Dear Cali Chica:

Regarding genetics and mental illness: we are all predisposed to anxiety. Anxiety will take hold every time a child is alone and scared over long enough time, with no correction, no comfort, repeatedly. How the anxiety will manifest, the many, many, endless combinations of symptoms, aka diagnoses, well genetics may play a role in the development of specific symptoms.

Anxiety brings about the chemistry of it and then the chemistry maintains the anxiety. Chicken and egg thing.

Regarding seeing reality, relearning what is true: it takes time, a lot of time. No wonder you are numb. It takes so much time because unlike my scenario of medical school, what you believe about your mother, about her childhood, about you and so on, this is not dry information. It is information glued in those neuropathway with emotion.

It involves emotion to unglue this kind of untrue information. If you find out that you read wrong and the population in a particular city is not two millions but four, no big deal. It takes a minute to relearn and you move on. But to find out what you are finding out, that is a big deal and cannot be accomplished in a minute, or a day… it takes months, at the least.

anita