Dear calisister:

What you shared above, that you experience distress all the time, no breaks, is consistent with your very first post on this thread: “anxiety takes over every second. SECOND. blurry vision, not hearing… feeling heavy/ overwhelmed- FIGHT OR FLIGHT is always on… i’m just anxious- just have baseline anxiety all the time”

every second. SECOND… always on… all the time.

It is impossible for the brain to survive with that experience every second of the day and night, year after year. And survive you did, not in an unconscious, minimally alive state, but graduating school after school all the way to a PhD.

The aloneness- what can you do about it, you asked. Oh, how many answers there are out there for that question.

When a child is so hungry to not be alone, for as long as you have been, a child adapts somehow. I daydreamed a whole lot, made believe I had lots of friends and lots of love. My brain took its breaks from anxiety that way. What did you do, as a child, what did you do to adapt to being so alone?

anita