Dear Julie:

Regarding contact with your family: I hope you are okay with having no contact whatsoever, if that’s what it takes for your mental well being.

Regarding your therapy- obviously, it is not working. Your therapist may be too cerebral to be helpful to you. Fear is not something that can be understood and therefore eliminated. It is a force, a powerful emotion. You know that of course. It can not be rationalized and eliminated, and one strategy is not enough to manage it successfully.

Maybe a different therapist will be competent. This one may have the educational background, the book knowledge, the certificate but not the simple, basic understanding of what fear is.

Try to live your life one moment at a time; try seeing only the very next thing you need to do and not beyond it. Talk to yourself and treat your own self as if you were talking to a child who is scared. Be two people: a loving, kind, gentle and patient parent and a scared child. Be those two people-in-one on a regular basis.

Will you try that?

anita