Dear Jared:

You posted a year ago, October 2016. Your younger son is not a year old yet. You read like a dedicated, loving husband and father. I understand you not wanting to live and work away from them. It is for your benefit as well as theirs that you live with them. On the other hand, of course, there is rational to the need to earn money. You wrote that you work in industrial construction, does this mean that your next job is likely to be temporary, that the kind of work is such that different jobs are temporary?

Your anxiety has been lifetime, as I understand it. It is a tough condition to live with. But healing and management are possible and you already experienced success in such, as in meditating. The condition of anxiety is such fear looks for and finds places to … nest, so to speak. It focuses on this at one point and on the other thing at another point. Because it is impossible to make life perfectly safe, income guaranteed, health guaranteed, safety guaranteed, there always is a nest available for the unsettled fear. Sometimes more than one.

Understanding this nature of anxiety helps not focus on this or that life circumstance as the cause of the distress, but instead focus on the condition itself. Organize the circumstances of your life best you can to make life less distressing for you, and at the same time, expect anxiety no matter the circumstance.

Keep good communication with your wife. Experiencing safety in your relationship with her is very important. Keep meditating- if it worked for you before, do it again. Be patient when at times it doesn’t work as well as before.

Post again, anytime.

anita

Dear Jared:

You are welcome. When you remind (and keep reminding) yourself that in reality, you are likely to be okay once you are there and in a new routine, you are calming your fear with realistic thinking. Thinking that is congruent with reality counters the distorted, catastrophic, all-or-nothing thinking that goes hand in hand with anxiety.

anita