SA-It Still Has a Tight Grip On Me

 

My discomfort with using the phone, I’ve noticed, has gotten worse. I don’t like to call strangers, or answer to strangers, or make appointments. If we didn’t have caller id, I doubt I would ever bother picking up the phone.

 

I feel as though my family thinks I am useless in a way, because I don’t have a social life, and because I still have not made any suggestions that would indicate I am even interested anymore in having or making friends.

 

I am disappointed with myself for not even trying to take the risks I know I should’ve taken in the past, and should take in the future. I constantly doubt my ability to do new things, even if I were to be taught how to do something.

 

It’s become a fact in my mind that I am very good at embarrassing myself, and even better at saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time, the wrong way.

 

To better explain how everything looks from my point of view, it’s as if I’m at the bottom of everything, and I am unable or unmotivated to balance myself and get anywhere in life. The future doesn’t feel as if it will be hopeless; its more of a fact now that I don’t think about altering, it simply is hopeless.

 

Things I’ll tell my therapist tomorrow……

I Think I’ve Figured It Out.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: that’s what I’ve been going through for the last nine or ten months, and last night something just clicked for me. So I wrote it out in my journal and I have a summary of it here….

Isn’t it crazy the way we justify what we do and think? Like fear. We rationalize our fears and try to bring them down to earth so that they make more sense, leading to justification. For example, my emotional response to social situations is anxiety. I rationalize my fear and anxiety by saying I am just not a people person, or that I don’t want or need to be around others. Or I get angry at those people and situations that affect the anxiety in an attempt to shift my failure from being 100% mine, to becoming everyone else’s fault (at least partially). After making such rationalizations, I then feel justified in avoiding social situations. So in other words, my avoidant behavior has been justified by the way I’ve rationalized my fear and anxiety. How do I change that?

 

Instead of insisting that people are scrutinizing everything I do, in order to diminish my anxiety I should rationalize that they are not worried about me and what I am doing. But in my attempts at diminishing my anxiety, in a way I seem to diminish my self worth also. Like, I’ll say others aren’t worried about me and I am the last thing on their minds, then I take that further and say to myself that I am unimportant and simply in everyone else’s way, diminishing my self worth.

 

So maybe the first thing I should rationalize with is by reminding myself that I am a stranger to others just as they are strangers to me. I don’t judge and scrutinize every little thing I see strangers do, so why would they do that to me? But I still feel self conscious about my very presence in social situations. As if I am wrong, even thought I am quiet and bother no one and disappear into the background. That will take longer to completely manage.   

I can’t control what my presence evokes in the minds of strangers. I know they don’t know me. I know I can’t change for everyone, and I must remember that they certainly won’t change for me.  

 

So does any of that make much sense? I know what I should be doing in order to manage my social anxiety. I must change my thought pattern. I’ve got to take more risks and practice this approach I’ve written about. I can’t run and avoid every situation that sets off anxiety for me. And I am tired of doing that. I accomplish nothing but short term relief from that anxiety, and long term isolation and depressive moods. I am just tired of it.