Few people come to the therapy room saying:
“I want to understand myself better.”
Most people say:
“I do not want to feel this anxiety anymore.”
I understand them.
Anxiety can be overwhelming. It can mean a racing heart, a lump in the throat, the feeling that you cannot get enough air, thoughts that will not stop, sleepless nights or a constant state of tension. Sometimes it appears without an obvious reason. At other times, it seems to take over your whole life.
It is natural to want it gone.
But in psychotherapy, an important question appears.
What if anxiety is not only a problem? What if it is also a message?
The psyche speaks in many ways
If we cut our hand, pain appears.
Not because the body wants to hurt us, but because it is trying to tell us that something needs attention.
The psyche sometimes works in a similar way.
It does not always speak through words.
Sometimes it speaks through dreams.
At other times through symptoms.
Through blocks.
Through sadness.
Or through anxiety.
This does not mean that anxiety is “good”, or that it should be romanticised. It can become extremely painful and sometimes needs psychiatric or medical support as well.
Even then, it is worth asking:
What is this anxiety trying to protect?
Why does anxiety appear?
There is no single answer.
Sometimes it appears after a loss.
At other times, after years of trying to be strong.
It may appear when the body says “I cannot do this anymore”, while the mind is still saying “I have to”.
Or when we live a life that seems to work perfectly, but something essential is missing.
I have met people who became anxious just when they started to succeed.
Others when they fell in love.
Or when they were about to become parents.
At first, this can seem like a paradox.
Why now?
Because every important change also brings a loss. We give up an old identity, even when we are moving towards something we want.
The psyche feels these changes before we can explain them.
Fear is not always about what it seems to be about
One person is afraid of flying.
Another avoids lifts.
Another cannot bear speaking in front of people.
Another checks ten times whether the door is locked.
The object of the fear matters.
But often it is not the whole story.
In therapy, we try to understand what that object represents for that particular person.
Sometimes a fear of flying speaks about losing control.
At other times, about trust.
Sometimes panic attacks appear just when someone begins, for the first time, to say what they truly want.
The symptom may have its own logic.
Fighting anxiety can make it stronger
When anxiety appears, our natural reaction is to push it away.
“I should not feel this.”
“I have to calm down.”
“I must not be afraid.”
The problem is that the psyche does not always respond to force.
The harder we try to push anxiety away, the more strongly it may return.
Not because it is punishing us.
But because its message has not yet been heard.
In my experience, change often begins when the question is no longer:
“How do I get rid of my anxiety?”
but:
“What is it trying to show me about my life?”
Sometimes anxiety guards a door
Carl Gustav Jung said that symptoms often appear where psychological development is trying to take a step forward.
I find this a deep idea.
Sometimes anxiety appears because a part of us knows that the old way of living is no longer enough.
Maybe the relationship we are in no longer represents us.
Maybe we have built our life only around other people’s expectations.
Maybe for years we have been “the good child”, “the partner who never causes trouble”, or “the one who solves everyone’s problems”.
And now something inside us begins to protest.
Not always in words.
Sometimes through anxiety.
Not every anxiety needs to be interpreted symbolically
I think it is important to say this too.
There is anxiety with an important biological component.
There are anxiety disorders that benefit from medication.
Sometimes the nervous system remains on alert after traumatic experiences.
Psychotherapy does not exclude medicine.
And medicine does not exclude psychotherapy.
The two can work together.
At the same time, even when there is a biological explanation, the question still matters:
How does this person live with their anxiety? What meaning does it take on in the story of their life?
I do not think the aim of therapy is for anxiety to disappear completely
I think the aim is different.
Not to be led by it anymore.
To understand what it is trying to tell us.
To stop running from every discomfort.
And to learn the difference between real danger and a fear that is speaking about an inner change.
Paradoxically, when people begin to listen to what anxiety is trying to express, it often becomes quieter.
Not because it has been defeated.
But because, at last, it has been heard.
Perhaps this is one of the hardest things we learn in therapy.
Not every symptom comes to destroy us.
Some symptoms appear because a part of us is trying, awkwardly and painfully, to lead us towards a more authentic life.