Drained- a bit low at the moment

 

    Pressure. I have to finish classes strong, look for a job or volunteer, decide if I will officially go off my medication or actually remain at the high dosage I started with (I think I need it more than ever at present….), all of this while watching my mother get ready to take a week long trip to visit my aunt in Atlanta.

 

I feel pathetic. My therapist gave me a questionnaire about self confidence and I think he’ll be disappointed to see how low it really is with me. You know, I’m seriously feeling pressure to do something about this sorry status I have. It’s as if I have to either get something moving, or just kill myself and get out of everyone’s way, and no longer be the disappointment they have to wonder about and eventually lose faith in completely.

 

I think of these things because I’ve gotten tired of being around with no purpose, and no drive to create one. I say so frequently now that it’s no one’s responsibility to keep me alive, and I will say now that I am tired of having that responsibility; I don’t want it either, just like no one else does.

 

 

I call this drawing “Drained”, trying to spark some creative thinking, that’s all this drawing is really about…..

 

 

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.

Easy to break

I’m pretty certain that I am afraid to get stressed out now. I mean seriously stressed out; like how it was back in high school, crying before I left every morning, migraines. I don’t want to go through that again. So I avoid over doing the homework and study time now, but it results in losing motivation you know? If the pressure is not constant, everything I must do is half hearted and feels even more like a waste of time and effort. The prize doesn’t seem worth it.

On the other hand I break more easily now under stress, and now that I’ve seen how far I can fall, I’m concerned that any pressure that goes further than my limits will erase the mental strength I am still trying to build up. I’m basically saying I am fragile when facing stress in my life now. Maybe I’m just too sensitive to everything….I remember how someone criticizing me as a kid could cause me to melt into tears. You know, the kind of crying that you’ve got no kind of control over….and the worst part is I wasn’t above crying in front of other people. They never said a damn thing to me anyway, why should I have cared about them seeing me as a weak child? It’s what I was…lol.

I’ve been thinking. Maybe I should accept that I am just an unhappy person. A person with a melancholic temperament….or someone who knows deep down that sadness is what I really thrive on. Emotion is what I thrive on, and I say sadness because it affects what I do more than any other emotion. It’s rarely happiness; in fact, I don’t know the typical kind of happiness that is all smiles. Joy and excitement and things like that are rare. I’m by myself so often, and all I have are past memories, embarrassments and negativity to dwell on. It’s just a part of me now I guess. These pills only rob me of emotion. I’m numb, tired, lazy, and actually feel worse the more I take them. Zoloft is approved to treat social anxiety, but in my opinion, it can only help out with the physical responses to anxiety. And guess what: I have those symptoms still in social situations. In the beginning it was working. I didn’t tremble or sweat or have heart palpitations so badly, now, it’s all returned. That’s why they always recommend therapy for SA because it’s a behavioral thing that needs to be worked on. Medication can help with the symptoms and extra complications like depression that stems from the SA, but there needs to be practice when dealing with the thoughts and reactions associated with it.

Sure, I could be causing these issues for myself from lowering the dosage a bit, but even before that, the effects were waning pretty noticeably. I’ve already written enough about all of this haven’t I….Well, I’ll end with some quotes:

“We have no right to ask when a sorrow comes, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way.” —-

“Home, nowadays, is a place where part of the family waits till the rest of the family brings the car back” -Earl Wilson

“Suffering is the price of being alive, and it is music and singing and art that has helped me live through some of the most difficult things that have happened to me” Judy Collins

These are random quotes, but ones I can relate to.