Dear Amy:

You know the term “driving under the influence” or “operating heavy machinery under the influence of..” I came up with a parallel term: “operating under the influence of strong emotion, or “operating under the influence of distress”- we are not meant to be distressed on and on and on. It exhausts the body, the brain and keeps you weak. Too weak, to unclear, to foggy to see what needs to be done.

Physical anatomy, physiology is telling you: too much distress, cannot operate. Help!

There is no other way for you but to lower that distress. In your mind (operating under the influence of strong emotion) you figured: I can’t calm down until and unless this man is out of my life!

And as you stated, you can’t get him out of your life (unless you run away with your child, cut all contacts with the people currently in your life, and start a new life elsewhere… which is a possibility!)

But outside making a new life for yourself with a different name, that man is in your life. If you continue to connect him being out of your life with becoming calm, then you will not win (oh, yes, unless he is no longer alive, but let us not go there, please… prison comes to mind…)

You got to find a way to be able to see yourself calm while this man is in your life.

How to do that, is the question, that it has to be done, is not a question.

??? How to do that.

anita