Dear Derek:

Let’s look at cause-and-effect:

1) Cause: conversation with your brother on Saturday.

Effect: spike in anxiety, barely speaking to partner, withdrawn, “mean behavior and very dysfunctional”.

2) Cause: “opening up to (your partner)”

Effect: “felt calm and secure”.

My thought: avoid #1. Do not talk to your brother anymore, or to any individual in our original family that causes your anxiety to spike.

You wrote: “twice this week I have felt a pang of anxiety when I saw him and immediately thought that this was because I ‘wasn’t attracted to him'”- the anxiety was probably about the conversation with our brother, old issues otherwise, having nothing to do with your partner.

I think your brain doesn’t want to deal with the real causes, that feels too difficult, too deeply set, too difficult to change, so the brain latches on to something … easy to change.

Confronting family of origin with old issues and changing relationships with them is very difficult. Breaking up with a partner is.. easy, in comparison.

So your brain goes where it easier to go to.

anita