Dear Shelby:

You wrote today on your other thread: “I thought I was nearly at a point where my ex had said he would work on it and figure out the answers but he must have got freaked or something and bailed out at the last  minute, deciding he was ‘better off’ (easier and less frightening) on his own”.

I suggested to you before, on your other thread, that your significant anxiety before, during and after your recent relationship originated in your childhood  home life. You rejected my suggestion.

We all don’t want to address issues that frighten us, that freak us out, not only your ex boyfriend. He probably did figure he was “‘better off’ (easier and less frightening)” to be on his own.

But won’t you too decide the same thing in context of this very thread, to abandon it and focus on your other thread because it is “easier and less frightening” to communicate about the breakup than it is to communicate about your childhood?

anita

Dear Shelby:

You wrote on your other thread: “a friend said I was more unhappy than happy with my ex… I was unhappy in the relationship… I used to get incredibly needy even in the relationship… I was unhappy in the relationship. I am even more unhappy now”.

About why you were unhappy in the relationship, you wrote: “I was unhappy because things weren’t progressing… I understood more and more each month that passed what his issues were, through the insight of therapy, and I genuinely thought I could help him work it out and have our happy ending”

All through the relationship you were anxious and you still are. The difference is that during the relationship you had a mission: to achieve that “happy ending”, that Hollywood ending (“I’m a total romantic at heart and want that Hollywood ending”). During the relationship, you had hope, you had a mission and you were motivated. Following the breakup you lost your hope, your mission, and therefore, your motivation: “I just feel empty. I’m trying to fill my days with mechanical empty activities. Nothing brings me joy. I’m existing, not living”.

You wrote about your experience in the relationship: “I thoroughly enjoyed his company and looked forward to each time I was with him. But the frustration of being stalled seeped out of me despite my best efforts, when the heart wants more, it can’t be silenced”

That more that your heart wanted then was calm, to no longer feel anxious, and you believed it would be accomplished by that happy ending. You were focused on him as The Problem, the one that is keeping you away from the happy ending, and as The Solution, the one to bring about that happy ending.

And you figured there is something wrong with him, and if you fix it, then he will take you to that happy ending. You wrote: “I thought I could help him and in the end he said there was nothing wrong with him and that he didn’t need help… he felt he was always made to feel like he wasn’t good enough”.

The relationship was about you trying to find that heaven people dream about, the happily-ever-after. But there is no such thing. Your anxiety would have persisted passed a wedding. Anxiety does not go away when a wedding ceremony takes place. It doesn’t go away no matter what event takes place in our lives. What your mission did accomplish instead is that he felt he wasn’t good enough.

“I get this incredible fear in the morning. I just feel so scared and people ask me why and I’m not sure”. The solution to that fear, that ongoing fear (anxiety) is not him, never has been him. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get married, but not as a magical solution to anxiety.

Looking for the solution in him or in any other man, in a future relationship, will only bring you more heartache and hurt a future relationship as well. Look into it, into that fear, in therapy.

Following this post I withdraw from this thread and will post again only if you ask me to do so. In case this is my last post to you, I wish you well, hope that you feel better very soon!

anita

Dear Moomin:

I am sure that the original poster will not mind that you posted here, almost 2 years following her original post, because she repeatedly welcomed many members to post about their personal challenges in her other thread, being very generous this way. Therefore, I feel comfortable communicating with you here.

Anxiety is a complex topic and I will be glad to communicate with you  for about it over time. Because this is my first post to you, and there is so much to respond to in your post, it will be a long first reply to you. Please take time reading this post, better not rush through it, nor is there a reason to rush.

