Swinging from extreme emotions

I am emotionally reactive now and all of last night because Jay has not responded to my text at 8pm last night, or to my phone call at 10pm after I got out of work.

It is now 9am and I feel livid and fearful.  Livid because I've been ignored and discarded. Fearful because I wonder if something has happened to him.

My pendulum swings in extremes: anger, fear, anger, fear, anxious anxious anxious.  There is no middle ground unless sadness is the middle ground.

10 minutes ago, I saw his name pop-up in green in google chat, meaning... he's alive!  And my fear quells and my anger goes up.  Seconds later, my anger goes down, and sadness enters the scene.  Is he choosing to ignore me then? Is he consciously deciding not to respond to me?  Cue self-doubt: Did I do something bad to change his feelings from liking me to not caring about me at all? Return to scene: anxiety.

This is how the cycle works.  It is a series of pendulum swings, cycling from one negative emotion to another, until exhaustion takes over me and I go to sleep.

(photo courtesy thanks to: life & science)

Being emotionally "reactive."

Have any of you heard the terms "reactive" to describe a person's emotions?
I use this word in my field of work and the best and most concise definition I can think of comes from Desert Alchemy -- and boy, does it it so aptly describe my experience.

emotional reactivity

1. involuntary and usually overly intense reaction to an external emotional stimulus, which often leads to feeling victimized by your emotions
2. an opportunity for repressed emotion to inform you of its existence

I am incredibly emotionally reactive in romantic relationships.

If I text you, and you don't text me back, I will flip-out.  My emotions will be out-of-control and feelings of hurt, helplessness, fear will erupt within me, even if it can't be seen by the human eye. Later, when he does respond, I will then burst into tears of relief, taking comfort in the fact that he's neither dead or gone missing, but that he's figuratively here and responding to me.  

That is the prime example of my reactivity and what I go through without fail with each partner.