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In childhood, other people decided our comings and goings.

Coming into what is new or leaving the familiar evoke primitive fears.

We can learn ways to handle our panic about comings and goings.

In childhood, we fear losing approval if we go, and losing our sense of security if our parents go. In some families, you are looked upon as a traitor if you move far away once you are an adult.

I may fear losing approval if I go. I may fear not being approved when I arrive at the new place. I may fear that no one will be here when I come back.

I may fear losing approval if I go. I may fear not being approved when I arrive at the new place. I may fear that no one will be here when I come back.

In childhood, other people decided our comings and goings. We were just moved to a new address, or they moved out and left us. Comings and goings were thereby associated with powerlessness. Comings and goings were associated with top-down decisions, confusion, and scary abandonments, making it very understandable that this would always be an anxiety-producing part of life.

In full adulthood, you take leave of the safe nest your parents provide and become an individual rather than a replica of them. You face the danger of going. Their opinion can no longer be authoritative over your choices. These are our two adult tasks: to go and to be. The first task of maturity is to go, with all the challenge, fear, danger, and difficulty that may entail. Then we have to take a stand, whether or not we are approved for it. The need for approval is paradoxically cut from the same cloth as the fear of individuating.

What scares you in your own adult comings and goings? Consider the following three elements: First, you go out, leaving the familiar behind; second, you are on the journey, in the process of going, facing the unknown; third, you arrive somewhere.

These are all areas of distress, each of which, from the Roman perspective, would have required its own god. You first step over the threshold; then you are en route to the next threshold; then you are crossing the new threshold into a new world. Let’s look at each of the three elements.

Leaving home means separating and letting go. It means abandoning what is familiar, taking a risk, possibly even winding up in a state of isolation. Why is it scary to go? You are confronting the fear of standing out there alone. This is the fear of just being yourself without all the familiar things, people, and routines that kept you secure. I am choosing to be unprotected by my usual supports. That risk is in the very action of going. Likewise, I am leaving behind something important to my identity. I am known as a certain person, and there I will not be known as anybody and will have to establish my identity again. Here, my tricks and my charms work because I have polished them up and I have trained people to respond to them. There, I do not know if my tricks will work.

While I am on the journey, I am in a gap between where I was and where I am heading. I am just one of a hundred people on a train or street, and nobody knows me here. No special treatment or attention will be shown to me. My identity and my accomplishments make no difference. I am unprotected by any support system. I am on a journey that no one can take for me nor from which anyone can spare me.

Most people easily meet other people and become open with them while traveling. For instance, you might talk about your whole life with a stranger on a plane or train. You are more open than usual. This may be an attempt to diffuse your nervous energy, anxiety, neediness, isolation, and vulnerability. It may also be an attempt to establish an instant surrogate support system. These are all indicators of the fear that happens within this gap between one place and another. These fears are not based on information but on primitive dread, the human panic about going, because we social animals might die if we wind up alone.

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You can determine your distress level about arriving by asking yourself, “Do I demand that other people make a fuss over me when I arrive?” I am visiting my friends in another state for Christmas. Do I arrive needy and eager to see that they have made extensive preparations for my coming? Do I arrive with expensive gifts for everyone to be sure that they like me? Do I arrive making many complimentary remarks about them and their house? Do I arrive with anger because nothing there is to my liking? Do I arrive late? Do I arrive without bringing what I needed, so I have to depend on other people to supply me? Deciding to go home earlier than planned is another sign of the general fear of comings and goings that we may all experience to some extent. These may be indicators of something phobic about your arrival style. Our questions to ourselves can be our steps into healing.

David Richo: adapted from When Love Meets Fear (Paulist Press)

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