Dear Derek:

You changed the story a bit, stating there was nothings sexual going on. It is not true, reading your previous account. There was something sexual there, between the women, between the straight man and the women, between you and the other man.

The “nothing strange here as people are in relationships etc so not breaking of commitment” is a false statement. True to reality it would be: following this breaking of commitment, there will be no further breaking of commitment, not today.

Part of the fear and distress you experienced is true to what happened, that is, there is a valid reason and purpose to it: to not repeat that situation, to learn from it, and not repeat.

To retroactively deny or minimize what happened is convenient, but not congruent with healing.

A large part of the anxiety and distress you experience is not true to what happened and is about previous issues, of course. That part of the anxiety, once this very incident is forgotten, will find another incident to nest in. It could be anything.

This anxiety is looking for incidents, real or imagined. It will continue to do  so. Today there may be such incident and the anxiety will nest in the new incident, the old forgotten.

It is “this dreadful feeling of fear”, this “hot rush of fear” that you are so scared of experiencing again. Already experiencing and fearing it getting worse. I know this dreadful feeling myself. Eventually, if you are to heal, it will be not about how to resolve this or that incident, how to rethink it… it will be about not fearing that dreadful feeling as much, having confidence that you will survive feeling it once again. It will be feeling the beginning of it and not sink into  it.

anita