1. You wrote: “I found it soothing what anita said on one of the posts, that when you feel like this you are not in danger. You are not going to die.. And also how this feeling can be as a result of a childhood experience. This point I would like to explore”-

– I’ll be glad to explore this with you. And it is amazing, isn’t it, how powerful emotions feel, and yet they don’t kill us. The biological reason for this is that in nature, when a deer, let’s say, spots a mountain lion, the deer feels a very powerful fear that motivates it to immediately escape, super fast. It is not the lion itself that causes the deer to put all of its energy into an immediate and powerful escape- it is the fear. If the fear itself was to kill the deer, that would defeat the purpose of the escape.

It is the lion that can kill the deer, not the fear. The fear feels so dangerous because it is designed to motivate an animal to escape real and present danger. Question is, what is the lion in your story.

You wrote: “I do remember having this panic as a child. For instance if going away on a holiday with school (which I requested!) being in utmost panic before I went- sobbing, mum please don’t make me go, and crying pretty much the whole time I was away”-

– back to the deer: a fawn, a very young deer, when separated from her mother feels the kind of fear you felt then, going on a trip away from your mother. For a young fawn, being separated from the mother means no  food and no protection from the cold and from predators that favor the young. For a young animal, being separated from the mother is a real and present danger. Even though a human child has other options if separated from the mother (such as the police and social  services that can place the child in a home), the instincts of the child are the same as the instincts of other young  animals. The lion, in your story, is separation from your mother.

When you requested the holiday trip, you forgot at the time about an experience you had earlier on, but when the trip was becoming a reality, the fear from the prior experience was activated. What that prior experience was, I don’t know.

Let’s look at the fear: “visceral emotions.. utmost panic and fear as soon as I believe someone has rejected or withdrawn their affection… It stops me from functioning day-to-day and only stops if I am soothed (by contact from the person who has ‘rejected’ me), or if I temporarily distract myself. I weep and wail and curl into a ball, blame myself.. go over and over things. I can’t breathe, my chest is tight.. I can also turn these symptoms off temporarily- which makes me feel like a fraud!”-

– Turning the symptoms off temporarily is a result of the natural reaction of dissociation that other animals are capable of, such as when playing dead when too close to a predator (running from the predator is not likely to succeed). The animal playing dead is not thinking “I am a fraud”, because it doesn’t have the capability to form thoughts. But we humans, once naturally dissociating, we can think and we suspect that we are frauds!

Same with blaming oneself- because we can think, we blame  ourselves.

It stops you from functioning because when separated from the mother, or the social group, a young animal’s only concern is to return to the mother or the social group. I remember a young coyote a few years ago, outside my home, having been separated from its group- the noise that it made was incredibly loud and persistent, most urgent. The young coyote wasn’t concerned with hunting for a rabbit or finding shelter. It’s  only concern was to return to the group. Finally, members of the group located the lost one, and the howling stopped, the lost one was soothed. The biological purpose of your weeping and wailing out loud is to get the attention of your mother, not different from the lost coyote.

Although, a child who  is afraid for too long, no longer remembering the traumatic separation, may cry silently, having given up being helped, not  remembering what help she needed before.

“I will never be ok, everything has changed and is broken, that I won’t recover, that I need to do everything to make it right again. My rational head says this is nonsense!”- but your instinctive, emotional self is doing the same as the fawn and the lost coyote do, because remaining separated from the mother or the social group really means that everything has changed and is broken; remaining separated really means that they will not recover. And therefore, they need to do everything to make it right again!

2. “My partner has a very demanding job and is by her own admission a workaholic.. My partner wants us to work through things, taking time out but remaining in communication. She believes relationships require work”- this is encouraging for the relationship because she is motivated to work, not only in her career but in the relationship. And if you are willing to work too, then the two of you will be engaged in a working relationship, a working relationship that is likely to bring about a better intimate relationship, as time goes by, with work.

“She describes herself as not knowing how to have fun… She has a very successful high powered job, is athletic and capable at pretty much everything”- she is capable at almost everything: she is not capable of having fun. My understanding: to have fun she would need to relax, but when she relaxes, she becomes aware of the anxiety that drives her. She prefers to be driven by the anxiety than to stay still and be aware of her anxiety.

