues that creates organs, and few organs compose body. Now lets do the analogy: Think about some of the the atoms as words or particles of language, while some other atoms are physical (our biology and interaction with the physical world) ones. Think of the molecule as small networks of words mixed with the continuous stream of the physical world, the organ in the analogy represents our mental-life, and the body in this analogy represents our existential-state.
Our existential state is therefore made of of language and matter interrelated and mixed in away that construct some representation of our being in a world, that for us, human beings is both, material and lingual and cultural, and anthropological and historical, and political...and.... and...
A treatment that push to change the entire system, will act to bring into expression, the very different layers or surfaces that compose our existential state. This can be handled by trying to guide patient to talk beyond the scheme, diving in and bring something up, again and again, like doing many holes in shell (our armor), and constructing a map out of the shell. The therapist is there to help to highlight the scheme that is gradually expressed publicly, evolve as meta-subjectivity. The therapist is also there to kick the ass of the subject when patient tend to be too subjective (stay deep too long without going up and bringing something out ).
The task is not to find the subject, neither to construct the subject, but to tear up the repression that construct the subject. The change happen by the act of constructing and expressing the meta-subjective network. This act fight the repression imposed by culture, to shape the civilize subject.
The treatment may expose the person to many symptoms. Passing through the symptoms is part of the deal. When crossing beyond the symptoms and checking in the personal level, one can find that entire approach for life has been changed and became much less deterministic. The journey may continue long after treatment finished and travel between nihilism and or creative relativism.
Lets summarize then:
Here is a question for you - what do you want to achieve in your journey? Do you want it to be a journey, or are you searching for some local solution for a problem?
We are living in a world that possibilities are spread all around, and we can pick particles and compose our own unique collage of life. You may choose to start your way by treating the symptom and then decide that, although symptom gone, something else is missing, so check another direction.
In other cases, someone may be very satisfied if treatment for anxiety handle only the symptoms. This can be a great solution for him/her and no more will be required.
Now, when you know about different possibilities, for the direction of a treatment, you can have a better perspective to set your expectations from a treatment. For example, you may not expect a treatment that act only for stopping a symptom, to generate a dramatic change in your existential state. There will be some change, but only a new cover. On the other end, one can not expect a treatment that act for replacing a symptom or act for generating drastic change in someone's existential state, to be completed in three weeks. This usually take months or years to do. You may also conclude that such treatment is not easy to do, not fun and not pleasant. Many times it trigger unpleasant and unconvincing changes such as breaking relationships o changing a work.
So here is again the question, and take your time to answer it since this is the very basic of constructing a well established complaint for starting a treatment: what do want, when complaining about your Anxiety?
Via Ezine Article
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