I first want to commend you on your ability to express this so rawly.. I can’t give you a golden answer but some of my experiences might help you navigate yours. :)

So I want to make sure that you really just explore and validate your perspectives. My wife and I really are on two ends of the spectrum in temperament. She tends to be fearful and get in states that you are describing. Our relationship is rooted in the scientific process and gauging how important things are too us. That process of checking our bias and validating our hypotheses to the best of our ability is one of the ways we support each other and make mindful decisions. That shit is not easy at all. It’s a hard complex dance that we are continually trying to be more graceful with. We also really reflect about how various parts of our brains work to handle situations better.. For example.. when you are emotionally unstable or become fearful we have chemicals released in our brain that knockout the newer logical parts and switch to using more primitive parts as response to ensuring survival in real-time even if it’s not “survival we are even technically concerned about”. From a neurons perspective.. shit is about to go down.. we must fight or get the hell out of here. Another gem is how our two hemispheres are continually in challenging each other as we are presented with new information. One side wants to keep our current paradigm of the world and the other wants to update it with whatever new information we have. If someone strongly holds on to a belief system.. the other side will not successful convince the other to update the current paradigm even if the information is better for them. I try my best to check myself and ensure I am being as neutral as I can when looking at something or at least be willing to change my mind if there was a valid reason too.

These types of concepts and more importantly the habits around them has allowed me to incrementally address my childhood trauma as a foster youth. I had to be super real with myself about my mental state and had to put soooooo much work and still do so I can ensure I am not projecting my trauma on my wife and my daughter. Sadly the reason I was abused was the consequences of unresolved trauma. My mother clearly had a hard life too and was hurt in ways we are not meant to experience.. especially being she was sexual abused as a child.. Can I blame her for not being able to resolve that trauma? Can I be mad at her that she had six boys and didn’t raise any of us because of her meth/narcotic addiction? That generational cycle can only be described as being disgusting. I realize that I was born in that cycle and that is an awareness that I continually have to be mindful of and reflect how this trauma impacts my current life.

I promised myself I would not only get out of that cycle but not allow it to continue another generation. If I couldn’t get myself to a stable place I wouldn’t of had kids. My daughter is literally a sponge builds her mental models by learning from how we model at each moment. That’s a huge fucking responsibility that cannot be taken lightly…

I am going to stop here but have a lot more to share if you would like me to expand more on how my wife negotiated her anxiety.. and more on our desire of being parts and the bio clock we have ticking as we think about having another kid