“I have a small issue in that she has suggested I see my friends more and do more activities- something I think that is a projection of what she admits she is lacking in her life- as I said, I have a rich life.. close friends”- I think that she suggested that you see your friends more etc., not because she thinks that you lack friends, and that you are faulty for not having friends and activities, but because she wants you and your anxiety away from her. She doesn’t want to feel her own anxiety close to her awareness: she doesn’t want yours either.

3. “If I was able to control the crazy, I think we would not  only have a better shot at the relationship, but I would also be a stronger person going forward”- it is possible for you. It takes becoming skillful using what is called emotional regulation skills, turning down the volume of the fear, so to speak, so to not be overwhelmed by it.

“I had a very loving childhood, with parents who are still together”- something happened. It might not have been something worthy of a horror film. It could be that your parents were having relationship troubles long ago, when you were a child, you heard them arguing maybe, you were afraid to be left alone if their fights escalated into a disaster. Maybe you were literally left alone one evening or night, without a baby sitter, maybe for an hour. Your parents may not have thought it was a big deal..  only an hour. But for a child, time feels differently, when afraid- an hour feels like an eternity.

anita

Dear Moomin:

You are welcome. Thank you for wishing me a happy and healthy day, and I wish you the same. This will be another long post in which I will reply to your 1- 5 statements/ questions (and I will ask you two questions):

#1- you were hospitalized for about a week when you were 1, away from your parents, and your mother mentioned that with what you believe to be “guilt or sadness still about this”- as to whether that experience caused your 30 years long anxiety following breakups, I ask:

* Did your mother mention to you how you behaved after being re-united with her, whether your behavior after the hospital was different from your behavior before the hospital (maybe after re-uniting, you cried more, slept less, appeared more clingy, or detached)?

* Are you aware of experiencing anxiety prior to your first breakup, prior to age 16?

“Are there particular age ranges when a child is developing that make them more susceptible to forming negative associations, and carrying these through to adulthood?”-

– according to an article, Attachment and Separation: What Everyone Should Know, by Dr. Peter Cook (in natural child. org), “It is believed that children aged 6 months to 4 years are more particularly vulnerable” to separation from their mothers.

Another article, psychological emotional and physical experiences of hospitalized children in oatext. com, reads: “The experience of illness and hospitalisation.. exerts a great deal of psychological distress, one of the most distressful events people might actually experience in their life time… From the outset, we know that illness is a major stressor in one’s life. Various symptoms of the illness put the body into a state of continuous stress.. Being hospitalised, individuals may experience a wide range of short-term as well as long-term consequences… Children are particularly prone to the adverse effects of being ill… In a sense, for children ‘the hospital is like a foreign country to whose customs, language and schedules they must learn to adapt’…

“A considerate body of research on the effects of paediatric hospitalisation has been conducted since the 1950s.. When children are scared, tired or in pain, they are particularly dependent on the safe and stable environment of their  home and on the support and love of their family members… For children, this is not  only a subjective need, but also  a vital necessity… especially when they become ill, they need their families’ support more than ever…

“Recent empirical data highlights that adverse effects of hospitalisation on children, have been found to be stronger when parents are not present, or when parents are highly anxious and were not able to calmly respond to them.

“Illness and hospitalisation are traumatic, anxiety provoking and can lead to transient or long-term behavioural  and psychological difficulties in children… It has been argued that hospitalisation can be a life crisis for children, which might further highlight and aggravate their experience of fear, loneliness and frustration”.

Regarding you being hospitalized at one year old, according to Erik Erikson’s stages of psychological development theory, Wikipedia, the first stage is infancy, under 2 years old.

