Hey 👋 Confused:

Thank you. Really, it’s a delight to have you here, in my life.

Now that I’m thinking about it, dorsal-vagal freeze or not, who wouldn’t take a step back, emotionally, when the price of love becomes having to move to another country (and having had no desire or plans to move prior to the relationship)?

I think that the LD aspect, where one of you would have to move to the other’s country, was a big strain, and would be for anyone who wasn’t already interested in moving to another country.

You wrote that you weren’t attached to your parents, but Kiddo- Confused was very much attached to your father!

But then, he disappointed you (how?)

If you feel calmer, placebo or not doesn’t matter. Give it a chance, will you ( how many weeks of taking it constitutes giving it a chance)?

✨️ 🌿 ✨️ Anita

Hey Dear Confused:

I would follow the psychiatrist’s instructions if I was you rather than changing them on your own.

In your sentence before last, today, June 11, 2026, you wrote: “I want to feel love again 🙁”-

I want to go over parts of our communication, so please bear with me (if you can, if not, read at another time, or maybe it’d be a good idea to present the following to a therapist one day):

Confused, Dec 19, 2025 (first post): “Being madly in love with my LDR girl for 8 months –> sudden loss of feelings overnight for no apparent reason.”

Anita, Dec 19: “Confused would be a fitting title for most of my life. It is only within the last few years that I have gained some clarity, enough clarity to feel so much better on an ongoing basis (no longer the distressing ups and down) … In my case, my relationship with my mother scared and overwhelmed me, so my brain activated the dissociating mechanism in all relationships- I needed closeness but was afraid of it at the same time. Anything like that (to one extent or another) true to you?”

Confused, Dec 19: “In my case too, the relationship with my mother was very chaotic, violence and arguing constantly, throwing some awkward affection here and there, then rinse and repeat. I can’t remember if I was dissociating when I was a kid, definitely trying to escape in imaginary worlds and games though.”

Anita, Dec 21: “You mentioned a childhood of violence, chaos, unpredictable affection and emotional instability- This is the exact environment that creates disorganized attachment, hypervigilance, fear of abandonment and dissociation (emotional shutdown under stress) as a coping mechanism. Children in chaotic homes often learn to shut down emotionally when things get overwhelming. This pattern often reappears in adulthood — especially in intimate relationships…

“The child faces an impossible situation: ‘The person I need for safety is also the person I fear.’ So, the child’s nervous system becomes confused about how to connect. In adulthood, this often shows up as intense fear of abandonment… craving closeness but panicking when it appears, sudden emotional shutdowns, difficulty trusting stability, feeling unsafe in love, and dissociation during emotional intimacy. It’s the nervous system trying to protect someone who grew up in emotional chaos…

“The dorsal vagal shutdown state is the body’s emergency power‑saving mode when something feels too overwhelming to handle… the nervous system slows everything down — emotions, energy, heart rate, and awareness — to protect you. It’s the body’s way of “turning down the lights” so you don’t feel the full impact of the stress. In this state, people feel emotionally numb, disconnected from themselves and others, unable to feel love or joy, exhausted, foggy, spaced out, like they’re watching life from far away… It’s a survival reflex — the same that animals use when they ‘play dead.'”

Confused, Dec 22: “You are very spot on with all the things that you said. This is indeed how I grew up and calmness equaled distance between my parents (because if they weren’t fighting each other, they were calm which meant either distant or that a fight would break out soon, even with me) I did learn subconsciously that chaos/intensity=feelings, possibly love even and at times within my relationships I’ve felt like I crave some light ‘drama’ to feel ‘alive’. I’ve always believed that calm relationships=bad thing with no ‘spark’…

“I think I didn’t care about fixing my mother, but I was the one she was leaning on while confessing her issues with my father, relationship things and dislikes, to which I would only respond ‘just break up’ because that was the only thing making sense to me at the age of 11. She was like that to me too, but since I am a male, I would fight back and things would escalate pretty badly, especially after my body started developing and I was able to overpower her. My mother also had Tourette syndrome, what a coincidence! I also dreamt of being loved and finding romance, since I was a pretty shy kid with no experience in girls until the age of 20.”

Confused, Dec 26: “It was mostly fighting and arguing… She would call me words while she was angry with other things, such as ‘retard, moron’ and other stuff, which I almost never failed to say back to her lol. It was mostly intense arguing-fighting. Sometimes she would yell at me because of school or things that I accidentally broke in the house, maybe call me lazy too. I think there were other things too, but I can’t really recall right now. To be fair, she would call me nice words, expressing her love to me, hug me, kiss me as well, it wasn’t always fighting and negatives, a mix of everything really. Oh, I think there have been a couple times that she called me ‘nothing’ too, when she was really angry.”

