Why we get lost in a Whirlpool and what stops us getting out

All of our serious emotional arousal has the same basic causes and the route to recovery is also not that different regardless of what the problem seems to be. The similarities outweigh the differences for sure.

When emotions and stress are out of control, this means that your coping strategies are not working. Not only are they not working, but they are actually making things worse.

Its time to introduce ORWED....Origins....Whirlpool of emotion...Emotional Distress

This is Feelbetter Counselling's attempt to represent what we find is the common source of most (if not all) mental problems.
And to make the point that anxieties, depressions and addictions are not that different really.

Lets looks at each of these three bits separately:

Building blocks - mainly fixed.

What you are born with - unhelpful genes.
Values and expectations from early on - to age 5 or thereabouts.

Life Events

Stories of failure and stress –> childhood coping that embeds.
Experiences of Trauma -> a further embedding that can do real damage.

Strategies and Feedback loop

Life's accidents and emergencies - how do you cope, adjust and make sense of it all?
And then fitting it all in the stages of life - birth, marriage, career and death - and especially before or after mid life (around 45 yrs).

Whirlpool of Emotion

The great unravelling - drowning in emotions out of control.

Emotional distress

Depression - rumination, leading to exhausting sleep and hopelessness.


Anxieties – active flight and fight, leading to hyper vigilance and avoidance which feeds generalised anxieties, phobias and much else.


Addictions – seeking pleasure to escape, leading to obsessions, personal abuse and the risk of destruction.

Depressions, Anxieties and Addictions are related ways of coping with emotions out of control. Anxiety is the central channel of the image - as anxieties covers all the variety of limbic system responses - and there are many. Addictions are a move toward excessive pleasure and depression stays stuck in a self absorbed trance.

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