Dear Lisa:

I sure hope you slept some last night. I wish you weren’t worked up but calm and  peaceful instead. Calm and  peaceful, that would be wonderful for  you.

It is your thoughts that kept you worked  up. I think that you kept  your post vague because you were afraid that the thoughts being typed into the screen will make bad things happen to you, specifically the scenario you fear.

But thoughts in themselves are not dangerous. Thoughts don’t make things happen;  actions make things happen.

Problem is fear and anger travel  in thoughts, so the more you think about a scary scenario, the more fear and/ or anger you feel, getting worked up.

The scenario you feared  last night was that “people will force me to see someone who hurt  me and .. I will be expected to be find and pretend everything is fine”. I suppose a scenario like that already happened in your young life, maybe many times, and the experience got activated in your brain last night.

I remember very well my own experience of years and decades of pretending everything is fine. I never thought I did a good job of it, imagining people can tell what I was thinking and feeling and blamed me for it, thinking little of me, humiliating me in their own minds. I thought people can read my mind, and I felt so very uncomfortable in my own skin.

anita