Hi Mr. Ritz,

So I’m wondering how to deal with this to avoid another incident?
If I’m not feeling any strong emotions when I hear the news, what am I supposed to do to avoid the anxiety later?

Well, you said that this suggestion of mine sounds pretty accurate:

But in any case, it seems like something is triggered – something that is beyond your conscious awareness. One possibility why things are beyond our conscious awareness is that they were not allowed to be expressed, typically in our childhood (say we weren’t allowed to cry or show weakness), and so we have suppressed them.

So if you have problems expressing emotions (let’s say fear), and it comes out indirectly, in form of an anxiety attack, then I guess you’d need to get in touch with that fear. It most probably stems from your childhood, so I think you’d need to work on some of your childhood memories (those that were hurtful) and process what happened to you.

You mentioned you’ll start seeing a new psychiatrist. Is she also offering counseling/psychotherapy? Because I guess that’s what you’d need if you want to address childhood issues.