As Within, So Without

We are starting a volunteer effort at work in which my business partner and I provide gentle massage to those receiving chemotherapy infusions in the infusion unit downstairs and in the Phase I clinic upstairs (where new chemo drugs get administered to humans for the very first time ever).

This is my business partner's dream that she's been working on for 12 years. It is not my dream. I'm scared to death about it for no apparent reason, and I've been trying to figure out whence comes my anxiety and fear and overweaning terror.

In an email today I received my weekly note from a cool therapist who nailed it:

Such mirroring is one of the sacred, and practical, functions ofrelationship. If we want to know how we truly feel about ourselves,we simply need to observe the quality of relationship we are attracting into our lives. It will give us an accurate read every time.

As I read this I turned it around a bit and then it finally hit me:  I'm so afraid of doing this because this is something I don't do, can't do for myself:   In so many ways I don't step up to support myself, really nurture myself. I have some sort of deep aversion, deep fear of taking care of myself (because then that might mean I'm truly alone, truly "on my own" now?  fear of not being loved and/or taken care of by a loved one?  is this my own fear of abandonment at work here?).

So, unable to rise to the cause of taking care of me, how can I possibly think of doing these unthinkable things for anyone else?

It's a relief to begin to know what this is.  And in the knowing , begin to unravel it.

Update:  I just saw my first patients while they were receiving chemo infusion, and everything was totally fine.