Hey 👋 Confused:

ROCD and Emotional Impermenance are useful terms, but the basic ingredients in these terms are Fear + Love. You Love her + you’re Afraid to lose her.

Your I-don’t-love-her intrusive thoughts is your 🧠 trying to neutralize the Fear of losing her, to cancel the Love so to neutralize the Fear that’s attached to the love, and make you safe.

🐔 Anita

Good Tuesday morning, Christy ✨️

The 5 acres where you once lived carry memories of people who are no longer alive, and it carries certain youthful hopes and dreams, I imagine, such that didn’t come true.

So, if you move back there, you’ll be living with a lot of reminders of the people, hopes and dreams that are no longer there.

It touched me that you wondered what kind of advice your parents would give you.

They are gone now, but you know they live within you. When they look at you in your mind’s eye, do they smile at you with love? Do they approve of your life in the city?

🌿🌿🌿 Anita

O1, 02, and o3

Hey Dear Confused:

First, what Copilot 🤖 has to say:

“Confused’s update shows real movement in his self‑awareness and emotional regulation: he’s beginning to notice his shutdown patterns while they’re happening, he’s interrupting catastrophic thoughts (“ok so what”), he’s staying present in moments of connection instead of dissociating, and he’s able to enjoy closeness without immediately flipping into fear.

The fact that he could feel desire, affection, playfulness, and warmth for eight hours — and then name the intrusive thoughts the next day instead of being swallowed by them — is a sign that his nervous system is slowly widening its window of tolerance.

He’s also starting to understand his triggers (“silence feels uncontrollable”), and he’s recognizing that his internal state shifts when he can’t see her, which is exactly what emotional permanence issues look like: difficulty holding onto the felt sense of connection when the person isn’t physically present.

So yes — what he’s describing fits emotional permanence struggles, which are common in people with anxious‑avoidant patterns. His progress isn’t linear, but it’s unmistakable: more awareness, more regulation, more ability to stay in connection without collapsing or bolting.”

I never heard the term “Emotional Permanence”, so I asked.

🤖: Emotional permanence is the ability to hold onto the felt sense of connection even when the other person isn’t physically present. It’s what lets someone feel, “She still care about me,” even during silence, distance, or a shift in mood.

When emotional permanence is shaky, the connection feels real only when the person is right there — on video, in text, in voice, in sight. The moment she’s gone, the nervous system loses the emotional thread and starts filling the space with doubt, fear, or stories of abandonment.

People who grew up with inconsistent, unpredictable, or emotionally unavailable caregivers often develop a body‑level belief that love disappears when it’s not actively shown. So, the mind panics, the feelings flip, and the connection feels unstable until contact is restored.

Emotional permanence isn’t about logic — it’s about whether the body learned that love stays even when the person isn’t in the room.

Building emotional permanence inside a relationship means helping the nervous system learn, slowly and repeatedly, that connection doesn’t disappear in silence, distance, or temporary shifts in mood.
01: Name the Pattern Together- Say: “When we’re not talking, my brain tells me the connection is gone. I know it’s not true, but it feels true. I want us to work with that together.”…
02: Create Predictable Micro-Contact- Say: “A tiny check-in helps my body stay regulated — even something small is enough.” Use brief check-ins (a heart emoji, a short voice note). Keep them simple so they don’t feel like pressure
03: Practice Holding the Thread During Silence- Say to yourself: “This is my old pattern. Nothing bad is happening.” Notice the urge to panic or assume disinterest. Ground yourself: slow breath, feet on floor, name what’s happening. Remind yourself: feelings shift, connection doesn’t…

Emotional permanence isn’t built through intensity — it’s built through repetition, predictability, and small moments of safety. Over time, the body learns what the mind already knows: the connection stays even when the person isn’t right in front of you.”

Second, well… I have nothing to add to Copilot’s input. He’s a genius!

👩🏻‍🦰 and 🤖

Hello again Kris Simmons:

When I answered you earlier, I was at the computer and I had a conversation with AI (Copilot) in regard to what you shared. I agree with all that I posted earlier, but this Sun Eve, using my phone (and therefore not having access to AI as I type), I want to reply again, and this time in my strictly human way 😊

You wrote in regard to your older sister: “She always finds a way to put me down… She told me I’m a very angry person”-

Well, when a person is being put down on a regular basis, is it a wonder that anger comes up?

First there’s a pattern of put downs, second comes the anger. Anger is the natural result of being put down.

It’s like beating a person with a stick and then blaming the person for having a bruise. Or having a bruise that’s too big.

Or poking a person with something sharp and then blaming the person for bleeding. Or for… bleeding too much.

The problem is not the bruise or the bleeding. The problem is the beating and stabbing.

When your mother said you should “get rid of your anger once and for all”, did she provide a private example where she got rid of her anger once and for all?

She didn’t protect you from your older sister, did she? Or worse, she and her older daughter (your older sister) ganged up against you, scapegoating you?

You ended your original post with “I feel like a piece of trash right now.”- because trash was thrown at you, not because you are trash!

Do you live with your mother and older sister?

🌙 🌿 ✨️ Anita

Dear Robi:

Robi, June 14, 2026: “I’m still here in Romania and I now feel like I’m officially stuck… And it feels pretty bad.”- I am so sorry, Robi 😔

Exactly 8 years ago, on June 14, 2018, I wrote to you: “Unless you take on a healing process, your life will not be any different than it is now and has been… It really is up to you to make your life better, not in one magical move (“Go somewhere new and just start a new life”), but through many, many moves, many changes in thinking and behaving, persisting month after month, year after year. Persisting in a process that will often not feel good. Persisting through the not-feeling-good times.”

I don’t like the harsh tone of my message back then. You needed gentleness as much as clarity and I wasn’t that great when it came to gentleness. Yet, the message was true then and it still is: healing is a long process, not a relocation (Germany, Spain, Poland); relationships don’t improve by changing geography; and real change requires persistence.

On June 10, 2018, you shared: “I guess I never felt very close to my parents… Most of the times it felt like I hate them… About one thing, I am sure. They never gave me privacy or the feeling of freedom… I guess I hated them for that. I also hated them for not having my own room… It had a door basically made of glass… They used to also come in whenever they needed something from there… I used to minimize whatever was happening on my computer every time they we’re entering the room… trying to keep something for myself… trapped in their workplace indeed made me feel invisible. I was always there. Everyone was coming and going. Except me. I wasn’t. Hmm. Pretty much like now… Things from childhood do repeat. S*it.”

Copilot (AI) with my note in parentheses: “Childhood intrusion means growing up with too little space to be a separate person — parents always present, always watching, always entering the child’s physical or emotional world without boundaries. Childhood neglect means too little presence, intrusion means too much presence, and both prevent a child from forming a stable inner self.

“When a child has no privacy, no room to explore their own thoughts, and no sense of “this is mine, this is me.” they learn to hide, to stay hyper‑aware, and to protect their inner world from being taken over. Over time, the child learns to hide (the minimizing of the computer screen when they entered the storage room), to shrink, to stay hyper‑aware, or to disconnect internally because there is no safe boundary between ‘me’ and ‘them.’ In adulthood, this often becomes difficulty with closeness, fear of being controlled, guilt for wanting space, and a deep confusion about one’s own needs.

“The adult longs for connection but also feels overwhelmed by it; craves intimacy but also fears losing himself inside it; wants to trust, but his nervous system expects intrusion, criticism, or control.

On June 11, 2018, you asked: “Do you think would be better to gain some distance from my parents? Hopefully to be financially independent and also seeing them less?”

Copilot: “If I were answering his 2018 question — the honest answer is yes: distance would have given him the psychological room he never had as a child, the space to breathe, to think his own thoughts, and to begin forming a self that wasn’t constantly shaped by their presence.

“He needs to know that nothing is wrong with him — he is simply living inside an old pattern, and every small step toward autonomy will help his system calm down and give him the clarity he can’t access while he feels trapped”

Now, it’s me speaking, Robi: it really isn’t your fault that you are stuck. Any child growing up in your exact circumstances would be trapped in an unchosen pattern. I too grew up (I prefer to say grew-in, as in shrinking) being intruded upon on a regular basis, and I reacted very similar to the ways you have.

Every day I repeat the same mantra that end with these exact words: “I redirect self-fragmentation, alienation, disconnection-within, chronic shame, guilt and self-doubt to =====> self-integration, love for myself (loving myself and loving others are two sides of the same coin), empathy for myself and trust in my own perceptions and emotions, not because I’m perfect, but because I’m learning”.

Got to run, hoping to read back from you soon.

Anita