Dear Lean:

You shared that you are a senior in high school. You have a boyfriend beginning in January 2019. In July 2019, after he surprised you with flowers at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), you spent time in his car but you didn’t feel aroused by him. Next, the following happened: “suddenly felt an extreme dread inside me and I thought ‘what if I don’t love him anymore?’.. felt ETREMELY sick and I was crying and panicking.. a week passes and I couldn’t shake the feeling… Months go by with endless doctors appointments.. Everyday I would cry and soon I became extremely depressed and suicidal”.

Sometime after school started, 12th grade, you “got better and fell back in love with him and I was happy, but I could never shake the thoughts of ‘I don’t know if he’s going to be the one I marry’, ‘maybe there is someone better’ then quarantine began and at first everything was okay.. The past week though it came back and in full force. I feel extremely numb and I think I just need to break up with him, but I just can’t… I feel like I deserve to suffer for putting him through so much.. I get sick thinking of  being with anyone else besides him.. I’ve just became extremely depressed again and I’d rather not exist than to feel what I’m feeling and to make him feel horrible”.

My thoughts: what you described that you felt in the car almost a year ago is severe anxiety, and that anxiety kept happening on and off for 11 months, recently it became more intense. You’ve been focused on questions such as whether you love him or not, whether you want to marry him or not, etc., but the issue is not these questions but the anxiety. Feeling guilty about hurting him is adding to your anxiety.

I want to understand your situation better, therefore I ask:

1. You mentioned having gone to “endless doctors appointments”- what kinds of doctors were those (any of them a psychiatrist?), and what were the results of those appointments?

2. Did you attend psychotherapy or counseling in the last 11 months?

3. I imagine you shared with your boyfriend about your guilt regarding hurting his feelings. If you did, what did he say in response, and did he ever express to you that he will feel very badly if you leave him?

anita