Dear Naia1234:

You submitted posts on Oct 6, 7 and 8 and you were very pleased with the replies you received, but following telling the story about the friend group on Oct 9 and receiving the replies to it, you did not post in the last 8 days. I am guessing that what you shared in your last post and/ or the replies to it increased your relationship anxiety so you withdrew from your thread.

You shared in that last post: “My best girl friend at my the time began to make up stories and lies about my boyfriend and about our relationship…  She painted my boyfriend out to be a really bad guy… I think about all of the awful things they said about my boyfriend when I am feeling anxious. This makes me really sad because I know they are pure lies but anxiety makes things feel so real“-

– There is a saying: “even a broken clock is right twice a day“, so I am guessing that a part of the negative things that your ex-best girl friend said about your boyfriend and the relationship was true at the time. But it doesn’t mean that everything that she said was true, nor does it mean that your boyfriend was or is a bad guy, or that the relationship is bad. Your 3rd sentence in your original post is: “We are not perfect, but we are strong“- everyone is imperfect, never to achieve a perfect being. But we can aim at getting better and better every day.

How are you, Naia1234? I wish I could read from you again!?

anita

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