I'm okay, a lot better today than yesterday. Thank you again for your support, it really does help.
At the moment I'm trying to exercise every day, except yesterday I forgot to. So I end up with an overabundance of energy that turns into anxiety, I guess.
Some online sources say I should try to understand my situation as thoroughly as possible, some say I shouldn't over-analyse it; it's hard to know what to do. But I think I may have some idea now of where this sudden phobia is coming from. Back in June I was extremely stressed out about coronavirus, as are we all - but being in a regional town, where thankfully there has been very little of the disease, it was an abstract and distant fear. When I had that panic attack about the asteroid, I think my brain fixated on that as the source for all the diffuse fear I've been feeling for months. And as the coronavirus problem gets worse (I'm in Victoria), but still remains geographically distant from me, my brain is projecting that anxiety onto what it thinks is the real threat.
I'm interested now in inherited trauma. My family has a huge amount of inherited trauma in general, but there's one oddly specific thing. When my dad was a child, he was almost killed when he witnessed an airplane accident. This trauma developed into a fear of the sky, and he said that throughout his childhood he was especially terrified of the night sky. It could be that the chronic stress I've been under was triggered by the asteroid-related panic attack to "wake up" that hereditary fear. It's still a very new thing in psychology, so who knows?
A miracle has happened: I have found a therapist, and my first appointment is on Monday (via Zoom). The only catch is that they're a psychoanalyst. Like, old-school Freudian couch psychoanalysis. So if I can analyse my way out of this or whether it just makes me worse, I'm going to find out very soon!