He called that stage “Hope: trust vs. mistrust”, it reads: “The infant depends on the parents, especially the mother, for sustenance and comfort. The child’s relative understanding of the world and society comes from the parents and their interaction with the child. A child’s first trust is always with the parent… If the parents expose the child to warmth, regularly, and dependable affection, the infant’s view of the world will be one of trust. Should parents fail to provide a secure environment and to meet the child’s basic needs; a sense of mistrust will result. Development of mistrust can lead to feelings of frustration, suspicion, withdrawal, and a lack of confidence… the major development task in infancy is to learn whether or not other people, especially primary caregivers, regularly satisfy basic needs. If caregivers are consistent sources of food, comfort, and affection, an infant learns trust- that others are dependable and reliable… the child’s number one needs are to feel safe, comforted, and well cared for”.

#2: “I imagine that pretty much every child will have had some sort of experience of feeling alone and afraid. Parents are human after all. So I wonder why for some people this would cause later issues and not for others?”-

– most parents fail their children,  most parents can do better for their children if they had the motivation to seek the help they need and to do right by their children. And therefore, most adult children have issues. No two people have the very same childhood, and as a result, different people have different combinations of issues and different extents of the same issues. It is not true that a minority of people have issues and most people are issues- free. Because there are so many people with serious issues, the state of the world is as sad as it is now.

#3: “Why would this feeling transfer to a romantic relationship, and, to my embarrassment, even to a previous relationship that only had a handful of dates? I don’t associate these people with a parent figure”-

-because as Erikson wrote: “The child’s relative understanding of the world and society comes from the parents and their interaction with the child. A child first trust is always with the parent”. Following a separation from a woman you dated  just a handful of dates, your childhood experience of separation from your mother was activated. It does not mean that you thought of that woman as a mother figure; it means that you felt some emotional attachment to her, and separation from her triggered your childhood anxiety when separated from your mother (to whom you were very attached).

#4: “Can the trigger be prevented from going off? (Without having to resort to no romantic connections, which is an option!)”-

– no, I don’t believe it is possible to prevent being triggered in the ways that you do, not for a long, long time. Over time, with healing and management, you can lessen the intensity of the triggered experience.

#5: “Emotional regulation skills. Do you have any advice on developing these? And can that be done in the absence of the stimulus, or only when triggered and hysterical?”-

– Emotional regulation skills need to be practiced every day, regardless of the presence or absence of a trigger, or a stimulus. You can start with downloading Mark William’s series of Mindfulness Mediation series. Last I checked the downloading is free of charge. I recommend him because my former therapist gave me homework after each session, and part of the homework was to listen to one or more of the meditations every day. This was my introduction to the learning of emotional regulation skills.

anita

Dear Moomin:

In your recent post, you shared that you remember as an early teenager, waiting for your mother to come back home from work, afraid that she may not come home, that she may not be alive anymore. You looked for a sign: how many cars pass by, so to comfort yourself.

In your first post, you wrote regarding romantic partners: “I get the feelings of utmost panic and fear as soon as I believe someone has rejected or withdrawn their affection“.

When you feared that your mother was no longer alive, you feared that her affection was withdrawn from you in a very final way, and in a devastating way, because you had only one mother, and you were not expecting a second mother. No one to replace your one and only mother.

When you fear that a romantic partner will withdraw her affection from you, or that she already has, it probably feels final and devastating, like the finality of death, and it probably feels like there will be no one to replace her as the source of affection. And that makes the fear overwhelming.

What do you think?

anita

Dear Moomin:

As a child, did you have any reason to suspect that your mother will not come back from work? I don’t have any reason to think that your mother said or did any of the following, but I am asking anyway:

Did she complain to you that she works very hard outside the home, that the work is hard on her body and is causing her to get sick?

Did she ever talk about wanting to die or wanting to cause herself harm?

Was she clearly at times depressed, withdrawn, in bed for many hours in her room?

Any such thing??

anita

Dear Moomin:

“It was said in response to the (I think) common, petulant child protestation that I was going to run away from home”- I don’t understand this sentence, can you elaborate (who wanted to run away from home.. under what circumstances, who said what to whom)?

anita