Anxiety is caused when we have a fear and we start projecting that something will happen that will force us to deal with it in some way.  I have been having major anxiety about one issue in particular.   I have fear about seeing him.  I do not want to see him at all.  I especially do not want to see him with someone else.  My fear is that I will not be able to control my emotions that it will feel like an icy hand gripping my heart and I will burst into tears and he will say “See, I told you she was crazy.”  That is the fear I have and then I start thinking of places I might see him.  What if I am driving down East Avenue and I see him?  What if I am in Wegmans or another store and he is there?  Now the chances of it really happening are pretty slim.  I dated him for 2 years and I never once ran into him with his other gf except for the club and that was to be expected since we all went there.  I feel like I am constantly on high alert about this.  I get especially anxious in Henrietta in any kind of thrift store.  This used to be my favorite kind of shopping.  I cannot do it at all right now.  I pull in the parking lot and start having a panic attack.  There is however a greater chance I will run into him in the parking lot of my job because his gf works here…in the building next to me.  Yes, I told her about a job here and she now works right next to me.  I cannot even go to the place I used to eat at anymore or walk in certain areas for fear of running into her or him.  It sucks.  I don’t regret telling her about the job.  I do however want to get out of here as soon as I possibly can.  So what is at the root of this?  I think it goes way back to when I was a kid and I seemed to constantly have the issue of being rejected by playmates for someone better.  I never understood it.  It caused me to question everything about me and to hide who I really was because I felt since people did not like me I need to fix something.  This led to me having lifelong issues with rejection and anxiety about social situations.  So in my mind I imagine seeing him and then watching him laugh at me while he is having a wonderful life with someone else.  OK, that is just dumb.  He is the same man.  He has not changed overnight and he will do the same thing to any woman he is with.  I should feel sorry for them not jealous.  I would not want to be in anyone’s shoes who is in a relationship with him for that very reason.  I know the inside story on that deal.  It starts out great and then spirals into shit.  But our minds are funny things.  We always think that the next person will get all the good pieces of this person and “what was wrong with me?”  I have an answer to that question.  NOTHING.  I did nothing to deserve the treatment I got.  It was not even about me.  So I have to work at making friends with this debilitating fear that is affecting my life.  I have to reason with it and remind it that first of all the chances of running into him are slim and secondly it is never as bad as you think it is going to be.