Advice for How to Know if You are Feeling Trapped
Do you ever feel like you are constantly putting out fires? Do you want to feel like yourself. You want to be emotionally strong, confident. Instead, you feel overwhelmed. You are pushing yourself to the limit, but you can’t seem to find joy, peace, or happiness. Are you feeling trapped?
Are you suffering from anxiety?
Begin to Find Your Joy through Journaling
Why you may feel trapped
Life is about surviving. Your goal is to make it to tomorrow, to next year. You want to keep yourself safe. It is easy to understand why you run when you encounter a thief. It is harder to understand why you want to run when speaking with a co-worker. Many things in life can make you feel unsafe.
If your life is not threatened, you may feel your needs are being threatened. You have basic needs which are food, water, shelter. You also have emotional needs. You may be protecting yourself from your unmet emotional needs. Your emotional needs are: acceptance, belonging.
You may not know why you are feeling insecure. You may not notice your need to protect your emotions. You will notice anxiety and the desire to keep from crying in front of co-workers. You will notice yourself keeping silent to keep from feeling stupid in front of others. There are many things you do to protect yourself. What becomes challenging for adults who feel trapped is learning to break the cycle.
What does it mean to feel trapped
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” by Abraham Maslow.
In your past, you were hurt by others. You made it through these hard experiences, but you were left with wounds. To prevent yourself from being hurt again you learned to protect yourself.
When faced with a stressor, you respond and behave in a way that keeps you safe. If someone says or does X. You will do Y. For example, a co-worker asks you how to do something you don’t know how to do. In your past saying “I’m not sure” lead to bad things happening. Today, your response to not knowing something is to make a rude comment to the person about them not knowing how to do their job.
This leads to problems in your life. Your safety is no longer at risk, but you respond to many situations as if it is. You are protecting yourself. This constant need to protect yourself leads to you distancing yourself from others. This cycle leads to you feeling trapped.
Feeling trapped has its pros and cons. If the actions that lead to feeling trapped were not helpful, you would not continue do to them. You have learned to make it through challenges in your life and to keep yourself safe. The problem is that these protective behaviors lead to emotional pain and keep you emotionally distant from others.
You may have said or learned sayings such as “This too shall pass.” “Time heals everything.” “Put on your big boy pants.” “No pain to gain.” “Don’t be a baby.” “Man up.” These messages helped you make it through hard experiences. They also hardened you. They did not give you the opportunity accept your fears.
These are not words of acceptance. They minimize your hard experiences. Beneath your fear you may be thinking, “What’s the point?” “This is too hard.” “I’m not (fill in the blank) enough.” You may have internalized that you are not good enough or something is wrong with you. You have avoided these thoughts due to the negative feelings they cause.
Avoidance of negative thoughts and emotions leads to a person feeling trapped.
Why do you feel trapped
Fear is at the base of feeling trapped. It may be hard for you to recognize your fear and your response to it.
You may notice yourself feeling anxious if you are walking to your car at night by yourself. You respond by breathing rapidly, looking around for threats as you walk. You may tell yourself it is dangerous at night and you don’t want to be injured. You are on guard for a specific reason and time frame. It ends when you drive out of the parking lot.
Other responses are harder to recognize. Fear may be behind your demeaning comments about a coworker's mistake. It may be the reason you don’t speak up in meetings. It may be the reason you don’t eat lunch with co-worker. It may be the reason you are late to work.
What to do when you feel trapped
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
It is important to keep the serenity prayer in mind as you examine your fears.
You are a unique person. Some things about you are flawed and it is important to allow yourself to accept those flaws. Other parts you are able to change.
It is important to understand the cycle of fear so you can begin to learn who you are and how you respond. The cycle of fear keeps you feeling trapped.
Lang (1968) reported the fear cycle involves three types of responses
· Verbal response: Feeling and thoughts that are expressed
· Behavioral response: negative demeanor and avoidance behaviors
· Physiological response: sweating, tearing, changes in heart rate, changes in breathing rate, ect…
Journaling will help you to begin to recognize your patterns. It will allow you to explore what you may have been thinking or feeling when you said or did certain things.
Is it related to depression or anxiety?
Everyone struggles with fear. Fear keeps you safe. Fear can take over your life when it stops being isolated to a single event or situation. For example, leaving a store alone at night. This is when a problem begins to arise.
When you are afraid to leave your home by yourself during the day or night. You are not able to function at work due to fear. Your relationships are affected by your fear. When you are no longer able to function. This is when a clinical diagnosis of depression or anxiety is made.
Negative thoughts related to feeling stuck
One evidence-based therapy helps people get unstuck is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy does this by focusing on three things:
1. Identifying and modifying thoughts and beliefs
2. Identifying and modifying behaviors
3. Identifying emotions
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people learn to face fears rather than avoid them.
Getting unstuck
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will help you get unstuck by challenging your negative beliefs.
You may have a negative beliefs like, “Nobody likes me.” A situation at work may trigger this belief. You find out that last weekend a few of your coworkers went to dinner and you were not invited. You may feel angry. You may stop engaging in conversations with them. When they invite you to eat lunch you tell them you are too busy and pass.
In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy you would spend time and identifying each of these steps
· Behavior: not eating lunch with coworkers
· Emotion: anger
· Belief: “Nobody likes me.”
The next step is to take time and explore the belief, "Nobody likes me." They did invite you to lunch. As you think back, you and your husband were out of town. The trip was booked weeks ago. You recall discussing this with your coworkers. You recall hearing they planned the outing on Friday and met up on Saturday. You were most likely not invited, because your coworkers knew you were out of town. Not because they did not like you.
Journaling with the principals of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy allows you to explore situations and your negative thoughts. By challenging your negative thoughts you can out of the cycle of fear and help you get unstuck.
Are you suffering from anxiety?
Begin to Find Your Joy through Journaling
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Citations
Benjamin J. Lond & Iain R. Williamson (2018) “Stuck in a loop of fear”: a phenomenological exploration of carers’ experiences supporting a spouse with acquired brain injury, Disability and Rehabilitation, 40:24, 2907-2915, DOI: 10.1080/09638288.2017.1363299
LeDoux JE. Coming to terms with fear. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Feb 25;111(8):2871-8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1400335111. Epub 2014 Feb 5. PMID: 24501122; PMCID: PMC3939902.
The information provided through this blog is for educational and informational purposes only. By reading this blog, you agree not to use this as medical/psychiatric advice to treat any medical/psychiatric condition. By reading this blog it does not create a physician-patient relationship. Consult your own physician for any medical/psychiatric issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the blog. Under no circumstances shall Nicole Gutierrez MD, Kwinpax Behavioral Health PLLC, any guests or contributors to the blog, or any employees, associates, or affiliates of Kwinpax Behavioral Health PLLC be responsible for damages arising from the use of the blog.
