Dear noname:

You are welcome.

“Can you elaborate on ‘too intense to allow comfort?.. Are you suggesting basically I was moving too fast? I’ve never had a close, comfortable attachment to anyone”-

– these are two different things: your emotional experience and your behavior. Moving too fast is the second thing, the behavior. And I did suggest to you in the past, repeatedly, to move slower, get to know the woman as a friend before getting emotionally and sexually involved. The first thing is something else (connected to the second, but different), and that is your very emotional experience, what you feel.

There is an element of panic involved, a rushing that takes you with it like a strong windstorm, overwhelming you and you collapse, logic incapacitated, depressed, hopeless.

The key to your healing is in slowing down that rush, dispersing that panic.

This dynamic, the panic and rushing, that has nothing to do  with thinking and understanding. It is an automatic habit of the brain, it functions this way. So does mine. It becomes this way when a child is scared and alone for too long.

The fear is supposed to motivate an animal to do what it takes to survive a perceived danger. When a child is alone for too long with fear, the child learns to fear the fear itself, that is, the child’s emotions are perceived as the threat, the danger. Meaning, the child no longer fears the original danger (a parent’s anger, a parent’s threat to commit suicide and whatnot). The child fears his own emotions. And so, the child numbs them best he can, not by choice. Nature does that.

Fast forward, you are now a man, you meet this woman, you get excited-problem! The excitement itself is a problem. Excited emotions are perceived as a threat, danger!

anita