Words are important. Words matter. Somewhere along the way, you were taught the phrase, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” While this childhood phrase can be a defense against verbal bullying and name-calling, they carry a great irony. This phrase is usually spoken in the very moment the words spoken do hurt. You speak them with a tone of defiance, but usually, they come from the heart of someone who has felt the sting of another person’s verbal expression.
Language is such a pervasive presence in your life that you aren’t always aware of how powerful and forceful language can be. The average person has more than 6000 thoughts a day, and most of those thoughts are made up of words. When you wonder, you use words. When you question, you use words. Language is so pervasive that you can spend more time with your words than you do with what’s happening around you.
In fact, language can create experiences that would not otherwise happen.
If you are willing, do an exercise with me. Imagine that you are holding a lemon in both of your hands. Close your eyes and really imagine it. Feel the texture of the skin. Hold it up to your nose and smell; even the skin has that lemony aroma. Now, imagine cutting the lemon in two, with a half in each hand. That lemony smell is even stronger now. Perhaps some of the juice is running down your hands. You might even think about some past experiences with lemons: the lemonade stand you had as a child, squeezing a slice of lemon into a glass of iced tea. Now, take one half of the lemon, bring it to your face, and take a big bite.
If you were able to really put yourself into and create this scene, you may find yourself salivating or even having pursed lips…like you have really been eating a lemon. And yet, there is not a lemon in sight!! All of these reactions happen in response to language about lemons. In one of his workshops, Acceptance and Commitment (ACT) therapist Daniel Moran, says you are having a “language event” with the word “lemon.” But this language event is not the same as experiencing a real lemon.
So what does all this talk of language and lemons have to do with anxiety?
Another exercise. Imagine that you feel some physical discomfort in your body. You are having some tightness across your chest. Or maybe it is some heaviness on your neck and shoulders. Or it could be a general sense of being on edge. What happens next? Well, if you struggle with anxiety, you mind might say, “Uh-oh, here it comes…I’m getting anxious.” And then the thoughts really take over. “Here we go again…I hope this panic attack is not as bad as the last one…get a hold of yourself or you will lose it…why am I like this…I will always struggle with this anxiety.”
This whole experience began with some physical sensations in your body. But when you said to yourself, “I am getting anxious,” it became a language event. A language event that is more than a couple of thoughts; it becomes this extensive narrative about yourself as an anxious person that includes your past, your present, and your future.
Please understand. I am not minimizing your anxiety by saying it is all your mind.
The anxiety is real. But I am inviting you to another understanding of your anxiety which can give you a different relationship with it. Think of what happens when all of these thoughts about your anxiety show up. You try to control them by avoiding them. Or you try to figure out where they are coming from which can lead to avoiding situations in your life that might cause the anxiety. And yet, many of these situations are ones that would give your life meaning.
What has happened is that you have become fused with these thoughts and feelings. Like the lemon experiment, the language event of anxiety becomes more powerful than what is actually happening with you and your anxiety.
In my approach to treating anxiety, I will teach you a variety of techniques that help you defuse from these thoughts and feelings, so that you have the emotional flexibility to respond in a way that is more aligned with how you want your life to be. I will share some of these defusion techniques in future posts, but for now please visit my anxiety treatment page for more information.