In group work, Joe has observed a remarkable phenomenon: when you ask one person to fully hold and feel an anxious person’s anxiety, the anxious person can no longer feel it. There’s a certain amount of emotional energy in a relational system, and if one person holds it, others can’t.
This shows up everywhere. The husband worries about money, the wife relaxes. The husband stops worrying — guaranteed the wife starts. Fire the naysayer from a team, and within a month someone else becomes the naysayer. A child with anxiety disorder improves when the parent’s anxiety is treated — without touching the child.
Joe points to an African tribe where marital problems are treated as community problems. The entire community gathers to work with the couple, because the couple’s dysfunction is a symptom of a community imbalance — just as a ridged fingernail in Ayurvedic medicine points to a digestive problem.
This phenomenon also dissolves the sense of separate self. When you see your emotions held by a community, the boundary of “me” and “my emotions” becomes permeable. Dr. K calls it an “emotional umbilical cord” — emotions pass back and forth between connected people.