Dear Javier,

I woke up now, after 1hour of sleep, gasping for air. Experienced rapid heartbeat, rapid breathing, and sweating. I’m in full panic mode, and I’m afraid I’m going to die.

it seems like a panic attack, and I believe the first thing to do would be to calm down your nervous system. I myself haven’t experienced panic attacks, but some members here have, and they’ve given very good advice on how to calm yourself down when you’re experiencing a panic attack. I don’t know if I can post a link to that thread, because last time I posted a link it took almost a day until the post was approved. But you can find it under the “Relationship Paranoia, Anxiety Overall” thread, page 2 (the thread was started on April 26, 2021).

I just realized I will not leave any legacy or leave a mark on this world that will have meant something when I’m long gone. That means, that when I die, I’ll be gone and forgotten.

I too had such thoughts in the past. I thought my life was in vain and that I was a failure. I felt worthless and unimportant. Like, it doesn’t matter if I live or die, it would be all the same. My life made no difference. After some digging, I’ve discovered it has to do with my lack of self-esteem and self-worth. Subconsciously, I didn’t feel important or special to my parents (and a part of it might have been because they left me at my granny’s when I was 1.5 years old and left me there for almost a year).

So I felt unimportant but wasn’t aware of it. As an adult, I felt like I needed to make some big contribution to the world. It made me fight for some “big causes” that later turned out to be a lie, after which I felt humiliated and like I should forever shut up. My self-worth was at the rock bottom.

I believe that your fear that you won’t have any legacy or leave a mark stems from the same feeling of lack of self-worth. On some level, you don’t feel important to your parents, specially to your mother, I guess. This feeling might have formed very early in your childhood. Do you have an idea what might have caused it? One reason could be e.g. that your mother stayed for so long with your father and didn’t protect you from his abuse. Or it can be something less obvious.

You did feel important while you were a lead engineer at a cruse ship, you said you even felt loved then. But if there’s a deeper sense of lack of self-worth, then even external recognition and praise cannot convince us that we’re really worthy. A part of us never really believes it, and we constantly seek validation and eventually experience rejection.

Try to look at your current situation as a wake-up call to start living in accordance with your authentic self. It’s rough at the moment, with lots of turbulence, but try to think of it a re-shuffling phase, after which you’ll be a better, more authentic, more self-confident person. You need to get through the storm to emerge renewed on the other side.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Tee.