Dear Regi:

I am glad you did start your own thread. Now I know what that specific thing that was said, what you referred to in your first post, two days ago.

I wish your big brother didn’t say that. But he did.

Anxiety is fear. Fear is like fire. It starts and it catches on to anything that will catch it, anything in its way. Reads to me that this is what happened. The fire started one Saturday night at your grandmother’s dinner table. Then it caught on to every dinner at your grandmother’s, continued to spread to situations with friends and eventually to you being alone at home.

Shame is what you felt that Saturday night when the fire started, “one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had”, you wrote. I know this feeling. I know shame.

Before that fire started, that Saturday night, were there embers, silent embers of shame?

anita