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EP 0093 – Dating with Trauma: The Anxious Attacher’s Endless Chase (Subscription)

It’s Not You – It’s Your Buried Emotional Child Screaming for Attention

You’ve spent decades running from the knot in your gut, the tightness in your chest, the wave of dread that hits when things get quiet. You call it anxiety, overwhelm, or just “being busy,” but the hard truth is simpler and more brutal: you’re terrified of feeling what’s already inside you, and every distraction is just another way to stay one step ahead of your own body.

The Real Terror Lives in Your Body
The panic, the racing heart, the sick feeling that makes you want to crawl out of your skin—none of it is about what’s happening out there. It’s about what’s happening inside. You’ve trained yourself to outrun those sensations with phones, booze, work, sex, endless planning, anything to keep from dropping into the discomfort. Socializing becomes impossible because your nervous system screams danger the second connection feels possible. You rehearse every conversation, map every exit, exhaust yourself before you even leave the house. Connection is what you crave most and fear most—because trauma taught you that closeness equals threat.

Avoidance Shrinks Your Life to Nothing
The longer you dodge the feelings, the smaller your world gets. You stop going out, stop risking, stop living. Hypervigilance takes over: you watch yourself from the outside, policing every word, every facial expression, terrified of saying the wrong thing or getting the wrong look. Shame floods in afterward and you ruminate for days. Addictions promise relief—numbing the body, quieting the mind—but they always collapse. The relief fades, the cost rises, and the feelings you buried only grow louder and scarier. Age makes it worse: metabolism slows, distractions thin out, empty space arrives, and the stored energy finally demands to be felt.

Sitting With It Is the Only Door Out
Healing starts when you stop thinking your way around the pain and start feeling your way through it. Lie down, kill the distractions, close your eyes, and locate the discomfort—usually the belly at first. Your mind will bolt into rumination to escape; gently bring attention back to the body and breathe into the sensation. This is exposure work. Start with one minute, three minutes, five. Build tolerance the way you build strength at the gym—never jump to the heaviest weight. The goal isn’t to erase the feelings; it’s to get comfortable enough that you can function when they arise. Over time the sensations move, shift, and eventually release. Grief, anger, sadness—they all need to come out. That’s how the poison leaves.

Three Important Takeaways

• Running from uncomfortable feelings in your body doesn’t make them disappear—it makes your world smaller, your addictions stronger, and your self-hate deeper.
• The mind’s favorite escape is thought; real relief only comes when you stop analyzing and start feeling the sensations directly in the body.
• You cannot heal what you refuse to feel—sitting with the pain, even for a few minutes a day, is the only path that leads to freedom, regulation, and actual connection.

Conclusion
Stop waiting for the perfect moment, the right therapist, or the magic fix that never arrives. You are the adult now, and that terrified child inside still needs you to show up. Schedule the time to feel bad. Start stupidly small. Notice when you escape into thought and come back to the body. It will hurt. It will feel endless at first. There are no shortcuts and no one else can do it for you. But every minute you stay with the discomfort is a minute you reclaim from fear. Keep going. The space that opens on the other side—freedom, presence, the ability to live instead of just survive—is worth every second of the hell it takes to get there. You’ve avoided long enough. It’s time to feel your way home.