Too many worries in your stomach?
The ingredient principle helps you untangle diffuse fears
© kenchiro168 / Shutterstock
Psychology: Sometimes our heads play tricks on us, worries pile up and become a big, heavy ball of anxiety. How do we untangle the fears? The ingredients principle can help you find peace again.
If you had to assign feelings to years, the last one would probably be that of insecurity. Even people who normally go through the world quite carefree were suddenly confronted with fears about the most basic things: their health and that of their loved ones. The security framework began to falter enormously. And it’s still not entirely stable.
But some people worry more than others. This may be partly due to her personality and partly due to the circumstances. They sweep over their foundation like gusts, causing the scaffolding to shake noticeably. When many of them come together, a storm develops that we perceive as an unpleasant gut feeling. A gray soup of fear is spreading. Our body reacts very differently to this diffuse emotion because it cannot fully grasp it. What was brewing there? As a silent observer of your body, you may ask yourself, helpless to fight the fear.
If you know these moments when fear takes over and you lose yourself in ruminations and worries, a recipe from psychology could help you. And like the original, it’s all about ingredients.
Psychology trick: How does the ingredient principle work?
Actually it is quite easy. We work with our imagination here. When we feel uncomfortable because we are worried and fear slowly but surely makes itself comfortable in our stomach, it sometimes feels like a soup of uncertainty is filling it. It spreads, makes waves and is difficult to identify. Is that already a sea or just a small pond? Is the fear based on a real threat – or does it feel bigger than it is? To find out, let’s just rewind the recipe.
As a soup, fear is difficult to identify. But if we try to fish out the individual ingredients, it becomes clearer. And we recognize what really bothers us. In plain language this means: Think about which individual elements your gut feeling currently consists of. This could be the nervousness before an appointment tomorrow. Concern for the aunt’s health. The disagreement with the colleague.
At the same time, it helps to specifically name the feelings. Once we have this unpleasant feeling, the soup of insecurity, in our stomach, it is often difficult for us to specify exactly what it feels like. Is it really fear? Or is it insecurity? Fury? Grief? And how did they come about? Try to identify the individual aspects – and feel free to write them down if you feel like it.
This simple method can have an impressive effect on us: we understand what the fear is made up of. And that takes away her power.