I’ll resubmit, hopefully without the excess print:

Dear Helcat:

I admire you for being vulnerable in your recent post and sharing about your struggles and successes. As I often do when replying to an original poster, I will quote from what you shared and respond, part by part.

”Anxiety…  is an addiction like any other… Even as I say goodbye to this habit, it seeks to preserve Itself”- I too think of anxiety as a habit: a chemical-physical habit of the brain-body that involves habitual secretions of chemicals in the brain (neurotransmitters) and in the body (hormones).

“My health issues are a result of the anxiety condition. It prevents me from getting adequate sleep …  a form of suffering. This habit once had me believe that it was preparing me for reality“- my lifetime anxiety habit was definitely a form of suffering, great suffering, and it did not at all prepare me for reality (at least not in adulthood). Instead, it often distorted my perception and understanding of reality and led me to significant dysfunction in real life.

“But the emotional response is disproportionate”- my emotional responses were indeed disproportionate to the events in reality: often things happened in reality that required that I respond, but I did not. At other times, things happened (or didn’t) that required no response, but I responded and I responded inappropriately.

“If I wait for each challenge to be over for my anxiety to reduce, I would be waiting forever“- exactly my thought.

“I will have to decide each time anxiety is triggered, how I would like to behave“-this has been crucial in my struggle with anxiety: to not behave in such ways that fuel and maintain my anxiety. For example, I had a habit (until recently) to unnecessarily confront members in these forums, a habit that added to my anxiety (and did not help others), and so, I am successfully changing this habit. I find it quite doable.

“What has helped address shame is to accept why I feel unlovable and to understand that I am worthy of love. For example, I felt unlovable because my parents didn’t love me. This occurred not because of fault with me, but due to winning an unfortunate genetic lottery“- “genetic lottery”- I like this wording. It is never the child’s fault that her parents didn’t love her, but the child naturally believes that it is her fault, and shame gets attached to this belief like glue.

“By having conversations with people about boundaries and not allowing myself to be bullied, I was protecting myself”- in regard to being bullied and protecting yourself from being bullied… can you/ would you like to give me an example, a recent example perhaps?

anita

Dear Helcat:

It’s good to read from you too. As far as advice and tips in regard to managing anxiety, there is so much that has been written on the topic, so many, many books, workbooks and online sources, including on the first page of tiny buddha under BLOG (“Mindfulness and Peace“), as well as the Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal. I would add today that I agree with what you mentioned, “to never argue with anyone“- that’s an excellent advice to reduce and manage anxiety. This does not mean of course, that one doesn’t assert oneself with people. As I think about it now, arguing weakens assertion, it doesn’t strengthen it. So yes, I vote for never arguing with anyone (unless one is part of a debate team whose objective is to argue under agreed, fair guidelines).

anita

Dear Helcat:

I am not anywhere close to finish my post and I am not focused and calm enough to continue this afternoon (Thursday, 2:04 pm  my time), so I will continue Friday morning.

anita

I suspect that this post will have lots of excess print, so if it does, I will repost and you can skip this post.

Dear Helcat:

In this thread, you shared: “The level of abuse and neglect I experienced at the hands of my mother was severe… From the age of 4-5 I used a stove to prepare simple meals for myself and my brother if food was in the house…  Most of my childhood she spent sleeping, the rest of the time she was out (leaving us home alone), rarely purchasing food, watching tv,  getting drunk and abusing us…There is no polite way to describe the things she did… My mother was institutionalised because she expressed a desire to harm myself and my brother to a doctor. We were placed in short term care whilst she recovered in hospital“-

When I read the above yesterday morning, I remembered that I read it before, it was not news to me.

In your Buddhism Journal thread, you shared: “My mother was fond of suffocation and drowning. I practiced free diving breathing techniques to survive this. I was scared of dying in this violent way“- when I read these two sentences  yesterday morning, it was news to me and I was very surprised that I failed to read it earlier. At first, when I read this, I  “heard” myself  asking you incredulously: did it REALLY happen? I was surprised that you didn’t share such a severe traumatic detail in an original post on your first or second thread.

Not that it doesn’t happen that mothers drown their children. Very recent news, 5 minutes ago, Friday Sept 16, 2022, abc 7, ny. com: “The mother accused of drowning her three children off a Coney Island beach was arraigned on murder charges Friday from her hospital bed at NYU Langone, where she is receiving psychiatric attention. Erin Merdy, 30, is charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts each of second-degree murder, both with depraved indifference to human life and murder with victim under 11 years old, in connection with the deaths of 7-year-old Zachery Merdy, 4-year-old Liliana Stephens-Merdy, and 3-month-old Oliver Bondarev. According to the criminal complaint, Merdy was caught on surveillance camera walking toward the ocean with the children just before 1 a.m. Monday. About two hours later, police observed a ‘barefoot and wet’ Merdy on the boardwalk by the beach. At about 4:20 a.m., police found Zachary Merdy and Liliana Stephens-Merdy ‘lying on the shoreline unresponsive, wet and with sand on their bodies'”.

