A Mini Breakthrough

Yesterday while visiting with the psychologist, we came to an interesting fork in the road. As we were talking about what point in my life I first remember being anxious he asked what events took place at that time in my life. I quickly replied “that was when my parents divorced”, I was 6 years old. He asked me how I felt about the divorce and my biological father and I told him “I have no feelings about it whatsoever”.

Although he expressed concern that I didn’t have any feelings about my biological father or the divorce itself he begin to drill into how I would have reacted as a child of 6. As I’ve thought about it, at the time I felt like I needed to be the “man of the house”, it was my responsibility to hold things together. This no doubt would have been scary to such a young boy. Also a few years later my sister became very ill and was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, this event introduced me at an early age to the frailty of life.

I now had two missions in life: don’t screw up (see also: don’t be like my biological father) and don’t die (see also: if I die, I’ll abandon my family like my biological father abandoned me). Does it make sense to draw the conclusion that the don’t screw up mentality lead to becoming an overly anxious child with a “I can’t do that” mentality? Would it be logical to take it a step further and say that that anxious child developed health anxiety as a result of being in an anxious state, bearing the weight of his family on his shoulders, and seeing his sister become ill?