Dear Nichole:

“I had such hopes the other day we spoke and now no where to be found”- fear deactivates hope, make it gone, for a while, moments or days, maybe months, maybe longer. Fear is a very unpleasant, very distressing feeling and it is draining, so when afraid, the brain desperately looks for solutions to what is bothering us so to calm that fear, to get rid of it and experience a relief from the torture of feeling fear.

What solutions does your brain come up with, let’s see:

1. “to contact my ex and get that love back”

2. “get away from my family and be alone for some time”

3. “staying in Chicago is best because what will happen when I am all alone and have no one?”

Let’s look at these proposed solutions: #1 is not a good solution because even though you had comfortable moments there and you have so little comfort now, if you go back there, you cannot recreate those past comfortable moments and extend them because you know too much now.

#3 is not a good solution because, again, although you had comfortable moments with your family in the past-

– “I have yet to feel comfortable anywhere since being back here”

– “I have been practically bamboozled most of my life by people I thought loved me”, which includes your family members, causing you PTSD

– “all of my family resides and know me as being a certain way and now trying to be anything but that”, which means being around your family makes you changing what you need to change about yourself very difficult, maybe impossible.

“But what is the right thing?”, you asked. My answer: move away from Chicago, away from all your family members, but not to your ex boyfriend in Florida, away from him too.

Fear is going to stay in your mind and life, it is not going anywhere. No solution will make it go away. The thought that there is a solution that will make fear go away is a delusion that motivates you to consider any possible solution and accepting it with the hope that fear will go away, an impossibility.

Key for you, for me, for any person, really, is to find a way to live with fear, to calm it down throughout our waking hours by exercising, guided meditations, yoga… calming music and so forth and to not panic, that is, to accept and expect this very unpleasant, very uncomfortable, very distressing experience of fear.

Because we have no choice. We don’t have the choice of living without fear.

It is difficult for you and will continue to be. Question is, will you do today what will help you be in a better place (feeling calmer regularly) in a year from now, or will you do what will take you to a worse place in a year from now?

anita