I have suffered abuse and trauma since young childhood including every type of abuse - the worst was the severe psychological abuse from my mother after her divorce from my father. She also refused to let me have any further contact with him.
Further trauma as a adult including rape in my early 20s, the loss of a baby at birth from an extremely rare syndrome not picked up until late into the pregnancy, financial catastrophe that led to bankruptcy and the insecurity of the renting merry go round, complete estrangement from birth family at age 40, 2 children being diagnosed with unrelated conditions in early teens - 1 neurodevelopmental, the other a life threatening chronic physical condition. This has led to a lot of fighting for services and massive stress/sleep deprivation. Also the loss of my career!
I'm not wanting a pity party, this is just explaining the background.
I have had several years of therapy and understand why I'm like this (CPTSD) but I just can't shake my conditioning to be constantly on alert that something terrible to going to happen, expect the worst, don't bother looking ahead, jumpy, constantly scanning for risk, etc. Despite this I consider myself quite an optimistic person and I really want to live rather than just surviving. I'm in my 50's now and pretty sick of it.
I think a pretty defining factor in my childhood was my mother strangling me when I was 12 years old until I almost lost consciousness. Luckily she was dragged off by my stepfather. I did wonder if they would have called an ambulance if my stepfather didn't come back when he did, or tried to cover it up. I lean towards the latter. This makes me realise how unsafe I felt in my own home which I had no escape from and the fear I had of my mother.
I think that together with the other abuse and trauma has trained my brain to be this way.
For e.g - adult child is abroad on a lovely holiday. I keep expecting a call saying something terrible has happened.
If something is coming up that I'm looking forward to - I will tell myself not to get excited because something is going to happen to ruin it/it won't go ahead.
I don't want to pay out thousands more for therapy so if anyone else has successfully overcome something like this, it would be great to hear!