Hello again. How are you doing today? Hope you have managed to stay feeling reasonably in control .

I can't say I have the same tendencies that involve energy or motion - my reactions to threatening or invalidating or paranoia-inducing situations such as you're describing with the second employer, would be to think think think - my prime, in fact my only, coping method, is to endlessly think about something, in and out up and down round and round desperately trying to understand make sense and change it... sometimes it helps.

As I said in above post it was quite striking how much your description of the impulsive run-away energy matched what I'd just been reading about (the books are called Waking the Tiger and In An Unspoken Voice if you're interested to browse them.) Does that make any sense to you?

How curious that you make a distinction between abandonment/invalidation and rejection - I guess I experience all three in exactly the same way and so don't see any difference. What I do relate to though is an explosive angry response to being misunderstood (or invalidated, or put down or negated or dismissed or made to feel powerless and worthless and unimportant...) In fact I had been thinking about posting about that in a separate thread and might do that yet.

Being seen is altogether different and it's that which sparks my paranoia - it's intolerable and because it's inside my head I know there is nowhere to hide, it's like being exposed and naked to the whole universe, everyone's eyes inside my head - so I can relate to the frantic element of your response. If I'm feeling negatively seen, I do try and get away though, it's a horrific feeling and I'm sorry you experienced that yesterday .

Just had a thought about the being seen aspect, maybe it's in part a shame response, do you think? I'm not too savvy when it comes to feelings but I suspect shame plays a big part in AvPD.

I really hope you're ok now, sending you lots of support and big hugs (((((( OrangeMoira ))))))))

Torn