Anxiety as a Substitute for Grief

Anxiety and Repetitive Repeating/Looping Neurotic Thoughts.

These are coping mechanisms designed to protect you from pain – Deep. Terrifying. Buried. Pain.  So it’s really a very adaptive coping mechanism whenever you’re a child and you don’t have a parent or older mentor you know you can go to for help or support.  Whenever you are a small one, dealing with the pain of facing the world and your emotions is just too much to do alone, when you don’t have adequate support.  But as adults, we can begin to see that these repetitive/looping thoughts as they really are when we are all grown up.  They are just lies.  With just a little guidance, we can do the work of exhuming these buried hurt feelings and letting ourselves put words to them.  Then they can become harmless stories.  By reconstructing the stories, we can gather all the pieces together in one place, so it’s no longer in the shadow, and when it’s not in the shadow, it’s not so scary anymore.   Feeling grief is work, but it’s quite do-able for an adult.

You already have what it takes to parent yourself well.  Check out my online course if you’d like more information on how to parent yourself as an adult.

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