I want to help Debbie

Can a person be scared of their own emotions? Debbie is! Her emotions are so powerful they shake sometimes her to the very core of her being. Literally, the stronger her feelings become the more her voice breaks and her fingers tremble. She describes the feeling as loss of control over her mind. She becomes disoriented, believing that everything is rushing at her at exactly the same time. Her legs no longer hold her up; I’ve seen her fold to the ground and start to cry.

She says it is so overwhelming that there is nothing beyond that moment in time. She never remembers how she gets to the point where she feels so much. She never thinks about how she will feel when it has passed. She is so completely blinded by the intensity of what she is facing that she cannot see even that clearly. She described a fog that descends on her mind and makes it all feel heavy. When she spoke to me, I pictured an impenetrable force field that envelopes her entire being and refuses to let anyone in.

When she begins to gasp you can see that she is taking in air but her chest is too constricted to let enough of it through. She tries to hold on to her sanity but how can she when her brain is not getting enough oxygen? She’s dying a little inside with every passing moment. That might be best, she feels. At least she won’t have to go through this pain for much longer. She starts to hallucinate at some point, I think. Talking about how her emotions morph into her worst nightmare and she’s drowning in an ocean with no land in sight until she drifts into nothingness.

I sigh as she relates all this to me. She really is quite dramatic but unfortunately, the little darling believes it is normal. Why wouldn’t she? For her, anger is rage, love is obsession, annoyance is hatred, pain is agony, concern is anxiety and fear is EVERYTHING. She experiences all emotion in more than high definition and it scares her. To be honest it scares me too because there is always the possibility of being like her. At the same time, one would not want to swing to an extreme and feel nothing. Question now is: where is the balance? I want to help Debbie find it.