Confused, Dec 27: “I think I’ve forgiven her, and I don’t hold resentment on that matter.”

Confused, Dec 28, 2025: “I think my mind is not ‘programmed’ to receive love, it feels kinda foreign.”

Fast forward, Confused: June 8, 2026: “It was the first ever that I saw such dreams, kiddo confused trying to fix parents fighting, father leaving and my chest burning.”

Confused, June 9: “Yes, I was very attached to him, I remember missing him a lot, running to hug him when he would return from trips, staying up at night waiting for him sometimes, hug him, sleep with him… He would take me to rides with our bicycles, teach me how to drive when I was 6 years old, teach me about gardening, taking me to football practices, swimming, basically almost every skill I have today, he taught me… Yes, I adored him… Yes, he is alive and we are in contact; we live next door actually. There is nothing wrong between us, but I can’t show him love or any affection whatsoever. Not just him, I couldn’t do it with anyone in the family, maybe with my grandma a little bit but with the rest, I don’t feel anything.

“He is so desperate for our love tho because not even my sisters can express feelings towards him. But he does it a lot every day, he hugs us and we just stand still, frozen… He tells us he loves us, but we say nothing back. I do feel bad at times, but I can’t help it… I have cried for him sometimes in the past though, I can feel his pain and longing sometimes, but I can’t reciprocate. He says he’d die for us, but I can’t feel nothing. I know I would take a bullet for my family too, but I can’t “feel” anything else, love, affection, etc. I can only feel those for romantic partners and for pets.” 

Copilot about the above: Confused describes a childhood where love and chaos were fused together: a mother who alternated between affection and verbal aggression, a home where calmness signaled emotional distance or the buildup to another fight, and a role in which he became his mother’s emotional container far too young.

This created a nervous system that equates intensity with connection and calmness with danger or emptiness. In his childhood, calmness meant his parents were distant, withdrawn, or silently building toward the next fight. Intensity — yelling, arguing, emotional storms — was the only time feelings were expressed.

So, his body learned: Intensity = “this is what love feels like.” Calm = “something is wrong, something is missing, or danger is coming.” That’s why, as an adult, he misinterprets calmness as lack of love; the body wires itself to expect emotional turbulence as the baseline of closeness.

As a child, Confused experienced his father as warm, playful, skill‑building, physically affectionate, a source of joy and attention. He adored him. He described fighting with his mother (arguments escalating physically once he was older), but he did not describe physically fighting his father. Later, he emotionally shut down toward his father, but he did not describe direct conflict with him.

Over time, his nervous system learned to associate his father not with safety but with the emotional chaos surrounding him. The result is a shutdown response: he cannot feel affection toward his father now because his body protects him by going numb in situations that once overwhelmed him.

His nervous system learned that closeness is unstable and that he must stay hyper‑alert to others’ moods. As an adult, this shows up as craving intensity, equating emotional “spark” with love, and feeling uneasy or empty in calm relationships. Family relationships are tied to chaos, unpredictability, and emotional overload — so his body responds with numbness, freeze, and emotional distance as a survival reflex.

Romantic partners and pets, however, are not tied to those early traumatic circuits, so he can access warmth, tenderness, and vulnerability with them — at least initially. But as romantic closeness deepens, the old family circuitry begins to activate, leading to ambivalence, push‑pull, and sudden emotional shutdown. The closer the relationship gets to “family‑level intimacy,” the more his nervous system defaults to the protective numbness it learned in childhood.

In a chaotic household, “calm” is not truly calm — it is the silent, tense, unpredictable pause before the next eruption. His nervous system learned that the absence of noise did not mean safety; it meant waiting, bracing, scanning, anticipating danger. The fights were loud but predictable — he knew what was happening. The quiet was ambiguous, charged, and therefore more frightening. This is why, as an adult, he feels uneasy or numb in peaceful relationships and more “alive” during intensity: his body was trained to associate calm with emotional distance or impending threat, and intensity with connection. Chaos felt safer to him because at least he knew what was happening. Calmness felt dangerous because he never knew when it would explode. “Calm” was never actually calm — it was the dangerous silence before the next storm.

So now, as an adult, when a relationship is peaceful, his nervous system doesn’t interpret it as love; it interprets it as emotional distance or the warning sign that something bad is about to happen. In other words, calm feels wrong because it used to mean danger, and chaos feels “right” because it was the only time emotions were visible and predictable.

