Originally Posted By
Marcy Axness
Dear David:
You sound like a pretty thoughtful and insightful guy, describing how you try to penetrate your anxiety and find out what it wants/needs. I agree with everything that Damsel said, and would simply add the following:
We all suffer losses, adoptees don't have the corner on that market at all. What we DO have in common is that many/most of us suffered a pretty traumatic loss very early in our lives, and there can be physiological/neurological remnants of that trauma "stuck" in our autonomic nervous system. Any kind of "high-arousal" circumstance--positive or negative, like a relationship break-up--can kind of "set it revving" again: that over-amped feeling, that knot in the stomach, the organism's natural response to threat. Check out Peter Levine's website at
http://www.traumahealing.com. His model, Somatic Experiencing, was incredible helpful to me in resolving this physiological piece. Good luck to you!
Marcy