Dear Max:

Good job on following your last message to her with what was in the message: nothing. And I am glad you started this new thread.

You wrote that you are afraid you will always feel like this because you have felt like this for so long and when the distractions are not happening, you are back to these feelings of despair again and again.

When there are no distractions and you feel that kind of despair, the unmet need to be loved, the fear that it will never be real… when you are alone with these feelings, what do you do?

The more I resisted such feelings, the more they persisted. The more I was scared to feel badly, the more I did feel badly. I learned to breathe deeply and feel it, feel it in the body, be it a tight chest, a feeling like wanting to vomit (in my case that was), a tingling something along my arms… feel it in the body and stay with it, not trying to fight it… and as I paid attention, it weakened, those sensations and the feelings were less intense.

Hearing a guided meditation when you are alone, without the distractions, may help.

I hope you work in therapy on this kind of Mindfulness, so to endure the emotions: it is a skill and over time, you may be amazed how effective it is.

Please do post again… and again.

anita