Dear Naia1234:

Good to read back from you! I am glad you got a break from intrusive thoughts about your relationship, and I hope that this break lasts indefinitely.

“I still get a lot of physical anxiety. My chest feels so tight, my heart is being squeezed, my breathing is harder, my heart is beating faster. It is so uncomfortable, but when this is happening, no racing or intrusive thoughts are happening…Have you ever heard of this before? Any idea how/why you can feel so physically anxious but not have racing thoughts?“- I understand that panic attacks, unlike the experience of anxiety otherwise, happen without experiencing worries or intrusive thoughts before the attacks: they happen unexpectedly.

I re-read your posts and it seems to me, based on my personal experience with anxiety,  that the following may be the main source of your anxiety (with or without intrusive thoughts): “My mom… has so much unresolved trauma… My brother and I were always affected by this” – like I wrote to you before, young children absorb their mothers’ expressed childhood/ early life trauma like sponges, so her trauma becomes her children’s trauma by absorption. This is what happened in my case: my mother expressed her unresolved trauma in my presence many, many times and it affected me terribly, it was as if what happened to  her.. happened to me.

If this makes any sense to you, would you like to share about her/your trauma?

anita