Las olas del Atlántico
Meditar a las poderosas olas del Atlántico en Playa de San Lorenzo, en un hermoso día soleado en la isla de Gran Canaria (España), meditar frente a las costas de África.
- Duración: 15min 38s
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Author: Alex Asensi
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Why a pathological fear persists
Why a pathological fear persists
When we suffer from an alteration of fear, it automatically appears when faced with situations related to the fact that we fear.
An usual behavior is usually to try to avoid situations in which our emotional discomfort appears (physical and / or cognitive). For example, if a person talks about flying in a conversation, the person who is afraid of flying does not participate, if we find ourselves bad in a restaurant or in the subway … we go home…
This behavior reduces fear very quickly. However, in the medium term, the avoidance is bad, because we are learning that not doing what we are afraid of eliminates feeling the fear. However, it does not make fear to be resolved once and for all.
In addition, we also learn what is good to avoid in advance. That is, the more things related to the fact that we fear we can avoid, the better. Since that way I will have less fear. However, fear is usually widespread and generalized. Every time we fear more things; Maybe initially you were only afraid of the subway, but now you have developed fear the moment you leave home, travel…
In conclusion, Avoidance, Sensitization and Generalization explain why the emotional disorders of fear do not usually disappear alone or without a change in the behaviors that a person performs to manage their fear.
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How we feel emotions
How we feel emotions
We all feel, experience and express the emotions in different ways. Let’s see what is the triple answer channel of emotions:
If we imagine a television with three channels, the first way in which we feel is our body, and it is what in psychology we call Physiological Channel: palpitations, abdominal discomfort, headache, tremors, excessive sweating, etc, are examples of how we feel the emotions in our body.
A second channel is our behavior, Motor Channel: block us out of anguish, cry, be in bad humor, avoid or flee from determined situations are another way of fear.
In third place, but not less important, are our thoughts, Cognitive Channel. In this channel, we tend to anticipate the worst, we stay just with the negative part of the situation, for example, having an accident…
These three channels, unlike what can happen in a television, are perceived at the same time. That is to say, when we feel an emotion is like we are seeing the three channels at the same time. Imagine that you are watching a movie, a documentary and a tennis match at the same time and on the same television… Is because of that that sometimes, it is difficult to understand what is happening to us.
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How to resolve emotional problems
How to resolve emotional problems
To solve an emotional disorder you will learn how to break the Association that has been created between the situation or conditioned situations (getting away from home, going by subway, by car, etc) and fear (physical sensations and unpleasant thoughts).
Psychotherapy will help you to train and perform a series of learning that will allow you to break that association: Through the exposure technique, you will face progressively, situations related to your fears, which will help you to break down and reduce the intensity of the association between your fear and those situations.
Learning how to use your breath can also be helpful in reducing the feelings of discomfort that appear when you have fear.
Finally, learning to detect negative thoughts and change them to more real and functional ones will help you in your cognitive discomfort.
With training and these lessons you can solve your fear. Cheer up!
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How emotional disorders begin
How emotional disorders begin
That a fear ends up being a psychological problem is more likely if the following conditions are met:
People who are more nervous by nature (genetics) are more likely to have an emotional problem.
But that is not usually a sufficient condition for a fear disorder to appear. It has also been discovered that fear disorders are learned. In other words, our experiences in relation to certain situations are also very important: having a bad experience, not having done something or never or very little, having seen other people having a bad time during a particular situation or having seen or received news about a certain situation are experiences that influence our fear.
In short, our way of being and our experiences are the most important aspects to explain why a fear disorder appears. Knowing that the origin of that fear is in our way of being and in the lived experiences helps us to explain how and why an association is made between certain situations and the appearance of fear. In addition, (as will be explained later) it will be very useful to us to understand how the fear is solved.
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Exposure Hierarchy
Exposure Hierarchy
Let’s use the example of fear of dogs:
- First, list the situations that cause you discomfort. Remember that the list should include concrete and varied facts.
- Once you have the list made, score on a scale of 0 to 100 the two situations on the list that lesser and greater discomfort provokes to you. Do not worry if you doubt or make any mistake, make changes as often as necessary and score all the other situations, one by one, depending on the subjective degree of discomfort that they generate to you.
- Finally, sort the list according to the score that you have assigned to each of its elements (from minor to major discomfort or score).
Congratulations, you already have your exposure hierarchy ready!
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Definition of emotions
Definition of emotions
We have 6 basic emotions: the surprise, the happiness, the disgust, the wrath, the sadness and the fear. Like the fingers of a hand, they help us in different aspects in our life: they prepare us, activating different mechanisms in our organism; they motive us, giving us energy, to get closer or away of determined situations; and finally they help us relate with other people and beings (animals, plants…) therefore, our emotions are adaptive and help us in a lot of aspects of our life.
