Dear Charlotte:

You shared regarding visiting your parents: “the heaviness that surrounds them gets to me. I worry about their mental and physical health- my Dad has gotten himself so worked up about my sister’s boyfriend that he’s landed himself in the hospital a few times thinking he was having a heart attack”-

– even though your sister’s boyfriend was not in your parents’ lives when you were growing up, I imagine that they were very upset about this or that other person who was in their lives at the time. Maybe your mother kept fueling your father’s anger, maybe the two kept fueling each other’s anger and agitation, and you got caught in the cross fire, absorbing much of their agitation, which may very well be the origin of your anxiety.

“I still do yearn to live closer to them a lot of the time”- living close to them, (1) you will not lower their agitation, (2) they will heighten or maintain your agitation.

Maybe you are so used to their agitation, that when you are in their presence, you don’t feel agitated or anxious, but later, after visiting them, your anxiety may be intensified. You wrote that you feel heaviness when in their presence- that can be the feeling of anxiety being pushed down, replaced by the feeling of depression.

anita