Anxiety awareness ease. Milan, 2013 [2020].
Based on a talk given to psychotherapy trainees in Milan 14 November 2013. Substantially revised and extended by James Low, Sept 2020
James Low
Initial transcriptions by Amanda Lebus and Wendy.
Read the transcript in English here
Read the transcript in German here.
Read the transcript in Spanish here.
Listen to the Audio here.
When someone presents with anxiety or depression, it can be helpful to consider them as patterns of energy, patterns of experience. The more the patient fuses with the experience and takes it to be indicative of who they are, the more difficult it is to help them. Although to say, ‘I have depression ‘ is less dense than to say, ‘I am depressed’, both these statements can feel like the truth of the patient, their limit and definition, and therefore something to be taken seriously and honoured. However, on the basis of what we have explored so far together we might relax and hear such statements in a less reificatory way