02-10-2014, 05:42 PM
It goes deeper than fear and avoidance cycle. The deeper root of the issue is how you view yourself & emotional reactions you experience due to your fear/avoidance of something. Desensitization therapy lacks in this deeper exploration.
When distressing and disturbing issues occur, the mind may 'lock' this experience and it is left unprocessed in our unconscious mind. The issue plays out in the background and we keep re-experiencing undesirable emotions but we try to avoid it bc it's too emotionally charging or we can't even pinpoint what the problem is. The brain does the same thing - the memory of distress is locked in and unprocessed - no new meaning may be ascribed to the problem than that it is 'fearful' and 'need to avoid to avoid unpleasant experiences'. No processing, no new interpretations of the event, no movement - you're stuck.
The deeper issue then can be connected to something totally different and even seemingly unrelated. Through association, we unconsciously connect events and stimuli. For example, my fear of driving and avoidance of driving for 30 years of my life was due to fear of messing up and disappointing myself and others. I connected it with an earlier memory along that lines.
The deeper issue is how you view yourself when you fear/avoid, and the emotional reactions that occurs when you fear/avoid. If there is an associated memory or even that is connected to the thing you're fearing/avoiding, you have to go back to that association and process around the situation. When I was doing some therapy work around fear/terror of driving, I looked at the issue of messing up, potentially failing, and disappointment and, voila, I don't freak out anymore.
Our mind is pretty remarkable, really. You'd be surprised sometimes how it connects past events with whatever you're phobic about. Sometimes there's no connection. That's actually easier to take care of.
When distressing and disturbing issues occur, the mind may 'lock' this experience and it is left unprocessed in our unconscious mind. The issue plays out in the background and we keep re-experiencing undesirable emotions but we try to avoid it bc it's too emotionally charging or we can't even pinpoint what the problem is. The brain does the same thing - the memory of distress is locked in and unprocessed - no new meaning may be ascribed to the problem than that it is 'fearful' and 'need to avoid to avoid unpleasant experiences'. No processing, no new interpretations of the event, no movement - you're stuck.
The deeper issue then can be connected to something totally different and even seemingly unrelated. Through association, we unconsciously connect events and stimuli. For example, my fear of driving and avoidance of driving for 30 years of my life was due to fear of messing up and disappointing myself and others. I connected it with an earlier memory along that lines.
The deeper issue is how you view yourself when you fear/avoid, and the emotional reactions that occurs when you fear/avoid. If there is an associated memory or even that is connected to the thing you're fearing/avoiding, you have to go back to that association and process around the situation. When I was doing some therapy work around fear/terror of driving, I looked at the issue of messing up, potentially failing, and disappointment and, voila, I don't freak out anymore.
Our mind is pretty remarkable, really. You'd be surprised sometimes how it connects past events with whatever you're phobic about. Sometimes there's no connection. That's actually easier to take care of.
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