Dear Moomin:

I am sure that the original poster will not mind that you posted here, almost 2 years following her original post, because she repeatedly welcomed many members to post about their personal challenges in her other thread, being very generous this way. Therefore, I feel comfortable communicating with you here.

Anxiety is a complex topic and I will be glad to communicate with you  for about it over time. Because this is my first post to you, and there is so much to respond to in your post, it will be a long first reply to you. Please take time reading this post, better not rush through it, nor is there a reason to rush.

1. You wrote: “I found it soothing what anita said on one of the posts, that when you feel like this you are not in danger. You are not going to die.. And also how this feeling can be as a result of a childhood experience. This point I would like to explore”-

– I’ll be glad to explore this with you. And it is amazing, isn’t it, how powerful emotions feel, and yet they don’t kill us. The biological reason for this is that in nature, when a deer, let’s say, spots a mountain lion, the deer feels a very powerful fear that motivates it to immediately escape, super fast. It is not the lion itself that causes the deer to put all of its energy into an immediate and powerful escape- it is the fear. If the fear itself was to kill the deer, that would defeat the purpose of the escape.

It is the lion that can kill the deer, not the fear. The fear feels so dangerous because it is designed to motivate an animal to escape real and present danger. Question is, what is the lion in your story.

You wrote: “I do remember having this panic as a child. For instance if going away on a holiday with school (which I requested!) being in utmost panic before I went- sobbing, mum please don’t make me go, and crying pretty much the whole time I was away”-

– back to the deer: a fawn, a very young deer, when separated from her mother feels the kind of fear you felt then, going on a trip away from your mother. For a young fawn, being separated from the mother means no  food and no protection from the cold and from predators that favor the young. For a young animal, being separated from the mother is a real and present danger. Even though a human child has other options if separated from the mother (such as the police and social  services that can place the child in a home), the instincts of the child are the same as the instincts of other young  animals. The lion, in your story, is separation from your mother.

When you requested the holiday trip, you forgot at the time about an experience you had earlier on, but when the trip was becoming a reality, the fear from the prior experience was activated. What that prior experience was, I don’t know.

Let’s look at the fear: “visceral emotions.. utmost panic and fear as soon as I believe someone has rejected or withdrawn their affection… It stops me from functioning day-to-day and only stops if I am soothed (by contact from the person who has ‘rejected’ me), or if I temporarily distract myself. I weep and wail and curl into a ball, blame myself.. go over and over things. I can’t breathe, my chest is tight.. I can also turn these symptoms off temporarily- which makes me feel like a fraud!”-

– Turning the symptoms off temporarily is a result of the natural reaction of dissociation that other animals are capable of, such as when playing dead when too close to a predator (running from the predator is not likely to succeed). The animal playing dead is not thinking “I am a fraud”, because it doesn’t have the capability to form thoughts. But we humans, once naturally dissociating, we can think and we suspect that we are frauds!

Same with blaming oneself- because we can think, we blame  ourselves.

It stops you from functioning because when separated from the mother, or the social group, a young animal’s only concern is to return to the mother or the social group. I remember a young coyote a few years ago, outside my home, having been separated from its group- the noise that it made was incredibly loud and persistent, most urgent. The young coyote wasn’t concerned with hunting for a rabbit or finding shelter. It’s  only concern was to return to the group. Finally, members of the group located the lost one, and the howling stopped, the lost one was soothed. The biological purpose of your weeping and wailing out loud is to get the attention of your mother, not different from the lost coyote.

Although, a child who  is afraid for too long, no longer remembering the traumatic separation, may cry silently, having given up being helped, not  remembering what help she needed before.

“I will never be ok, everything has changed and is broken, that I won’t recover, that I need to do everything to make it right again. My rational head says this is nonsense!”- but your instinctive, emotional self is doing the same as the fawn and the lost coyote do, because remaining separated from the mother or the social group really means that everything has changed and is broken; remaining separated really means that they will not recover. And therefore, they need to do everything to make it right again!

2. “My partner has a very demanding job and is by her own admission a workaholic.. My partner wants us to work through things, taking time out but remaining in communication. She believes relationships require work”- this is encouraging for the relationship because she is motivated to work, not only in her career but in the relationship. And if you are willing to work too, then the two of you will be engaged in a working relationship, a working relationship that is likely to bring about a better intimate relationship, as time goes by, with work.

“She describes herself as not knowing how to have fun… She has a very successful high powered job, is athletic and capable at pretty much everything”- she is capable at almost everything: she is not capable of having fun. My understanding: to have fun she would need to relax, but when she relaxes, she becomes aware of the anxiety that drives her. She prefers to be driven by the anxiety than to stay still and be aware of her anxiety.

“I have a small issue in that she has suggested I see my friends more and do more activities- something I think that is a projection of what she admits she is lacking in her life- as I said, I have a rich life.. close friends”- I think that she suggested that you see your friends more etc., not because she thinks that you lack friends, and that you are faulty for not having friends and activities, but because she wants you and your anxiety away from her. She doesn’t want to feel her own anxiety close to her awareness: she doesn’t want yours either.

3. “If I was able to control the crazy, I think we would not  only have a better shot at the relationship, but I would also be a stronger person going forward”- it is possible for you. It takes becoming skillful using what is called emotional regulation skills, turning down the volume of the fear, so to speak, so to not be overwhelmed by it.

“I had a very loving childhood, with parents who are still together”- something happened. It might not have been something worthy of a horror film. It could be that your parents were having relationship troubles long ago, when you were a child, you heard them arguing maybe, you were afraid to be left alone if their fights escalated into a disaster. Maybe you were literally left alone one evening or night, without a baby sitter, maybe for an hour. Your parents may not have thought it was a big deal..  only an hour. But for a child, time feels differently, when afraid- an hour feels like an eternity.

anita