Regarding the recently released psychotherapy teaching film "Mind Agent Team 2", I swiped a few very interesting audience feedback:
"After watching the movie, I finally got a good night's sleep."
This is because, when the anxiety in their minds is truly described, they have the experience of being "seen".
Many people experience that intense anxiety affects sleep. When the anxiety is gone (maybe the stressor is gone, maybe it's a conversation with a supportive friend), the person becomes sleepy.
▷ Douban hot comment: Pixar, the cheapest psychotherapy I can get
In Mind Squad 2, the adolescent girl Riley's mind is filled with several new emotions: anxiety, embarrassment, bereavement, admiration, and nostalgia for her grandmother.
主角是焦焦（焦虑，anxiety）。
It is a large, orange creature with a small body but a great vitality. From the beginning of his debut, he carried several suitcases ("New York Times Sharp Review: Literal "Baggage").
Like any other emotion, anxiety arises motivated by love for Riley. It sets out Riley's future for all potential threats.
▨ Jiaojiao's first baggage: the fear of being "not good enough". In order to get Riley selected for the Fire Hawks ice hockey team, anxiety caused her to wake up early in the morning and practice for several extra hours.
▨ Jiaojiao's second baggage: the desire to be accepted. Anxiety caused her to dye her hair the same color as the Fire Eagles, and to say that her favorite band was "very naïve".
Riley carefully disguises herself, reminiscent of her teenage desire to be the same as her classmates, the experience of wanting to prove herself when she first entered the workplace, and the experience of being disliked by the person she liked when she first fell in love.
When anxiety finally spirals out of control, Riley experiences a panic attack on the court.
Jiaojiao cried out. It knew it had messed up, but it couldn't stop - its hands were still swiftly directing from the console, setting off a circle of orange storms.
It wasn't until Lele prepared a comfortable sofa chair and made a cup of anxi tea that Jiao Jiao calmed down.
Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist who worked with the film, says that what we are trying to convey is a reasonable perception of negative emotions.
Most people think that mental health means "feeling good". In fact, mental health means that we are aware of all the emotions that are happening within us, and that these emotions are under control.
When it does not reach the level of clinical neurosis, anxiety can be a beneficial emotion. It's not very comfortable, but it's important for everyone growing up.
In The Meaning of Anxiety, existentialist psychologist Rollo May details the implicit meaning of this type of anxiety:
Anxiety is a stressful life experience. It prompts our inner desire and stimulates people's creativity. Anxiety will also come with the feeling of "being yourself".
Because—
1. Being yourself is inherently anxious
Riley's "Scorched Focus" has several baggage. These burdens all point to a key line: everyone says to be themselves. But if a person's "core self" has not yet been formed, I don't know who I am and how to be myself?
For the adolescent Riley, "anxiety" is a feeling of not knowing how to be herself.
This is the anxiety of individualization, the eternal torture of how a person can become his true self, and the theme of countless film and television works: Who am I? What kind of person do I choose to be?
According to the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, the desire to be oneself is the true vocation of life.
But the process itself is anxious. Attempts to escape anxiety are not only doomed to failure, but in the process, one loses the opportunity to "be oneself".
What kind of job is a better job? What kind of intimacy is worth going deeper? Which type of major is worth studying?
However, there is no standard answer to the true "self". When the times no longer have a certain "consensus", being ourselves means that in our daily life practice, we have every confrontation and every run-in with different choices.
Anxiety means that you are free. When there is no established track ahead, people become anxious. Because "anxiety is a kind of vertigo in the face of freedom".
2. A person is anxious, indicating that the TA is energetic
Everyone experiences anxiety differently.
My anxiety is shaped like this:
▨ I learned that I was going to give a public lecture the next day, so I spent the night typing a draft in my head. ▨ I want to get close to someone, but I'm afraid that the other person won't care about me.
▨ When you want to do a good job, your J attributes will explode. Crazy acne, the whole face does not have a good skin.
Anxiety is "both want and fear", "twisted and inconsistent" – a state of mind that is about to be nailed to the pillar of shame on social media these days – but on the other hand, when I am anxious, I discover my true desires.
The "feeling of stagnation, vacuum, and feeling of being tired of doing nothing in a depressed state" disappeared for a while, and I found myself tiptoeing to get what I wanted in life. Moreover, it is possible to achieve this "desired life". It's this possibility that makes people anxious.
Rollo May argues that the more likely a person is, the stronger the underlying anxiety. Because behind the "possibility" is a reality of my ability to do something. On the other hand, anxiety suggests that you really have a chance of getting what you want.
3. Anxiety-avoiders rely on authority, and they look for external objects of desire that can be imitated
People do a lot of things to escape anxiety. Because confronting anxiety requires us to confront the ultimate question of "who am I?"
For example, find an authority and hope that the person can influence your life decisions and make decisions on your behalf.
People who escape anxiety are constantly looking for replicable frameworks and externally imitable objects of desire. In this way, I hope that I will never make a mistake and never take responsibility for the "creation of free will".
In order to avoid the anxiety of being themselves, people sometimes fabricate a set of illusions that would rather never be fulfilled and standards that are infinitely close to perfection.
For example, you want to stay young forever, you want to earn millions a year, you want to be tall, you want to be handsome, you always need to climb up and achieve class jump.
In the fantasy, a stern "superego" looks downward.
▷ Image source: Pexel
A few days ago, Professor Zhu Rui said in his speech at the graduation ceremony of the National People's University that most of our desires are generated by social imitation.
We keep involuting, not necessarily because there are too many monks and too little porridge, but because our "desires are too simple". He believes that the solution to this phenomenon is not for everyone to practice "low desire", but to transform their desire autonomously and become a person with high desire and low internal friction.
The so-called autonomous transformation of desire is a series of "self-naturalization" processes, that is, to face the inherent anxiety between the self and the environment, and to be yourself.
No one can clearly define what a person's self is.
We crave symbolic symbols of meaning (such as a house, a car, a decent job, a partner of high social achievement), but fear of losing the familiar discomfort, fear of risking everything, fear of losing the exploration of our own possibilities at a young age.
On the one hand, we yearn for stability, and on the other hand, we yearn for adventure. We want to be close to someone, but we are afraid that the other person will not have the will to do so. You are being pulled back and forth by two opposing forces.
Today, "laxity" has become the ideal template that everyone is flocking to, and "both want and want" has become a derogatory term to accuse a person of not being consistent enough.
But we would like to say that anxiety is a perfectly normal emotion. It is a constant confrontation between "self-awareness" and "non-self", a kind of inevitable discomfort on the path of self-discovery.
Anxiety is never entirely bad.
Then I wish you to continue to "have both and want", I wish you to continue to "have a moderate amount of inconsistency", and I wish you the ability to act in a controlled anxiety.
🎉 Leave an easter egg 🎉 Talk about "What kind of experience anxiety is for you" to get 1 copy of the "Mind Agent Team 2" peripheral blind box
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References————————
Rollo Mei, Cheng Xuan / Zheng Shiyan (trans.), The Meaning of Anxiety, January 2023, Zhejiang Education Press
Author: Jianghu Side Cover: "Mind Agent Team 2"