Dear miyoid:

“I have this obsession on being safe. I was not safe as other kids because I never believed in anything that would protect me“- this is the sentence that stood up the most as I read your recent post. It brought me an image of a 1- 2 year old miyoid walking unsteadily, not yet mastered walking very well, dragging a safety blanket behind her (also called a security blanket that toddlers carry with them for comfort).

“I try to think better than my reality…  I try to run from that feeling (of being) not fully safe“- another image comes to mind and this one is about me, maybe 5 years old, maybe a bit older. I was home, a tiny apartment, there was a fight between my mother and father, loud voices. It was night time. My mother cried and yelled with a voice that sounded so very out of control: I am going to kill myself!  And then, she left the tiny apartment.

In my brain, it all meant DISASTER. I cried and yelled for my mother. My father tried to silence me with a belt. Next, I remember being alone in the apartment and believing that my mother is out there in the night, dead. So I gathered courage and walked outside the apartment, alone, and down the stairs- imagining that I was an actress in a movie, being filmed. My fear was replaced for a while with a kind of wander and magic about being in a movie.

Down the stairs, I walked through the path leading to the street; I looked to my right and to my left with every step, or every few steps, looking for my mother’s dead body. I finally arrived at the street, there were people there, standing in the night, talking, my mother was one of them. (I imagine all the screaming caused neighbors to come out to the street). When I saw my mother alive, I was overjoyed. It was the happiest moment in my life: MOTHER! I screamed in delight and immense relief, YOU ARE ALIVE!!! I ran to her, ran to her, ran to her to take me in her arms.

But she didn’t. Instead, she was angry at me, her face was angry, disapproving, and so was her voice and her words…what is wrong with you, anita, why are you not at home?

She didn’t take me into her arms, didn’t hush me, didn’t calm that fear. In her harshness and coldness, the fear was cemented into my childhood separation anxiety disorder. Of course, I didn’t know the term as a child (and it is a made up term, one that belonged in a book, not in a 5 year-old’s mind). For years after that night, I prayed to this and that star in the night’s sky: please keep my mother alive!? Please… I developed OCD (didn’t know this term either) and performed all kinds of compulsions and rituals to keep her alive. I spent my childhood and adolescence at home, afraid that she will die in my absence. That fear infected my muscles, so to speak, with motor and vocal tics (and again, I didn’t know the terms tics, the words motor or vocal).

“I try to run from that feeling (of being) not fully safe“- no wonder you try to run from that feeling, that fear. When I feel it, it feels like an eruption inside of me, something that’s about to erupt and destroy everything.  The fear in me still is not fear of a real-and-present danger such as climate change, it is the same fear it always was: GOD PLEASE DON’T LET MY MOTHER DIE!

This fear, a childhood fear of separation from the primary care taker (aka childhood separation anxiety disorder) took over my life. You are in your early 20s. I don’t want this fear to take over the rest of your life, like it has taken over mine.

” I guess I should be able to sit with the not-comfy feeling and just be alone, observe, go on with my life. I think I try to run from that feeling“- I think that dealing with this fear includes both things: sit with the fear and run away from it… sit with it and distract from it, a little of sitting with it, a lot of staying away from it. Eventually, the fear is not as strong as it was, eventually the storms are not as strong.

“I do have a clue about what I want, but when a slight problem occurs like my partner being in a weird mood and behaving a bit differently to me, I start to feel unsafe and that affects me a lot“- this is the fear/ storm in the inside you being strong, a lot,  following a small provocation.

“I start to feel unsafe and that affects me a lot. My motivation towards life just start to vanish… I lose interest in the hobbies I like, I never want to read anything, do anything productive. I just go on with my life with the lowest effort and hope for better…. all the things mentioned are not as important as being safe with the partner“- the child that I was that night, believing that my mother was dead outside in the darkness of night… that child was not in the mood to stay in the apartment and play with toys. All she cared about, all her motivation was focused on finding her mother alive.

“Having at least one stable thing in your life helps… one thing I can count on“- makes me think again of the safety blanket a toddler carries around. The blanket is the toddler’s one stable thing, one thing to count on.

“I guess I am acting a bit pessimistic. It’s just when I am not safe with my feelings, I hardly see anything to be grateful about in life, that seems like the problem here. I have other stuff I’m working on to be grateful about“- the lesser fear (fear of separation), the more optimistic, motivated and grateful you can be.

“I wasn’t brought up with a religion. My parents were not religious…  I never believed in anything that would protect me… I tried to talk with some people that are strongly religious, but when I listened to the so-called miracles they heard and saw as the reason to believe in their god, it was never enough for me“- yes, you mentioned not being religious. I tried to be religious myself and it was never enough for me either because I never forgot how often I prayed to god by looking at the night sky and picking a star, and god did not help me. I prayed for what seemed like eternity, year after year of living with a suicidal mother… and no help.

In my mind’s ear, I hear someone (not anyone in particular) say: but god kept your mother alive. My answer to no one in particular: it would have been better if she died like she said she would- that way I would have no longer lived in fear of the anticipation of her death.

“The only thing I could see a little bit more persuading is the effects of meditation, and then again, I guess these can be explained in science as well. So I try to do my yoga“- like you, I rely on science rather than religion. I start each day with some yoga stretches, particularly chest opener stretches. The chest opener stretches make me feel courageous, more able to face fear than before.

“I put great importance to my emotional state and when that shatters, I am lost in that void without any will to live“- in between running away/ distracting yourself from fear, sit with it for a moment here, a moment there. Face your original fear, the one cemented in childhood, and break it bit by bit by bit. Watch it crumble, hear it crumble, feel it crumble.

anita