From the news yesterday “Merdy had at least two reports of neglect filed against her with the city Administration for Children’s Services for failing to bring the kids to school… (one of the children’s fathers) told the New York Times his son was often dirty and hungry when he showed up for mandated custody visits. He told the outlet he reported the mom to ‘child protective services’ and attempted to get full custody of their son, to no avail. It’s not clear to which agency the father reported the mother.”

And of course, there is the infamous Andrea Yates from Huston, Texas who drowned her five children in the bathtub of their home back in June 2001.

Back to you, Helcat: you shared about physical pain: “I have had a chronic pain condition for many years now. The level of physical pain fluctuates, when I relax before going to sleep is often when I experience the most physical pain. I find muscle tension reduces the amount of physical pain I can feel, when my muscles relax (the physical pain)  can be overwhelming… I have a bad habit of avoiding physical pain by focusing on anxiety… Worries are easier to think about than allowing myself to be immersed in the experience of physical pain.. I also have a tendency to dissociate to escape physical pain“-

– As I read this, I wondered if there is a connection between your personal experience with physical pain, particularly at night and the drowning experience. I read about people’s experiences with almost-drowning in  ranker. com, lad bible. com and in Quora. com: the reports of the experience included Panic, Pain, a shot of Adrenaline followed by Powerlessness, and the feel of Eternity.

Quotes from the sources I mentioned: “After about 10 seconds of being underwater, pain occurs. For me, this is the last chance of survival because pain tells your body to take action. And suddenly, adrenaline comes to the rescue. My body then kicked from the water so heavily, it felt like I flew, and then back in the shallow waters. And that moment I knew I was still alive because you can’t feel pain when you’re dead. I began to (drink) lots of seawater and it felt painful. But somehow, I was glad that I was in pain…  And then, my friends came to rescue me”, “Incredibly painful; a kind of tearing and burning sensation that occurs in your chest simultaneously“,

“You lose the use of your hands and limbs and become something of stranded blob with not a lot of hope left“, “I feel powerless, the water around me dark and cold”, “It’s probably been about 20 seconds but it felt like an eternity… What felt like eternity to me had really only been about a minute. I think that’s the craziest thing about this experience.”

Back to your experience with physical pain: when you relax before going to sleep, you experience the most physical pain. I wonder if it is the Powerlessness part of relaxing and almost falling asleep that triggers the Powerlessness of the traumatic almost-drowning experience, which triggers Panic, a shot of Adrenaline and Pain.

“My habits of using anxiety to distract from physical pain are probably not very helpful as stress increases pain sensitivity“-using anxiety aka physical stress (Adrenaline) so to avoid Powerlessness..?

“I still have a habit of an excessive anxiety response to small issues…Acceptance can be difficult for me. I am very stubborn and I believe in my ability to change things. This has led to me attempting to change and overcome difficulties throughout my life“- You are stubborn about NOT being Powerless, and acceptance (not trying to change things) feels like powerlessness…?

“But perhaps the nature of change itself means that I do not always have to try to force my way through a situation“- afraid of feeling powerless?

Feeling powerless: does it have a feel of eternity to it?

About shame and self-compassion: “I felt shame, anger and sadness  as I was being abused. I was bullied into feeling that I had it coming, not for doing wrong. But for existing. I felt that I existed to be abused and expected only that. This is why I chose the word shame…I would appreciate any advice you could give about processing my pain from the past regarding my mother seeing me as a mistake… What is interesting about love is that we are all born worthy of it, just by existing…To me, shame is internal.. By overcoming the self-abuse and being kinder to myself I was practicing self-compassion“-

– Make peace with the powerless aspect of existing. Make peace with being without thinking about problem-solving and about doing anything. Make peace with going to sleep whether you wake up in the morning, or not.

I am typing these words to you this morning while I am planning to go to Urgent Care in an hour or so because of an urgent health condition that was revealed to me only last night. My whole life can easily change today, maybe in 10 minutes. I am as prepared as I can be, mentally, although not practically. I know the nature of life and death, and I know that I am not more important than any one of the many billions of people and other life forms on earth. Life dies all the time and today it may be closer to me than previously. I need to relax more and more into Powerlessness and I think that you do too.

I made lots and lots of improvement in regard to my mental health, and so have you in regard to yours.  And/ but, it is my conviction that we (people) are all mentally ill and mentally healthy, it is just a matter of how much of each is true to each individual at any one time. Mental illness exists in each human, starting in the first decade of life. It is the human condition- I see it everywhere, in real life and online. Therefore, healing and improving has no end point, not as long as you are alive: there is always more to heal, more to improve. And no matter how much you heal and improve, there will still be mental illness along with mental health true to you and true to every other person (in the 2nd decade of life and onward if not in the first).

Self-compassion is indeed the answer to shame and to anxiety, and you already practiced it many times. But notice this: there is still so much more self-compassion that you didn’t practice. You (and I) need a whole lot MORE self-compassion. Whenever you feel emotional distress, think to yourself: this distress is happening in between my ears only. I suffer and no one benefits from my suffering. I don’t deserve to suffer. And then let go of the suffering. Let it go not because you solved this or that problem but simply because you don’t deserve to suffer. And… relax into powerlessness.

*I will probably answer another thread before I leave. I will be away from the computer for much of the day, I think.

anita