Tapping Away Anxiety

When I was dealing with infidelity in my first marriage I learned a few things that may apply to this quitting alcohol thing.  May even apply to my anxiety about exercise.....hmm...

Anyway, way back when, my ex and I had worked through, or I thought we had, an infidelity issue.  I was willing to forgive and move on, to accept my part in the relationship and to make us bigger and better than before.  So we went to therapy.

The main challenge I had was in dealing with the post traumatic stress of the betrayal.  I would be in a relatively good mood, things would be good between my husband and I and something would suddenly set my mind reeling.  I would be re-visiting every detail in my head of what happened in the past, I would want even more clarification (which certainly served NO purpose at that point) and I couldn't shut my brain down from this cycle.  Then both my ex and I would end up in pissy moods.

I'm not sure I can say for sure that that caused me to never heal enough for the relationship to heal either.....who knows if divorce still would have happened.... but it was something that I remember doing.

I would also let my brain go places it shouldn't.  My ex traveled a lot....my brain would imagine a parade of horribles in the present based upon the betrayal in the past.  Lack of trust would probably also be descriptive here, but it was more than that.  In fact, it wasn't as if I was distrusting at that moment in time....it was like my mind took over and imagined all sorts of things that were very likely not happening.   My point is that there were times where I made myself physically ill, completely anxious over the imagined!  (Granted there were times it turned out I wasn't imagining but I digress....)  Being awake in the middle of the night over this stuff really ticked me off!

My therapist gave me many pointers, two of which really stuck with me, to shut down the brain.

1) The first was to stop thinking about the details.  To force my mind from the past or the imagined and back to the present.  The way the therapist taught me to do that was to identify what feeling I was REALLY feeling and then sit with that emotion.

Example...if my mind was going down a path wondering what the husband was up to because I couldn't reach him over the phone....to stop that thought I needed to ask myself what was I feeling?  Was I really just lonely?  Was I sad and thinking that I might lose him?  Was I worried about my own financial future?

Once I identified the feeling and sat with it, thought about that for awhile, then I could move on.  Most times I was able to acknowledge the deep feeling and put away the drama film that wanted to play in my head.

Sometimes, however, it was hard to calm down when I had gotten very anxious so, even when I could identify what I felt, I still had trouble moving on.

2) The therapist introduced me to something called Thought Field Therapy (TFT).   It is a therapeutic intervention devised by Roger Callahan, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist who integrated treatment of oriental acupressure meridians with western psychological process to obtain mental health objectives. (Can you tell I just retyped what is on my cheat sheet that I just unearthed?  I knew I kept that thing for a reason!)

My take: It's basically focusing on emotions followed by tapping in different body places.  I do not pretend to be a therapist but I think (at least what I got out of it) the gist of it is that you can't focus on this process AND those crazy emotions at the same time.  So by the time you are done with this tapping thing, then you are calmed down enough to regain perspective.  If you just google "Thought Field Therapy" you can find tons of information if you are interested.  Lots of people have written protocols and proposed different things to do for different situations.  You can also email me if you want the .pdf of what I was given.  Happy to share.

I was once taught that your body cannot actually feel pain in two spots at exactly the same time.  (I think it goes back and forth pretty darn quick though sometimes!) A man once taught me to hold the first joint back from my nail of my ring finger on my left hand and squeeze the heck out of it if I got nauseous.  I have to admit I resorted to that on many a fishing trip and during pregnancy morning sickness.  I think the principle was that I couldn't focus on the nausea if my finger was being crushed.  But it did work.

I think this tapping thing is similar.  By distracting my brain from the drama film, I was able to calm my anxiety, move back into the present and get on with my day.  I tend to be the type of person who is great once I move my thoughts from the inside to the outside.  (Hence I had this thought today and needed to blog about it before getting back to other tasks at hand.)  Because we don't always have time to blog, or don't have someone to talk to right away, this TFT is a pretty good substitute for calming the body.

To bring this back to alcohol.....I think that sometimes cravings are a reaction more than missing a taste for wine.  My cravings have been a need to do something to calm my brain from something else it is thinking of.  My need to numb out.  I know alcohol will take me away from the immediate displeasure I am feeling and calm me.

I never actually thought to resort to the TFT part of the above during my initial quitting days but I think it would have been helpful had I remembered about it.  I definitely tried to identify underlying emotions during that time and sit with those feelings.  That definitely helped.

Perhaps it can be a tool to distract ourselves from the "pain" of a craving, to get through it and to move on with our other tasks.

Anyway, I don't know what prompted me to think of it today.....I think I was feeling a bit anxious about my lack of motivation to exercise and I remembered the process.

Food for thought, maybe a good tool to be aware of.  I'm dusting this paper off for myself today!

HD