The boy walked down the street. It was a lovely day. He bounced a ball as he went. Suddenly, a Chihuahua ran up to him and bit him on the ankle. The boy dropped his ball and ran home crying.
The next day the boy started off down the street. When he neared the house with the Chihuahua, he suddenly felt anxious. He stopped, turned around, and started walking the other way. As he distanced himself from the Chihuahua, he felt more relaxed and less stressed. The less stressed he felt, the more he felt like distancing himself from the threat was the right thing to do.
The following day the boy stopped at the edge of the street. He noticed that his body was creating a feeling of anxiety as soon as he thought about the street. His body was efficiently distancing him from the threat. The boy turned around and walked down a different street. His body relaxed. It felt peaceful. His body learned that turning away from the threat was the right thing to do.
The boy wanted to go down the street again. His best friend lived in the house with the Chihuahua. He missed his best friend. The boy decided to overcome his fear.
The boy talked to his friend about his dog. His friend agreed to help the boy become friends with the dog. The boy and the Chihuahua sat next to each other. His body created feelings of anxiety. His body wanted to remove the boy from the threat. The boy stayed next to the dog and started to pet the Chihuahua. After some time, the boy’s body realized the Chihuahua wasn’t a threat. His body learned to relax around the dog.
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The boy grew up and became a man. He wanted so very much to be a good husband, father, and provider for his family. Whenever the man made a mistake, he would feel like a failure. The feeling of failure would accompany memories of times when he failed. It became painful to experience failure as an emotion, because the accompanying memories would trigger a cascade of pain. He would argue with the memories, which would escalate the pain.
Whenever the man neared a situation that had the potential for failure, his body would create anxiety. The man would remove himself from the situation. The body effectively removed the man from the threat of feeling failure.
Sometimes the man’s wife wanted to vent about her day. The man didn’t like seeing his wife upset. It resulted in him feeling like a failure. As she started to vent, the emotion would surface and then memories of past failures would flood in. He would then respond to his wife with feelings of anger, defensiveness, or withdrawal. His wife felt like she couldn’t talk to her husband. She withdrew emotionally from him.
His wife was the type of person whose sexual libido was tied to her emotional connection. The lack of emotional connection resulted in her withdrawing sexually. For the man, he felt connected to his wife when they were physically intimate. The lack of connected increased the man’s feeling of failure.
The man remembered how he trained his body to respond differently to the Chihuahua. He decided he would train his body to respond differently to the feeling of failure. To accomplish this, whenever the man started remembering a time he made a mistake, he would allow himself to experience the feeling of failure and relax his body. He would not argue with the emotion or get upset with it. He would calmly relax and let the emotion pass by.
There were times when the man’s body would increase the feeling of anxiety so that the man would retreat from the potential threat of failure. Instead of retreating, the man would go towards the threat and allow himself to be physically relaxed in the presence of the emotions.
The man started responding differently to situations. This prompted his wife to try to open up to him again. As she talked about her feelings of sadness and loneliness, the man felt like a failure. Instead of reacting poorly to those emotions, he allowed them to wash over him and then drift away. The man taught his body that his emotions were not a threat and he could experience emotional pain, while still be physically calm.