This thing about your anxiety returning strikes a chord with me. I want to relate a personal story that really shows the link between a dysfunctional rel. that we know is "off" in our core and anxiety.
I have discovered through all of this that I've dealt with anxiety my whole life, which is tied to perfectionism, unrealistic expectations that my parents put on me as first-born, and which just snowballed the older I got, more bar-raising left and right, to the point where I set my own bar very high. This makes me really driven and ambitious but also not able to relax or cut myself a break. Anyway my anxiety issues were manageable until I started to have actual minor health problems that carried with them some symptoms back about 3 years before XH's MLC came out into the open. I started to worry about my health issues to such a level that I swear I made myself more symptomatic. It was very much a mind-body thing.
I wanted to avoid a surgery and started a treatment program with a naturopathic doc. that would work with non-prescription treatment and dietary changes and other things. She kept saying that all my issues were "second chakra" and centered in the part of my body aligned with relationships, and darnit if we could not figure out what was wrong, because I kept saying "but my rel. with my XH is so wonderful." We figured it was work anxiety and hormonal changes.
Well I continued to have symptoms and pain and panic about the pain. It sort of took over my life. I became very anxious about it. I had one or two emergency room trips even. Just excruciating levels of pain in my abdomen. (admittedly I leaned too much on XH at this time and was extremely co-dependent and this is probably one reason he went with a much younger OW...he didn't want to deal with a wife who let an illness take over her life so much).
When XH left the first time, I lost a lot of weight as many people do, from depression, and I assumed that my loss of symptoms came from that. But the physical evidence of my health concerns is still there. You can see the abnormalities on an ultrasound. When he came back, he wasn't back all that long...but I did feel the pain in the abdomen from time to time and I just tried to ignore it.
When he left the second time, I kid you not, I walked out onto my deck as he drove away and said out loud, these problems are not going to bother me anymore.
It was like at that moment, I realized that whatever anxiety I was holding in me that related to him was all bound up in the place in my body where I knew there were abnormalities. And with him gone, that place relaxed. I have had little to no symptoms there ever since.
Where do I have pain now? In the shoulders and neck. This is because I now feel I "carry the weight" of everything he left behind myself. I maintain the house and our pets and property alone. It is taking me a long time to adjust and not see this as a source of stress but as a choice I made to keep much of the responsibilities I once shared with him. Still working on that. So that's where the anxiety is now for me.
But any time I start to get too linked to XH again, the anxiety returns to the "2nd chakra", the stomach and abdomen, to the place that represents symbolically your connection with a partner.
In other words, being linked to XH in any way when he is in this very dysfunctional MLC pattern literally makes me emotionally ill, because I involuntarily create mind-body illnesses when there is a major source of stress in my life. It took me years to see that my health concerns likely stemmed from my not acknowledging that he was keeping me from being my authentic self. Maybe I was keeping him from being HIS authentic self, although his behavior now still appears to be marked by hiding from himself. But it was this conflict of me not being who I am and happy with myself that was making me sick with anxiety which would create physical symptoms, and so if you are feeling a high level of anxiety now in your sitch, it's probably that the anxiety is trying to warn you that right now, your XH represents a real invasion to your authentic self.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
I know no one has posted to this thread in a while, but just wanted to say how much of Sydney's and Antonia's situations resonated with me. I am currently dealing with a depressed WAH (I have a thread under the Newcomers section). Like Antonia, I have long had anxiety that becomes so much worse in anticipation of seeing my H. Every time I am supposed to see him, I think "Maybe this is the time he drops the bomb and says he definitely wants a divorce." Trying to take care of myself, but all of this happened so suddenly it has been traumatizing.