Like other elements of our body, the emotions can be “hurt”. IJust like we can get hit, make us a fissure, a sprain, a fracture in our hand…, on occasions our emotions can be malfunctioning. Then we talk about emotional disorders, that is to say, a temporal alteration of some or several of your emotions affects you in your daily life.
We professionals in mental health know and count with tools, just like a doctor uses an ointment, a bandage, a temporary immobilization of the hand if it’s hurt, that will help you solve your emotional problems. One of these tools is virtual reality.
Por qué se mantiene un miedo patológico
Cuando padecemos una alteración del miedo, éste aparece automáticamente al encontrarnos ante situaciones relacionadas con el hecho que tememos.
Una conducta habitual suele ser intentar evitar las situaciones en las que nos aparece el malestar emocional (físico y/o cognitivo -mental-). Por ejemplo, si en una conversación se habla de viajar en avión, la persona con miedo a volar no participará en dicha conversación, si nos encontramos mal en un lugar (p.ej.: restaurante, metro, …) nos marchamos a casa, etc.
Esta conducta permite reducir el miedo de forma muy rápida. Sin embargo, a medio plazo, la evitación es mala, ya que estamos aprendiendo que no hacer aquello que nos da miedo elimina sentir el miedo. No obstante, esto no es cierto, pues no hace que el miedo se resuelva de una vez por todas.
Además, también aprendemos que es bueno evitar con antelación. Es decir, que cuantas más cosas relacionadas con el hecho que tememos podamos evitar, mejor, ya que así tendré menos miedo. Sin embargo, debemos tener en cuenta que así el miedo suele extenderse y generalizarse: cada vez tememos a más cosas; tal vez inicialmente sólo tenías miedo al metro, por ejemplo, pero ahora quizás hayas desarrollado también miedo al momento de alejarte de casa, viajar, etc.
En conclusión, la Evitación, la Sensibilización y la Generalización explican por qué los trastornos emocionales del miedo no suelen desaparecer solos, o sin que haya un cambio en las conductas que lleva a cabo una persona para gestionar su miedo.
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Cómo sentimos las emociones
Cómo sentimos las emociones
Todos sentimos, experimentamos y expresamos las emociones de diferente forma. Veamos qué es el triple canal de respuesta de las emociones:
Si imaginamos un televisor con tres canales, la primera vía por la que sentimos es nuestro cuerpo, algo que en psicología denominamos Canal Fisiológico: palpitaciones, molestias abdominales, dolor de cabeza, temblores, sudar excesivamente, etc. son ejemplos de cómo sentimos en nuestro cuerpo las emociones
Un segundo canal es nuestro comportamiento, o lo que en psicología llamamos Canal Motor: bloquear-nos por la angustia, llorar, estar de mal humor, evitar o huir de determinadas situaciones, es otra de las vías por las que se manifiesta el miedo..
En tercer lugar, pero no menos importante, están nuestros pensamientos, conocido en psicología como el Canal Cognitivo. En este canal tendemos a anticipar lo peor y a quedarnos solamente con la parte negativa de la situación (por ejemplo, pensar en tener un accidente).
Estos tres canales, a diferencia de lo que sucede en un televisor, se perciben al mismo tiempo. Es decir, cuando sentimos una emoción es como si estuviésemos viendo los tres canales al mismo tiempo. Imagínate que estás viendo una película, un documental y un partido de tenis a la vez y en el mismo televisor… Es por eso que, a veces, es difícil entender lo que nos está sucediendo.
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Cómo resolver problemas emocionales
Cómo resolver problemas emocionales
Para resolver un trastorno emocional aprenderás a cómo romper la Asociación que se ha creado entre la situación o situaciones condicionadas (p.ej.: alejarse de casa, ir en metro, ir en coche, etc.) y el miedo (sensaciones físicas de ansiedad y pensamientos desagradables).
La psicoterapia te ayudará a entrenar y realizar una serie de aprendizajes que te permitirán romper esa asociación: Mediante la técnica de exposición, te enfrentarás progresivamente a situaciones relacionas con tus temores, lo que te ayudará a romper y reducir la intensidad de la asociación entre tu miedo y esas situaciones.
Aprender a utilizar la respiración también te puede ser útil para conseguir disminuir las sensaciones de malestar que aparecen cuando tienes miedo.
Por último, aprender a detectar pensamientos negativos y a cambiarlos por otros más reales y funcionales te ayudará en tu malestar cognitivo (mental).
Con entrenamiento y estos aprendizajes podrás resolver tu miedo. ¡Ánimo!