The Downward Spiral and the Fear Beneath It
La espiral descendente y el miedo que se esconde debajo
A question about working with the emotional distress and mental turmoil that arise during conflicts with a partner.
The Downward Spiral and the Fear Beneath It
A question about working with the emotional distress and mental turmoil that arise during conflicts with a partner.
I wanted to ask if you have any tips on how to deal with the distress that comes from fighting with your partner. Sometimes my partner can help me process something, but often it just makes me more confused. I'm more in the boat of having to do it on my own. What tends to happen is I get into a downward spiral. There are so many thoughts, and I don't really feel like I'm processing anything. I don't even know what's happening. I'm just spiraling. I call it "doomsdaying" sometimes, like a black hole.
You're calling it by its name, and it's fear. "Doomsdaying" is a name for fear. But I wonder if you are directly in touch with fear as fear.
Getting closer to fear itself
Let me say a few things. Fear is tricky, because when we're in fear we can be very far away and detached from it. We can still know that there's fear, but we're a thousand miles away from the actual fear.
One way to work with that is to try to get closer and closer. It will be progressive and slow. Over time, through more conflicts, you're going to start to get more directly in touch with the sensation of fear.
From stormy mind to felt energy
At first it's just crazy mind: a lot of thinking, a lot of doomsdaying, a lot of thoughts swirling around. Then, over time, it will come to be known more as an energy, a current that you feel in the body. All of that thinking and emotional turmoil is like a pressure cooker. If you're cooking rice and you put a lid on without a hole, the lid is going to start to lift. That's what the stormy mind and emotions are doing: they are the way the system decompresses the fear underneath.