Dear Anita,

“he caused you to get stuck in the fear and neediness that he wanted you to move away from” – this does make a lot of sense now, especially later in my life. It is something I definitely bring into romantic relationships, with separation anxiety and fear when I am not around my partner.

“there is nothing more natural for a child to miss his mother and feel anxious when not in her company. It is not stupid, it is natural” – thank you for saying this, it did always feel like I was being unreasonable missing my mother so much. But like I mentioned above, this has translated to romantic caregivers instead.

“you were afraid that she will respond to your emotions the way your father did” – yes, exactly this. I feel already that she is very empathetic and understands the way I feel a lot of the time, we do seem to share a connection. So maybe it just takes me a little longer than other people to open up completely and share what I am thinking/feeling, without fear of judgement.

“There are ways for you to express to her how much you’d miss her, etc., without appearing needy and overly emotional” – you are so right, I have worked a lot of expressing myself how I want to be heard, not how the voice in my head sometimes tells me I’m feeling. Although you are aware of my inner thoughts and my somewhat anxious attachment style, I am confident that I don’t come across too needy or anxious to my new love interest, I try to carefully think about what I am going to say before I say it, if that makes sense.

“all the ways that help lessen anxiety in general, will help with this particular anxiety.” – thank you, I am trying to cultivate some of the normal mindfulness routines that I developed after we first started speaking on this thread all those months ago. Reading, meditation, exercise. I think starting a new job was an additional stress that I hadn’t really considered until this weekend, so I should be a bit kinder to myself.

“Specifically for this anxiety, when you feel it, talk to yourself the way your father should have, but didn’t” – this is really good advice, and I will certainly do this. These words of affirmation from myself seem so important, rather than being judgemental and critical of my emotional side which feels a deep longing for those I care about.

Dave