I do lot’s of self-destructive things. I clam up. I avoid. I try to pretend it won’t happen. At the last minute, I frantically do everything I should have been doing way back when.
When it’s over, it rarely seems to be as bad as I thought it was gong to be. It was the things I didn’t see coming that totally sandbagged me. Like when the woman who was my first lover ditched me at graduation. Wow! Didn’t see that one coming! Took me five years to really get over the feelings of loss. Thirty years later, and I still think about it.