Dear GC:

You are welcome. You wrote: “I am 22, often struggled with anxiety and panic attacks and a bit of OCD since I was 18… I did not have a romantic relationship until I was about 18”-

I think you experienced anxiety way before 18, in the context of your relationships with your family members, in your family of origin. You sort of… got used to it. This anxiety got triggered in the context of romantic relationships, starting at 18. Anxiety is very exhausting and very unpleasant, this is why life is easier for you when you are not involved with a man.

You wrote about your current relationship: “I feel like I have to walk on eggshells… I feel so scared that anything I say or do wrong, he will break up with me… I always fear doing the ‘wrong’ thing”-

reads to me that you are re-experiencing your childhood experience, the one you got… sort of used to and don’t remember now as something significant (?). As a child you walked on eggshells, fearing to say or do something wrong.

It is not your boyfriend causing you this reaction. It is your childhood experience being triggered in the context of a romantic relationship, I think.

About your childhood you wrote: “I was either teased very much about being too sensitive, leading me to push people away”- correction, if I may: those who teased you pushed you away by their very teasing.

If you’d like, share more about the teasing, or other ways you were rejected as a child, and by whom.

anita