Dear noname:

You described beautifully your fear, how it travelled from your solar plexus (a complex network of nerves located in the abdomen, below the heart, behind the stomach,  called “solar” because of its radiating nerve fibers) through your arms and legs, coming out through your eyes as tears.

You wrote about that experience: “It felt familiar, the same debilitating sensation that lasted for hours when I broke up with my first girlfriend“- and you survived that hours long sensation, it wasn’t deadly. Remember this when you feel it next, maybe at night, say to yourself: this will not kill me. There will be a tomorrow for me, and imagine the morning to come, visualize it, see you in it.

“I have never felt safe in my life… I’ve had no relationships where I’ve felt safe“- it is heartbreaking.

“I’m hoping I can find safety in relationships one day if I’m able to take care of myself well enough to keep trying, and taking risks“- key is to detect the first, minute bit of safety and let it in. I don’t think that safety (the feeling/ perception of it) is going to appear to you like a big, heavenly experience. You will have to pay attention and notice a small bit of safety here and there, and absorb those bits, one by one. Over time, you will be able to endure bigger portions of safety (similar to a starving person unable to ingest a large portion of food, and has to ingest small portions of food, a bit at a time, then wait for a few hours before taking another portion.

anita