Living With Anxiety

So ever since I found out about the truth of Social Anxiety Disorder and that it was ruining my life I have been doing the absolute best I can to overcome it. It was a year from last January, and I searched on Google for it and found my answer, brought the information to my therapist and he agreed and diagnosed me.

I’ve learned alot from the past, the way I am and that I am permanently and may not be able to recover to my fullest potential, to be as outgoing as I was before.. to enjoy life in that exact fashion. It’s as simple as, I can only reduce my anxiety using techniques in self help books and through exposure and building confidence within the boundaries of common sense.

Work is one of the biggest players in this practice of recovery. It’s what brought me to this point, financially yes.. but mentally aswell. I am on Fluoxotine (Prozac) right now and I feel it is actually working, and it does not make me sleepy or drowsy. It seems to help pretty well, and I feel like that it’s something that will help with my depression I’ve been holding back ever since I started my recovery.

I now officially find it very differcult to even have the time to isolate myself, I’m always out somewhere, usually because of work.. or hanging with random friends.

The wedding for my parents is now officially over… no more anxiety for that. Even better, I feel as if I’ve improved on my anticiplatory anxiety because I remember very well before in my most severe anxious days I would dread any event coming up and would set myself up for failure. I actually enjoyed the wedding and wish it could happen again sometime maybe. But other events coming up will make up for that.

The only problem is eye contact in most cases, I have to figure this one out. It’s 10 times better than it was when I couldnt even look at someone for more than 2 seconds.

So right now I’m simply trying to pay off my car, working alot.. doing my recovery.. possibly going back to school in September if I can find a way to get my school work done on a routine and not totally at my own pace, which is the only way I see myself getting better.

Even though when he said “You might want to change” it reflects back to when someone has said something to you to try to give you advice, but meanwhile I didn’t perceive it that way when he said it, as far as I’m concerned from the million times I’ve watched this video I’ve thought about it, and I’ve asked myself “do I want to change?” well “why wouldn’t we?” is the question that answered that question to me, but yeah it’s always entired up to us to change.

It’s like asking yourself or your good and bad self which side to take. If you chose the opposite of the obvious choice you should take it’s like dealing with the devil, that’s the choice of your bad self. You won’t get anywhere in life, and you will not be happy, happiness is a virtue, so in the end the obvious answer to the question (not the question asked in this video but to why this video was made) the answer is, it’s because this is a much more calm and rational way of thinking, giving yourself a choice is better than having no choice BUT to overcome. When you change the way you think you can be either more relaxed or in pain. Well this is a more relaxing way of thinking about overcoming Social Anxiety. Thanks for this video socialanxietyvideo.

This is not an educated post, it is written in my words off the top of my head of why moving away will not work entirely. From what I’ve heard, that includes people from the SocialAnxietyForum, even a Psychologist himself tried to move somewhere else, to see if it would improve their social anxiety. Every attempt from everyone that’s said they’ve tried it, apparently failed. Why is this? because moving away will not do anything in my knowledge to improve anything in your social anxiety, in fact it would just make it worse.

My own goal is to move away, but my highest priority before that happens is to overcome this to the point that it’s significantly changed in a positive way so I can be a little more socially confident. And when I move I must have some kind of Diploma, Certification, for a job, in fact I want a job promised to me before I make the move to where ever. I am not transfering with a retail store, fuck that.

I do plan to come  back to visit, but starting a new life is overrall the best goal. I also make sure I tell myself everytime I think about this that I am not doing it to prove myself to anyone I know or to prove myself to myself. My current progress is pretty good in terms to overcoming Social Anxiety.

This is a big one. We’re all being treated like retards when we are around people that are either friends, family or strangers.. co-workers etc. They perceive us a certain way and they treat us in that way that they perceive us. It’s unfair, and unfortunetly you can get somewhat used to it. There are alot of “I’m always right, your always wrong” kind of people. The only thing that we can do (I think) is to act like ourselves if we can, and hope for the best. Move in a positive direction slowly, not fast or you’ll fall back or tire yourself out. Do it for yourself, not to prove yourself to yourself or to anyone else, that’s important and it’s the truth. In the end look at it that way, a revengeful way.

It’s an ongoing struggle, and remember it’s just a life devastating anxiety disorder that made you this way, but your going to be that way for awhile, but only for so long as long as you slowly move in a positive direction and focus on recovery. If you resist recovery, then you will persist with Social Anxiety.

This video was a big inspiration to me. But you know how this guy got to where he was? does it look like he has Social Anxiety?. He’s a public speaker for frick sakes, he is empowered by his own outgoingness and energetic mind, if you know what I mean. I don’t want to sound like I’m critisizing him, but honestly it’s not as easy as it looks for someone whos GOING through an anxiety disorder, depression, stress and so on to just decide “if I can’t do a million things then maybe, I can do 999,999 things”. All I can say is that it takes at least the will to get better, starting off with beginning to accept your current condition temporarily and along with the will to improve.

Perfectionism places a role in your dreams, that are versus reality in overcoming Social Anxiety step by step. When you want to go back to being the normal you, with lots of friends and possibly a girl or boyfriend, and maybe even a job.. to enjoy life once again and live it to the fullest… it’s just too much, and most people give up. In the 3 years that I’ve been working that I would say was the biggest step into recovery, I am now used to being around people at work. The problem still persists of my old ways.

