Dear miyoid:

Good to read from you again. A week ago, there was a break up, you thought you could handle it, but then, you lost all your will to live. After crying and being miserable, he came over to spend the night with you and you felt better. The relationship has been stable for the week since.

Like I suggested to you before, it is clear to me that you suffer from a separation anxiety disorder. When you anticipate separation, or you are experiencing a separation from a person you are emotionally attached to, you experience and display excessive fear and distress, lots of crying, etc., as if the world just collapsed and death is upon you.

Earlier, you described your anxiety about separating from your mother at a very early age: she used to put you to sleep, but the moment you realized she was no longer there with you, you went looking for her. It happened night after night after night. You still have trouble going to sleep at night.

In the first and beginning of second year of life, in any child’s mind at that age, the child and her mother are the same person, so when the mother disappears.. the child feels that she too disappeared. Fast forward twenty years, you anticipate separation from this man, or there was a breakup, he disappears from your life for a moment, and in your mind- you disappeared too, because you and him are the same person. Rationally, you know that the two of you are separate people, but emotionally, you don’t yet know that.

If you had an emotional understanding that you and him are two separate people, and he (the object of your attachment) disappeared, you would be anxious but not excessively anxious, because you’d know that .. you did not disappear, you are still alive and okay.

I am glad to read that you did yoga for a week, yoga is one of the ways to manage anxiety. You can read about more ways to manage adult separation anxiety in wikihow. com/ 4 ways to manage adult separation anxiety disorder.

anita

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