[teejai]

Sometimes i can go from ok to mentally and physically drained in the way that an F1 car goes from 0 to 60.
The stupid thing is that more often than not there seems to be no discernible trigger just this overwhelming sense of anxiety and guilt that makes me feel mentally and physically exhausted.

I sometimes wonder whether such a sudden and immense feeling of anxiety and guilt may have it's manifestations in a long ago childhood experience .
Or perhaps i am being silly for thinking so. The incidence occurred when i was 9 and at boarding school. I was waiting with the other pupils for the headmaster to come in and take a class. Some boys like myself were waiting quietly for his arrival while others were being rumbustious as young boys can sometimes be.
Cue the appearance of the headmaster and as the door opened a hurried curtailing of noisy activities.
He singles me out to be approached and says in a stentorian manner 'What are you doing' to which i replied 'I am doing nothing' meaning i had been sitting quietly waiting for his arrival to which he shouts ar me in a disapproving voice 'you should be doing something' and tells me to wait outside the study to be given the cane.

I often wonder the sudden bouts of free floating anxiety and irrational guilt are to some degree a product of that long ago unnerving experience.

[Perna]

Yes, I'm sure there's even more incidents that we forget that can help cause the sudden anxiety too.

I use to get anxious eating ice cream cones so never bought them. My husband, however, loves ice cream cones so it was a bit disappointing to him that I never wanted to go to Baskin Robbins.

One evening we were in the Mall and he stopped and got an ice cream cone and I did too (I like ice cream all right). Well, I'm eating it and it's melting and I'm getting more and more anxious by the minute. I get a mental picture of my stepmother yelling at me, about age 5 or 6 for making a mess. I remember how jealous of my brother I was because he was a couple years older and could eat a cone without making a mess whereas I was too young to have that much control/mastery. But, of course, I was also too young to realize what the problem was and my stepmother didn't "think" about it enough to be patient. So, I was stuck with being "afraid" of ice cream cones until I understood and could reassure myself that I was an adult and could "control" the cone or that it didn't matter if I got "dirty" in the first place! I still get a tiny bit angry, especially in summer when outside when the ice cream is melting almost faster than I can lick it :-)