Dear Nichole:

Resolve to never invest again in your family of origin: in any of your brothers and their partners, do not spend a single dollar in an effort to see any of them. If I understand correctly, your older brother’s child is a baby or very, very young and is not emotionally attached to you, correct? So it will not hurt her if you don’t visit her.

Put an end to this one type of waste: your money. That will remove the waste of your time in visiting and your physical/ emotional health, the most valuable resource we have.

At the airport, as you travel back to Michigan with your younger brother and his girlfriend, maybe you can buy a book that will occupy you through the flight?

The symptoms of anxiety are distressing but not dangerous, this is nature’s idea behind making fear feel so distressing: let’s say an animal, a deer, is eating in the open, quite relaxed but partly alert, as deer are. Then a predator is approaching, a big mountain lion. Nature wants the deer to run away as fast as it can, all its power, all its might. How does nature accomplish it? By making the deer feel so bad, so distressed, like it is about to die, and so it is motivated to run with all it has.

But the feeling, the fear itself is not dangerous, it is the mountain lion that is dangerous.

In a similar way, your fear, feels dangerous but it is not. Remind this to yourself when you feel more of it: it feels dangerous, but it is not dangerous. I am okay. My life will get better and better.

anita