Dear Anita,Good morning.  I hope you are enjoying your daily walks this summer.  

You wrote: “You can wake up a certain way, maybe not having slept deeply enough, with higher anxiety. Something happened, maybe a dream that you forgot, pathways activated, chemistry happening and anxiety is high.”

This exact thing happened to me last night.  I woke up at  4 am in a panic, definitely pathways activated, perhaps old buried hurt or trauma resurfacing during sleep.  I burst into tears.  And to be honest – I was glad. It feels as though chronic anxiety is a shield, it feels like this, there are demons or old hurts inside, and our body keeps running, running and running, chasing and chasing – this is the feeling of anxiety, constant movement, constant ON, never relaxed. and then at times, I feel, I hurt, and I cry.  I welcome these moments, as they are hard to come by.  Instead the tight anxiety feeling predominates.  When I feel a true hurt and cry, it feels real.  It feels like there is brain processing of what is going on or trauma. Many times I WANT to feel sad or angry, but instead it is anxiety.  Anxiety is the fall back – the go to- the baseline.  However, in the middle of the night I felt a tangible emotion building up, and then there was a release.  How good it feels to cry.  How good it feels to FEEL.  Do you ever feel like this? That you look forward to this release of true feeling/crying vs. pent up/anxiety.  I know that when I cry – it is progress.  These are not tears of emotions for me.  These are tears of processing.  They aren’t tears of being overwhelmed.  I don’t work this way as my baseline is not to cry or feel sad per se, but to feel anxious. I have read and know, and see, how people/patients do things,drastic things, such as cut their wrists often to “feel.” As much as I never truly felt this way or could relate – what I can see is how refreshing it is to feel a true emotion vs.  the jumbled mess of general anxiety.  Of course, taking drastic measures to achieve this is entirely unhealthy and a whole other thing. To feel a pin point emotion is refreshing.  In my case, I don’t walk around the world with sadness and despair.  I walk with energy, productivity, and motivation.  Yet, sometimes it is nice just to feel and let go.  At 4 am to burst into emotion and release or process some (likely old trauma) even 1% – I welcome it. 

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Cali Chica.

Dear Anita,

thank you for your explanation. I appreciate this part especially “That ongoing fear with no action (running away) becomes that base anxiety you wrote about many times. When anxiety is established everything is scary. We fear feeling anything at all, anything unpleasant. Fear invades sadness and even joy. When you cried, it so happens you felt sadness without the fear. Sadness then is not dangerous. It only feels dangerous. Healing is about feeling sadness, joy, affection, hopes, dreams… without the fear”

so in this sense, this baseline anxiety is avoidance of true feeling. It is my shield. It is attempting to protect me. This makes sense because if I TRULY felt all of the “expected” sadness and despair from the events I experienced I would be truly dysfunctional. So this anxiety in a way is a shield to “push through” cover up the true feelings/hurt.

Of course it is not truly protective as it comes with its own huge cost and burden. But from what you wrote I see – anxiety is the body’s way of attempting to protect from danger. The fact that it is omnipresent for me is because I have suffered so much danger/traumafrom a young age that it went into gear full force in the background always.

This is something we spoke about before, and I am glad you re-explained it to me.

How amazing it would be to feel those true feelings. One day.

Dear Anita,

I hope you are enjoying your summer weekends.  I took some space from writing this weekend because I wanted to observe my thoughts prior to writing them down.  I wanted to sink and savor.

Over the last week, I have been lucky to make some advancements in the career front, and find a space for my passion.  In short, it will be the beginning of hopefully me cultivating my medical skill as well as my creativity – I will add more about this later.

During this week, I have also met many people who are exceptionally nice and helpful.  Surprisingly so.  I find that at first  I was really taken aback.  Surprised, confused, and skeptical.

Growing up my family and I had a plethora of negative expriences with others.  My extended family, which I haven’t shared much about, were quite terrible to us, they would make sure my mother and I were not invited to any family events. At the time I was around 5 years old, my father was extremely busy in his medical residency.  I recall one Xmas party where all of the children were asked to play in a game and my aunts and uncles instructed my young cousins to leave me out.  I still remember sitting on the stairwell looking through the banister, sad and confused why I was different.  Why I was left out.

In addition we dealt with tremendous jealousy.  As an Indian girl I was born fair with hazel eyes, traits that are very desirable.  My cousin was born at the same time, with more “normal” indian traits of brown skin and brown eyes.  I recall as a toddler and as we grew into adolescence and even beyond, this was a sore subject.  My aunt made it a point to put me down in front of others, and dismiss any good about me.  All cruel.  I could write much more, and I am sure I will as time goes on.  But I wanted to just give a glimpse of some of the history.

So, therefore, I have seen a lot of hate Anita.  I have had a lot of cruel hate and jealousy directed towards me as well.  Yes, we know so much about my mom and her ways, but this hate was directed towards her and also the after I was born, directed towards me.  Needless to say, I do not speak to that extended family. To me cruel individuals like this are not family, if they behave like evil enemies.

So now in present day, I am finding myself anxious about these helpful and “extra” nice people I come across.  Could this be too good to be true? This is not because I think the world is a morbid place, its just that I honestly haven’t received tremendous love and support.  Sure I have great friends, but what I am today has been primarily self driven – growing up given that I had the drive and zeal, I could overcome anything  and I have in many ways. 

Yet, it is always great to get true genuine support, without the façade of ulterior motive or something negative.  I have wonderful friends that provide this for which I am blessed. 

So over the last week when I am meeting new people that are so nice and helpful, I am taken aback.  I have seen so much hate – and so it is hard to accept in a way

Dear Anita,

today has been a great day. Do you want to know why? Today I didn’t feel any fear, not because my life was better not because my life was different, but because I didn’t allow myself to focus on what will I lose. I asked myself what will I gain? When you go around life wondering what you will gain, you realize you may not need many things at all. you may not need that job that you didn’t want anyway – you may not need that person that you didn’t like anyway, we should think about people and things based on what they add to our life, not what we are missing

Dear Anita,

Good morning. How interesting that two individuals could be side by side. One happy with the news they received, one saddened by it. Same news, same time. Or how interesting that a gift to one person can be a burden on another. It is always important to remind ourself that things and people are good for us when they serve us in a positive way. This is relative to each individual personally. But with that being said, if you focus on what you gain – you will maintain a forward mindset. If you focus on what you lose – you stick to stagnation.

Dear Anita,

I like that win win rule, and I see you excercise it here on this forum as well. Engaging in long term communication when it is a win win and not toxic nor draining for either party. It takes great strength to know ones limits and boundaries in such a way.

On this Friday I am feeling sensitive. I am feeling extra sensitive to my surroundings. It is one of those days that I am feeling more sensitive to the energies around me. More a sponge less shielded. I know that nowadays these days are not daily – but they do arise. Days when it feels hard to protect your heart. When you want to give yourself a hug and say relax nothing is wrong – but know your brain won’t follow. These days they come and go. Today is one of those days.