Dear Alicia:

Your parents didn’t starve you and didn’t spank you with shoes or a switch. But they harmed you nonetheless. I hope that one day, when you are a parent, if you choose to be one, that you will not yell or spank your children at all (except at moments of real emergency, as in yelling: stop! if a child is about to cross a busy street)

Well, they turned out fine, they say. Not fine enough to not harm their own child. And again, their practice was harmful and common, and so there are many millions of anxious people, like you.

You wrote you can’t simply get rid of anxiety, true. How about psychotherapy? Is there a way that your parents will pay for such, for you, arrange for it?

anita