Sexual Compulsivity | Love Addiction

The 11 psychiatric diagnoses that make up the Anxiety Disorders category of the current psychiatric nomenclature (DSM-5) center on the manifestation of worry, concern about future threats, ruminations about performance and social acceptance, and avoidance behaviors. Paradoxically, as these concerns are emotionally and cognitively experienced and acted on, the level of anxiety typically rises rather than falls, further solidifying and perpetuating the anxiety condition.

Anxiety symptoms often arise suddenly within the context of a singular event or challenging situation, and may persist in the form of a chronic condition. Anxiety often co-occurs with depression and is linked to a variety of other conditions including substance abuse, interpersonal difficulties, and reduced performance in academic and professional settings.

Although anxiety is becoming more commonly viewed as a disorder with neurochemical origins amenable to psychopharmacological intervention, for a significant portion of patients who experience anxiety their symptoms are more closely associated with a range of stresses including unresolved problems, interpersonal/relational difficulties, mental conflicts, and emotionally difficult, taxing or traumatizing situations. A body of research exists indicating a correlation between various forms of trauma and anxiety.

This evidence, and my own clinical experience with hundreds of patients who have presented to my practice with anxiety symptoms, have led to my conceptualization of anxiety as an outcome of accumulated and unresolved stress.

To elaborate, I often tell patients with anxiety that the human mind is a lot like the hard drive of a computer. Each stressful experience, whether it be a minor disappointment or a more dramatic, even tragic, event, needs to be “processed” by the mind. This processing involves digesting the stressful experience, what is known in psychological parlance as “metabolozing” experience. For the most part, this occurs unconsciously and automatically in the recesses of our mind — unintentionally and completely outside of one’s awareness. Metaphorically, the hard drive of a computer does a similar kind of processing: the applications ran on the computer, the websites visited, the various forms of media, etc. utilized are managed and liquidated by the hard drive again and again, which keeps the computer running efficiently.

However, the hard drive of a computer cannot process all the bits of materialleft from the accumulation of all of the computer’s functioning, and my IT consultant tells me that this remnant material becomes fragmented; a lot of fragmentation, he says, negatively impacts the speed and functionality of the computer, which is why he uses “sweeping” software to de-fragment these residual bits. The defragmenter integrates the residual fragments lingering on the hard drive, binding them together then destroying them as a whole unit. He has made the interesting point to me that no tool exists that eradicates each bit of residual material one by one; they must be bound together first before they can be obliterated as a whole.

So too with the human mind. Each stress, each difficult event, even experiences of joy and accomplishment, leave certain fragments or undetectable remnants that may not have been processed naturally by the mind’s routine processing. Just as with the computer’s hard drive, these unprocessed, non-digested fragments accumulate in the background of the mind, over months, years, across one’s lifetime. Gradually and insidiously, they interfere and obstruct various components of one’s emotional life and behavior, but often do so covertly, without being detected.

As the accumulation of fragmented experience approaches a threshold, the mind is unable to manage or re-direct or destroy it. A panic attack is akin to what happens when the desktop of a computer suddenly freezes. The mind, overwhelmed by non-processed fragments, suddenly locks up, leaving the body in an activated physiological state.

To continue with this metaphor, psychotherapy is a kind of “de-fragmenter” for the patient’s mind. As the anxious patient recounts and processes key experiences in his or her life, the therapeutic processing of this material stimulates new links and connections between experiences, binding them together and synthesizing the fragments into a conglomerate whole. This is often an arduous and difficult task, but in their collaboration the therapist and patient often find a way to persevere through this linking process, with each link creating space and efficiency in the patient’s mind, and enhancing the patient’s cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal capacities.

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15615 Alton Parkway
Suite 450
Irvine, CA 92618

Hours
Monday: 8am - 8pm
Tuesday: 8am - 8pm
Wednesday: 8am - 8pm
Thursday: 8am - 8pm
Friday: 8am - 8pm
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed