Dear Anita,

All the things you suggest have been in place for a long time. I have a wonderful friend with whom I have confided and she is very understanding. My therapist was very sympathetic but I’m not sure she really understood the problem. She focussed on CBT and strategies to face my fears and overcome what she diagnosed as a phobia. She seemed to think that my negative feelings were a result of my thoughts, which seemed to be way off the mark as the bad feelings seem to come over me in a spontaneous way even when I am not thinking about my situation. Also, I have moments of clarity when I think about my problems and the bad feelings don’t always emerge and at such times I wonder what I have been struggling with all these years. At such times all my problems do not exist but this feeling never lasts long. My therapist seemed to think that facing my fears would help in the same way that other phobias can be overcome through gradual conditioning and gradual acceptance that nothing bad is going to happen. The reality is that everyday I am exposed to the source of what causes my anxiety and have been continuously exposed for 35 years. If anything, the exposure is now making things worse. It’s as if the fear feeds the phobia and the phobia feeds the fear so it is a feedback loop that is spiralling out of control. Something is out of control within me and the only thing that brings very temporary relief is alcohol. Fortunately, even relatively small quantities can do this and I know there are no answers there. I seem to be stuck in this place like the chained elephant and have recognised this behaviour in me for several years. There is nothing stopping me leaving right now other than myself. I need to do something to make the problem go away but first I must find the key to unlock the chain within me. I feel that something might happen soon as the pain of staying is becoming so great but part of me thinks that nothing will change as I have lived like this for such a long time. Leaving? How hard can it be? Impossible it seems, as every few days I set myself leaving deadlines, which come and go like night follows day. Then I set myself a new deadline. The idea of leaving has become an obsession that is also out of control. I know what needs to be done but can’t seem to do it. I must be an extreme co-dependent, people pleaser, or rather a person pleaser as it only seems to apply to my wife and not to the other people in my life that really matter to me. I know it is all tied up with the emotional abuse and psychological aggression that I was subjected to for a long time, which is largely absent these days and nothing like it once was but the damage that was done years ago has permanence. The conditioning lasts a lifetime once it is hard-wired and the training is complete and the behaviour has been learned.