I have a bigger social circle than before, maybe some formal friends, which I suppose is all I can ask for right now. Two jobs now, but the second job is only an extra 4-8 hours per week. I wanted to be all perfect back in the days of my severe social anxiety.

I’ve learned so far that, I have to aim a little lower from where my standards are right now, maybe alot lower, and if successful then go higher if I can. Taking things slowly is the only way too, or we fall back down again. I wanted to go to college and all that stuff, but the work itself and the endurance that it takes, it’s all just reality. Learning from my mistakes is how I’ve learned all this. This won’t turn out the way you want them too unless you rationally and calmly, slowly make it happen, within the boundaries of common sense, don’t think about everything as a whole to keep yourself going, you will only end up at square one more than twice like I did with dropping out of school many times.

I can’t remain stuck living with my parents any more, so I must make a move, but slowly.

The only reason I thought of making this post is because I know myself I used to drink mochas or just coffee with lots of sugar just to get a sugar high, and lots of caffeine to boost my confidence. Here is an interesting quote from a blog:

Some sufferers of social anxiety disorder self medicate, trying to numb themselves to their fear with alcohol, or using stimulants like cocaine or amphetamines to “jolt them over the top” and boost confidence. Even large doses of caffeine can be seen as an attempt at self-medication.

Today, I don’t consume as much Alcohol, Caffeine, and I do not consume any other kind of drug that is used to self medicate Social Anxiety Disorder. You can’t totally hide from the minor ones like sugar and caffeine… but you can lower it. More sleep also helps to keep your anxiety level down. I guess it’s all about adjusting your lifestyle to an anxiety disorder. Those days of not worrying about anything are now GONE.

For as long as you decide and make the decision to face a social situation, if you think your ready, not to be included with the consumption of Alcohol or any other kind of drug, the more progress you will make, to conquer that persistance of the anxiety cycle.

I drink on the ocasion, to be honest, but I only do it when I know it’s time to take a break from getting better I guess you can say. Theres alot of cases where guys or girls that drink and go to the bar find a partner, and the next day or week the date happens that person that had S.A. that drank to reduce their anxiety symptoms is back to their old self. So their new hot date might be scratching their heads a bit. Well I think that’s something that happens and it either works out great or could possibly turn out bad for the most part, it’s one way of getting hooked up with someone I guess, but the permanent sollution is to overcome and move up from there, never easier said than done. The same thing happened to me with a girl at a bar, and S.A. was bad enough to hold her back from me, so I did not succeed.

So I write this after thinking of what my situation is like and that’s mainly why this title was given. One thing we sometimes don’t notice is when time has flown by so fast that we didn’t even notice. So it was around 2003 that I was forced to drop out… and I’ve mentioned this numerous times in my posts, I slept in for two weeks and got a call from the principal. That two weeks changed my life completely. It’s what put me down in the dungeon.

I keep asking myself even to this day with therapy already done on myself mentally. Why did I have to go from outgoing to completely quiet, or also known as… painfully shy?. How can someone be afraid of people?, that is something completely unorthadox. Why do people live their lives with only one personality to worry about, when I have to suffer with battling a whole new venture as completely changing. Going from everything to nothing, losing all my friends, the chance to graduate at the same time as my peers but potentially blocked by my severe fear of social situations, that has impaired my ability to do anything, which is the requirement to do anything in the world today. All the people I knew before are mostly people I do not talk to anymore, I have had to start over, meanwhile labeled as “different” or of course “the quiet one”. It really isn’t fair. Thankfully though, well sort of thankfully others go through the same thing!, which has helped to provide resources to overcome it.

If this were the 1970′s we’d pretty much be shit out of luck to find therapy for treatment, nothing written in books, doctors that know nothing, Google does not exist, Starbucks is not on every corner, and The Simpsons wasn’t airing then.

So it’s been ever since 2003 that I haven’t went back to a school to permanently finish my grade 12. All because of anxiety, yes I blame anxiety, it is the culprit. Overcoming S.A. is a paradox, and it remains to be the cause of what has held me to remain caught in the storm. I continue to learn from my mistakes though, I see my world differently thanks to reading about the symptoms and using techniques to cope with this hell.

Alot more has been happening ever since I first discovered I had S.A. using the internet a year ago from last January. I’ve identified almost every last symptom that I have and small things I’ve overcome and other things I have yet to work on. But I’ve been making action plans alot, I’ve moved out for 2-3 months to kind of have some time to myself, it was a good learning experience despite the costs. I no longer regret my perfectionist ways either.. what’s the point, tiring yourself out? or enjoing life has it comes.

What’s driven me to make action plans is when I stop and think rationally, could I do this differently?, could I do something about this?, how can I fix this?, if I do this now will it make a difference?. Rational thinking builds upon itself, improvement after improvement. Success builds upon success, most often never upon failure. Then again what do you call “trial and error”?, well sometimes failure can be a success, to be improved on.

Slowly but surely my goals in life will be achieved for as long as I have the will to make that happen.

That is my short summary of how I got caught in the storm, and the struggle within lives on to make it to clear skies.