After months of emotional turbulence, life at home and at work finally began to settle. Situations in the past which would have triggered Robert’s anxiety states fell away like water off a duck’s back. He was surprised to connect to an increasing sense of tranquility running throughout his days. He nodded with self satisfaction as he articulated this. Clearly the therapy process was beginning to bear fruit. Or so I thought.
As he looked out through the window, he shifted restlessly in the armchair, uncrossing and crossing his legs again. Then he pushed a deep audible breathe through his nose as he readied himself for the next step.
“I realise it is always there,” he said enigmatically.
It was now my turn to take a deep breath and ready myself for what might follow.
“That sense of tranquility is now present in my life. Yet I am beginning to see that anxiety is there all the time under everything. Even the little things. I find myself doing things, little things, all the time to keep anxiety at bay.”
I could feel the entire room sink as the depth of the realisation settled in for both of us. My initial sense of elation that progress was being made vanished in an instant. Now we were sitting at the core of something that had never been fully acknowledged. It felt a little cold being in this space somehow.
Robert elaborated how at work he noticed himself doing little things all the time that didn’t needed to be done. At least not at the time he did them, and not because someone had asked him to do them. The depth of his unease with tranquility rose to the surface.
Despite clear admiration from work colleagues at his prowess in deciphering complex situations and proposing clear and sometimes unusual solutions, something inside kept saying he wasn’t good enough. This was making it difficult for him to appreciate the praise he was being constantly offered. In fact despite the recognition he received he still felt incompetent. And to top it all he lived in fear his colleagues would discover incompetent he really was. He felt very alone with all of this.
Working with the signs of fear and inner distress he connected to, we began exploring where feeling alone was most active in his ocular field. In the past we had explored many threads of fear in his history and had found many different ocular positions, off to his left, off to his right, above and below. But today, for the first time, Robert asked me to bring the pointer right in the middle where we were both looking at each other – eyeball to eyeball.
And then he went very quiet … for a very long time.
He shifted and sighed. He took deep breathes. He squinted his eyelids. He went very still before he moved again. At one point he hesitated to say something. Then his face went still.
He finally said he could feel the exhaustion in his body from being so anxious all the time. His body pressed down into the armchair like it weighted a ton. And then after a time an uncomfortable sensation rose out of his belly up into his chest. And then he connected to a memory.
He recalled how all the members of his father’s family had completed brilliant academic studies. That was the way in his father’s family. A culture of excellence. There was no other choice than to excel.
As he said this I began to feel a weight in my own body like I was being compressed. For some completely irrational reason I began to wonder about my own competence in that instant. Then I surmised that perhaps that voice which had initially said he wasn’t good enough was coming from far far away. So I sat to one side of the pointer and invited him to look beyond the point in the middle, to look far away towards the imaginary horizon in front of him and allow his eyes to relax.
He found this painful at first. But then it became easier for his eyes to look further away. Then to his surprise he connected to a feeling of curiosity and playfulness. He started giggling a little and found the experience delightful. He became animated and relaxed again. The fear had disappeared.
At the end of the session there was a long pause as Robert gathered himself and brought his thoughts together. He looked me squarely in the eyes.
“What was so helpful was how you acknowledged me throughout the session. Just with your breathing. With the slight nodding of your head. With the encouraging look in your eyes. I realised this was the first time I asked you to position the pointer in the middle. When you did that I realised I have been avoiding this point from the very beginning. Like I have been avoiding so many things.”
He glanced down at his hands. I let it sink in.
“And now I feel competent and not alone.”
He looked up me and said it again.
“And now I feel competent and not alone.”
And then he began to cry.
