Dear noname:

Fear is the most powerful emotion there is, the most distressing. I believe I have experienced fear (and still do), no less than you have so far. When I communicate with you about fear, as I am doing right now, I am working on my own fear.

We misunderstand fear when we confuse the order of things: the emotion and the thoughts. We sometimes assume that we think a particular thing and then we feel fear, when in reality, first there was the fear. And then, to confuse things further, there is fear, then thoughts, then fear connected to the thoughts, and the condition of anxiety is established, unfortunately.

Going to the origin of things: you wrote, “my worst fear reactivated which is being alienated and completely alone”. This fear was already materialized, it already happened for you, in your early life, you were already alienated and alone enough to trigger the fear of death in you. We fear it getting worse, but in affect, it was already bad enough.

“Paradoxically when this fear of being alone is activated I tend to isolate from people”. It is not paradoxical when you look at the behavior of other social animals in nature, or even domestic dogs. When they feel that they are about to die, feeling sick, they do isolate themselves. We are social animals, so we do the same.

“I have to people please in a way to continue to get what I need until I can be 100% financially independent which is less than a year away”- not likely to happen: fear doesn’t go away when you make good money. After all, very wealthy people find their lives unbearable because of the same old same old fear.

It will help you to do what is scary for you to  do- to stop people pleasing, to stop betraying yourself because you fear that you can not survive without those other people, or that they will retaliate against you. Every time you betray yourself, that is, you submit to others because you fear them, you hate yourself more and the fear stays as strong as ever. It is now that you need to stop this behavior, not later.

When you build that pride in yourself, you will no longer feel that if a woman likes you, “there MUST be something wrong with them”. Instead, you will feel: oh, they noticed that I am likeable. I noticed too!

anita