Dear Charlotte:

You are welcome, and thank you for your kind words! You shared that your anxiety is triggered by (1) gloomy, cold, rainy weather, (2) when you hear/ watch “news of horribly upsetting national events”, (3) “drama involving (your) parents”-

– sunny, clear sky weather will help, at least somewhat, so will staying away from sensational presentation of news, limiting your news intake to reading vs watching pictures/ videos of troubling events, and staying away from your parents and their drama.

Regarding your therapist telling you to follow your intuition, pack your bags and go on an adventure- it may be her intuition, something she wants to do (lots of people do).

Regarding safety, you wrote that you “actually live in a very safe suburb of NYC”, that there is no local crime outside your door-

– this is meaningful because when you evaluate safety living in a particular location, it is way more relevant to evaluate the safety in the particular location than it is to evaluate the safety of the country as a whole. There are locations in the U.S. that are much safer than certain locations in the UK, and the other way around.

It is similar to evaluating safety as far as Covid is concerned- the safety regulations in a particular location need to be much more about the number of cases in that particular location, than in the country as a whole.

anita