Dear sad.cloud:

You are welcome. The post you added helps me understand better.

* Here is what I believe did not happen: you were not born with an unusual amount of anxiety, and/ or with OCD, or with “quirks of personality” that caused you to experience (a) “extreme separation anxiety as a child”, (b) “extreme anxiety” about being late to school, (c) it being “so scary”  when your parents bought a bigger TV, (d) “enormous responsibility as a child”, etc.

“My maternal grandfather had similar tendencies”- but so do many people not related to you, so many people suffer from separation anxiety etc., all over the world, and those people do not share your family’s genes. For example, I suffered from extreme anxiety as a child and was diagnosed with OCD. I also felt enormous responsibility as a child, and yet.. you and I are not related and never met.

* Here is what I believe did happen: a young child, such as a 5 year old and younger, cannot feel safe unless her mother is present. It is the same not only for humans, but for many other animals.

When first going to kindergarten, the mother should stay with the child all day (shorter days) for about a week, reassuring the child, seeing to it that the adults in charge are competent, and that the child feels comfortable with them. After a week, the mother should stay with the child part of the day and leave for a few hours, then return on time to pick up the child. This way, the child can gradually adjust to spend time away from her mother without excessive anxiety.

When you were left at kindergarten to spend what felt like an eternity (that’s how time feels for a child when anxious) without your mother- you were not ready for that separation, and no child in your exact situation would have been ready. The fact that your mother was usually late to pick you up significantly added to your anxiety, as you witnessed other parents picking up their children, but .. your mother was not among them.

Children who are left in kindergarten before they are ready-  they cry a lot, day after day, but after crying a whole lot, some stop crying- they dissociate. They feel detached so to not feel that distressing, severe anxiety. Observing those kids may make you think that they are okay with the separation, but it is not true: they only appear okay, and their anxiety will express itself elsewhere, in ways other than crying.

When you were at home with your mother, she was “pretty savage at times and a master of giving me guilty feelings (for example for breaking a lamp accidently..”- a savage adult woman would scare anyone, but she would scare her dependent, young child the most. Your mother’s savage behavior caused a lot of your extreme anxiety. And, you learned that making any mistake is very scary because of her overreaction to it. Because she overreacted to your small mistakes, you came to believe that all of your mistakes are big.

When your mother made you feel a lot of guilt- that feeling of guilt in itself is a painful feeling and we are all scared of pain. So, you when you felt guilty, you were afraid to feel it again.

When you (8) heard that your parents wanted to buy a bigger TV, you felt so scared that the family financial future was doomed. You referred to that happening as a “curious episode”.  I don’t see it as a curious episode: what happened was probably that being already anxious, you repeatedly heard your parents express their financial fears, such as perhaps saying how much this costs and how much that costs, and not having enough money. Maybe (?) they complained that it costs too much to raise children- so when you heard them planning on buying an expensive item, you may have thought something like: if they buy that TV, maybe they will not have money to raise me!

Being late to school caused you “extreme anxiety” because, I am guessing, already anxious, one time you were late to school and a teacher screamed at you, or you were left to stand outside in the cold because the gates were closed.. or maybe your mother made you feel very guilty about having been late to school.

“During puberty I relaxed a lot and did a lot of stupid things teenagers do (occasionally skipping classes, smoking cigarettes, etc.)- mostly without guilt”- young children are solely focused on their parents as a source of safety; teenagers shift some of their focus to their peers, able to feel safety in the company of other teenagers.

“In later years, I developed severe hypochondriac tendencies and checking behavior related to my work”- the severe anxiety at 5, and throughout your childhood.. that anxiety doesn’t just disappear because we grow older, it stays and expresses itself in a variety of contexts, over the years.

Here are some of the contexts you detailed: (1) separating from your mother in kindergarten and her being usually late to pick you up, (2) your mother’s savage reactions to you making mistakes, (3) being late to school, (4) worrying about your family’s financial doom, (5) worrying about your health (“hypochondriac tendencies”), (6) worrying that you bullied the 14 year old and caused him to commit suicide- the most recent context.

“I started obsessing with my past and mistakes from my childhood”- that originated by your mother overreacting to small mistakes that you made (including making you feel so guilty about making mistakes).

“I feel such an intense sense of anxiety, compulsion to confess and .. figure it out”- naturally, your thinking brain is trying to resolve the anxiety and guilt, to figure out what happened and in figuring it out- and/ or confessing- to no longer feel that fear and guilt regarding the boy who committed suicide.

“I learned he has died. I did cry and I remember feeling guilty. I cannot remember why however”- feeling guilty about his death is not evidence of your guilt. It is evidence that you tend to feel guilty for almost anything that goes wrong around you,  ever since your mother overreacted/ savagely reacted to small, accidental mistakes you made. Because of her severe reaction, you learned that your mistakes are equally as severe as her reactions.

So, let’s say, you witnessed a bullying incident involving the boy and you smiled. In your mind- that smile alone might be so powerful as to lead the boy to suicide. Your mistakes, in your mind, are automatically magnified because your mother magnified your mistakes in the ways she reacted.

I hope you take your time reading this post, which took me 2.5 hours to put together and let me know what you think. I was also wondering what you meant by “unripe personality” (She has what I refer as an.. unripe personality”).

anita