Dear Sam:

I read your last post and re-read and studied all your posts on this thread this morning.

An observation: We all have our “Rational Mind”, our logic, and our  “Emotional Mind”, our awareness of our emotions (I use emotions and feelings interchangeably), and what message they send us. My understanding is that your Rational Mind runs way ahead of your Emotional Mind, and so, you are trying to figure things without adequate and NECESSARY input of your emotions. Without that input, logic is ineffective, information is missing.

You wrote: “The part you said about needing to hold on to something to avoid falling really resonated with me.”

You wrote: “I’ve always been hard on myself when it comes to getting good grades or doing well in sports… I am perfectionist and my anxiety does tend to come out when I fell like I can’t control a situation or be perfect in it.”

My question: when you were a child, and you didn’t perform perfectly, what were your mother’s reactions? Your father’s? In other words, what were the consequences of you performing imperfectly?  What did you lose, when you didn’t perform perfectly?

I think the Falling imagery that resonated with you is about living without that thing that you lost, as a child, when you performed imperfectly. I think you are still afraid of losing the same thing you already lost (afraid to lose more of it, to be left with none of it)

anita