Hey Girija:

WOW is what went through my mind as I read your message of only an hour and a half ago ✔️✔️✔️

You expressed a lot of clarity in a very short message.

I want to repeat this as a daily mantra for myself.

Thank you, Girija 🙏

I would love to read how you practice this in your everyday little moments.

✨️✨️✨️ Anita

Hey Dear Confused:

You asked me where did I get it that she was very anxious BEFORE the lie, so using my phone, I went back page by page and found it 5 pages ago (page 108), July 2o:

You wrote back then: “She’s going through a very rough patch because she’s having anxiety and panic attacks with all the stressful events that are unfolding now in her life, also, coming here in 20 days makes her anxious like hell… She said that she’s typing goodnight messages, and she feels dead inside, can’t form sentences easily.”-

See? “anxious like hell”.

I’ll submit this, return to current page so that I can see the rest of your message and reply further.

🤔 Anita

Hi Dear Girija 🌿

What you’re describing feels like the kind of exhaustion that doesn’t just make you tired — it forces you into honesty. When the body and mind hit that level of depletion, you stop performing, you stop overthinking, you stop carrying things that were never yours. You can only choose yourself because there’s no energy left for anything else. And that’s not weakness — that’s a boundary your system is finally enforcing.

It makes sense that travel feels exhausting and work feels dehumanizing. You’ve been giving for years, staying loyal, pushing through fear, and trying to meet impossible expectations. At some point the self‑respect becomes louder than the self‑doubt, and something inside says: enough.

You’re not rejecting work or life — you’re rejecting extraction. You’re rejecting anything that treats you like a resource instead of a human being.

And I can hear the shift in how you talk about fear too. You’re not fighting it anymore. You’re too tired to feed it, and that’s why it’s losing power. This “I don’t care anymore” isn’t apathy — it’s clarity. It’s the moment when you stop saving things that only survive because you keep pouring yourself into them.

This is a raw kind of agency, but it’s still agency. It’s you choosing yourself because your system refuses to let you abandon yourself any further. Let things fall apart if they need to. You’re finally letting life show you what doesn’t deserve your energy.

I’m here with you in this shift 🙂

Anita

Dear Eva:

You’re seeing the situation clearly. You understand the attachment styles, you understand the dynamic, and you understand that the relationship has become one‑sided. The problem now isn’t clarity — it’s letting go.

And what you’re feeling makes sense when you look at your childhood. You grew up with a father who pulled away, stayed silent for days, got angry easily, and made you feel like you had to be perfect to keep the peace — while your mother didn’t buffer the harm. You grew up without anyone saying, ‘you’re good, you’re safe, and I’m here.’

So, you learned that when someone withdraws, it must be because you did something wrong. And now, when a partner becomes distant or avoidant, your nervous system reacts the same way — you try harder, you explain more, you chase understanding, and you look for validation that you’re a good person and not the cause of the disconnection.

But you need to remember who you are in all of this. You’ve built yourself into a strong, disciplined, hardworking woman. You’ve achieved things through effort, consistency, and resilience. You’re self‑aware enough to look at your patterns honestly. You’re emotionally intelligent enough to understand attachment styles and how they shape relationships. You’re brave enough to confront your past instead of running from it. You care deeply, you reflect deeply, and you show up with sincerity — even when it costs you. These are strengths, not weaknesses.

You’re not actually trying to fix this relationship anymore. You’re trying to fix that old childhood feeling of being misunderstood, being seen as ‘the problem,’ or being blamed for someone else’s withdrawal. That’s why letting go feels so hard, and why you keep romanticizing past relationships where you felt even a little emotional presence. You’re not craving the person — you’re craving the feeling of being understood and seen as good.

None of this means you’re doing anything wrong. It means you’re carrying a wound from childhood into your adult relationships. The work now is not to make him understand you, but to understand yourself — to remember that you were always good, especially as a little girl trying your very best to make your parents happy and to keep peace at home, and that your parents’ withdrawals, lack of emotional presence, or unsafe behaviors were never caused by you. You weren’t the problem. They were.

Anita

Dear Eva: I’ll reply in a couple of hours or so 🙂

Dear Eva:

I studied your posts for a few hours today and would like to offer you my perspective. It may resonate, it may not — you decide.

The mismatch, as I see it, is between your anxious‑preoccupied attachment and his avoidant attachment.

He shows many hallmarks of avoidant attachment: difficulty sustaining emotional closeness, warm in short bursts and cold afterward, withdrawing when overwhelmed, becoming defensive when confronted, minimizing problems, feeling “peace” when alone, returning when lonely rather than ready to change, struggling to tolerate emotional demands, and disconnecting through phone use.

Avoidant partners crave connection but fear the responsibility and emotional intensity that come with it. So, they come close, get overwhelmed, pull away, feel lonely, return, and repeat. This is the classic anxious–avoidant cycle.

It also fits with him keeping the relationship a secret, because avoidant partners often keep relationships “off the record” to avoid labels, public acknowledgment, social visibility, and relational responsibility.

He can genuinely be warm in short bursts, but he can’t sustain that level of closeness, and that inconsistency keeps you hopeful because those warm moments feel so meaningful.

You’re not “too much,” and he’s not intentionally hurting you — it’s simply a painful mismatch between what you need and what he can consistently give.

If you feel like responding, I’d appreciate hearing your view.

🌿 Anita

Dear Girija:

I hear how heavy everything feels for you right now. When fear is already living in the body, even one more stressor can feel unbearable — and you’re dealing with several at once. Your mom’s PET‑CT, the coworker situation, the years of carrying anxiety, the feeling that life keeps hitting you without giving you a moment to breathe.. none of this is small. Anyone in your position would feel overwhelmed. Nothing about your reaction is unreasonable.

You’re not just dealing with internal fear — you’re dealing with real‑life uncertainty that would shake anyone. When you say, “everything hurts at once,” that’s exactly what it is: too many things landing on the same spot inside you. And when the body is already tired, even one more blow feels like ten.

Your exhaustion makes sense. Your hopelessness makes sense. The feeling that life hasn’t met you halfway makes sense. You’ve been carrying so much for so long, and you’ve had to do most of it alone. That wears down anyone’s energy, even the strongest person.

About the coworker — yes, he was rude, and yes, you trusted him over yourself for a long time. That doesn’t make you abnormal. It makes you human. When someone becomes an emotional escape, letting go of them feels like stepping into cold water. It’s not the “real life” that hurts — it’s the sudden loss of the thing that felt safe, even if it wasn’t good for you.

And your fear about your mom.. that’s the kind of fear that sits deep in the chest. Waiting for medical results is one of the hardest things a person can do. You don’t have to be brave about it. You just have to get through it moment by moment.

You said you don’t know how to like life anymore. I understand that. When life has been hard for a long time, optimism feels like the only thin thread left. But even if you can’t feel hope right now, I can hold some of it with you. You don’t have to carry all of it alone.

You deserve a stretch of life that is gentle. You deserve a decade of ease after a decade of strain. And even if you can’t feel it today, your capacity to keep going — even while exhausted — is strength, even if it doesn’t feel like strength from the inside.

I’m here with you in this. You don’t have to pretend you’re okay. You just have to keep breathing through this moment.

🌿 Anita