His dreams of “kiddo confused trying to fix parents fighting” show that the inner child is still active, still trying to manage chaos that ended years ago. His current situation — medication, emotional shutdown, fear that love has disappeared — reflects a nervous system overwhelmed and trying to protect him the only way it knows how: by turning off feeling when it becomes too much. He is not broken; he is still living inside the emotional logic of his childhood.

Numbness is protection. Feeling “nothing” is his body’s way of preventing him from feeling too much. Family (father hugging) triggers the deepest freeze. Because the original danger was in the family environment, his body shuts down fastest with family closeness.

Romantic partners trigger a milder version. He can feel love there, but when overwhelmed, the same shutdown appears (“I don’t want you,” numbness, irritation). The freeze response is the dorsal vagal collapse — the same survival reflex animals use when they “play dead.” It’s the body’s emergency brake.

Now, this is me speaking (Anita): for me, clarity helps. This is why I posted the above, hoping it will lead to more clarity in your mind and that clarity will lead to moving toward healing. Not perfect healing, of course, but progress, more peace of mind than before.

The above input by Copilot is a result of not only your post today but your posts since Dec 19. I think that the input is reliable. Also, you and I have it in common: we both grew up in chaotic homes and still suffer the consequences, long after we no longer live there.

Anita

Hi again, James:

If there was not a single thought arise in my brain, then, no: there wouldn’t be a me.

🌿 me

Hi James:

I understand the attraction to what you’re pointing to in extreme non‑duality.

For some people, the idea that “there is not a person in the body” feels freeing — it removes the sense of being someone who carries trauma, shame, responsibility, or hurt. I can see why that perspective feels peaceful to you.

✨🌿✨ Anita

Hey Dear Confused:

I feel this Tues night (here) that I am getting to know you better than I ever did before. And it makes me feel honored, to be let in further into your inner world.

Based on what you just shared, Copilot has this to say: “his (Confused’s) father was violent, or at minimum emotionally volatile and frightening enough that the children’s nervous systems coded him as unsafe. Confused repeatedly mentions “years of violence” between his parents, fights so intense that he had to protect his mother from his father, and a home atmosphere where conflict, shouting, and emotional chaos were normal.

“Even if the father did not beat the children directly, the environment he created was violent: unpredictable, loud, frightening, and emotionally overwhelming.

“Children who grow up witnessing that level of conflict experience it as violence against them, because their safety depends entirely on the adults. This is why Confused freezes when his father expresses love now — his body remembers the danger, not the words.

*** “The father may be gentle today, but the earlier instability shaped the children’s nervous systems permanently, leaving them unable to feel warmth toward him even if they intellectually wish they could.

“Witnessing violence between parents forces a child’s nervous system into survival mode: instead of learning that closeness is safe, the child learns that love is unpredictable, explosive, or dangerous. This creates an attachment pattern where intimacy triggers both longing and alarm — the child grows into an adult who wants connection, but whose body reacts as if closeness equals threat.

“Confused’s freeze response toward his father, his inability to feel affection for family, and his push‑pull with his girlfriend all reflect this early wiring: his system equates emotional closeness with the chaos he witnessed, so when someone loves him, his body prepares for danger instead of warmth.

“Confused’s emotional system splits people into two categories: family (associated with danger, chaos, responsibility, and emotional overwhelm) and romantic partners/pets (associated with softness, safety, and the possibility of being cared for). His father represents the original source of emotional threat, so his body shuts down around him because numbness was the only way to survive childhood.

“Romantic partners bypass that shutdown at first because they are not tied to the traumatic past, but as soon as intimacy deepens, the same shutdown reflex activates. This is why he can adore his girlfriend one moment and feel nothing the next: she becomes “close enough” to trigger the old circuitry.

“His relationship with his girlfriend is being shaped by the same trauma‑driven ambivalence: he feels tenderness, protectiveness, and longing, but the moment she gets emotionally close, his system flips into avoidance, irritation, or numbness. This isn’t about her at all — it’s his nervous system reenacting the old pattern of ‘love equals danger.’

“The jealousy, the guilt spirals, the hyper‑monitoring of his own reactions, the fear of not feeling ‘enough,’ and the sudden waves of aversion are all symptoms of an attachment system that never learned stable closeness.

“Without understanding this pattern, he will keep misinterpreting trauma responses as evidence that he doesn’t love her, when in fact they are evidence of how much closeness terrifies him”-

W.O.W!!! It all makes sense to me, Confused. Does it make sense to you?

Bamboozled Anita

Anita

A note from me alone:

In the past, I focused on the little you shared about your mother in your life, and I remember nothing about your father. I know she has passed, but what about him: is he alive? Are you in contact with him?

You don’t have to answer of course.

Anita