Anxiety

I get lonely but it's my own fault. I run away from people. I don't understand why. I just can't cope with people so often.  Talking to people involves either faking being someone or actually genuinely being myself, and both are exhausting.  There are people I love dearly and I know I'm letting them down, I'm not there for them, I don't make the effort to see them as much as I should.  I'm fucking amazed some people are still my friends, I watch them make efforts over and over to see me and reach out to me and I don't know why because I still flake on them all the time.  I can't even cope with fucking fchat conversations half the time.  I will be lonely as fuck but someone messages me and I panic at the thought of having to try and talk to them.  I encourage friendships with people who cover my half of the conversation for me, or who are okay with silences.  I hide when people knock on my door if I'm not expecting someone, or try to peek without them seeing me so I know who they are.

A friend came round the other day - I'd arranged it in optimism, like I so often do - I really like her, I want to know her better, but I've somehow always ended up failing at spending time with her.  So I arranged it, I said come round, we'll have hot chocolate, I'll get the whipped cream and marshmallows you bring the milk, I've already got powder.  And then I forgot about it and she knocked at the door and I just panicked so badly.  I wasn't prepared.  I know damn well if I'd remembered earlier I would have cancelled on her, made up some excuse or other.  I considered pretending I wasn't home, but she opened the door so I had to come to the door, and she came in and sat down and I was just panicking so fucking hard at the prospect of having to interact with her for a socially acceptable amount of time. I was screaming inside my head JUST GET THE FUCK OUT I just wanted her gone. I felt trapped in headlights, y'know?  I sat there and tried to wait it out, when really I just wanted to get rid of her, or failing that just leave myself. Just up and walk out and not come back 'til she was gone.  I hate situations I can't leave. I managed to get through it, she was good at talking and we finally managed to hit on something I could talk about.  She didn't try to stick with the 'so what are you doing nowadays?' thing that so many people ask and I have no fucking clue how to answer.  'oh I'm a cripple now' apparently doesn't cut it if you don't have another conversational topic lined up to move to.  'I like to internet' is also insufficient.

I find myself sitting there in social situations trying to remember how to do conversations.  There are times when it's so natural I don't have to think about it, times when there seem to be so many things to talk about that the topics spill over one another and you can never say all the things you want before ending up somewhere else and the words just flow over one another, but they seem so infrequent nowadays.  Most of the time I have serious trouble trying to figure out how to talk to people and what the fuck to say and I watch other people's conversations trying to analyse them to figure out how I could do it.

I get upset at not having more help with my problems, but if I would just go to the places I've been recommended and ask maybe I would have that help but I just can't make myself do it. I have trouble explaining it to people. I just CAN'T DO IT.  I try to face the idea and I just slide off it and into something else.  I have to be forced into these things and sometimes I can cope with it and sometimes I can't.

My friend contacted me over facebook chat the other day and said her mum did disability advocacy stuff and had offered to help with my benefits stuff if I wanted and I said great thanks that's awesome maybe give me her email address and I'll get in touch (knowing full well I would never be able to manage that just no can't do it nonono), and luckily her mum is kind of insistent and she took over my friend's chat and just started telling me things and asking me stuff and I answered - again with the massive amounts of panic and wanting to end the conversation and run away - I felt really trapped - but I tried to stick with it, and it ended up being really useful, and I asked her some stuff I've needed advice on, and I was really glad it had happened.

Someone used a phrase recently, to sit with your discomfort, to just acknowledge it and feel it and try to stick with whatever you're doing, wherever you're at, through that discomfort, that anxiety or panic or whatever.  They were using it in a non-clinical sense, but it stuck with me, and I've been trying to do that, when I can, trying to stay where I am and not bolt.  I can't always do it, and it only really works in situations that I've been dropped into and then panic, I can't seem to get to the actually stepping up to do the things I'm scared of part.  At least not yet.

I'm starting to wonder whether my problems lie at least as much with anxiety in some form, socially avoidant disorder or something similar, as with the depression/bipolar, but I'm really not sure.  I could really do with some professional help figuring this out. I mean, socially avoidant... I really don't know. Most people would say that's not me at all, I think. But then I know socially confident me is usually hypomanic or drunk me.  And hell, I'm still not even sure whether to classify half of this as anxiety or not. 

I went to the doctor a few years ago when I was really stressed and I'd started having trouble with pain/discomfort/tight feeling in my chest that would last for hours at a time.  He told me I was having panic attacks.  Mind you, he also told me this was 'perfectly normal'.

Most people seem to only consider it a panic attack if it's some completely overwhelming thing that you can't function through, whereas with mine people don't tend to even know it's happening, I don't let it show.  Sometimes I'll have to escape to be on my own, and it can *feel* incredibly overwhelming and horrible, and I often feel like it must be terribly obvious, but other people really don't seem to notice.

Sometimes it's just this sharp pain in my chest, like a breadknife slipped between two ribs, and it'll gradually get worse, my chest will get tighter and tighter, and I'll feel more and more panicky.  I can have just the pain on its own without a huge degree of panic for hours at a time.  The panicky parts tend to be shorter.

Other times I'll have freakouts that I sometimes refer to as panic attacks, where I feel absolutely overwhelmed with BAD and CAN'T COPE and curl up in a ball and need to be held if someone's there.  I don't usually have the stabby chest pain with that, although I sometimes do, and I usually get the very tight chest with them.

But I don't know whether to call the social stuff anxiety or panic attacks or anything though, they're much lower level, I don't tend to get stabby chest pains or anything, I just feel panicked and trapped.  I mostly deal with it by avoiding it and then I'll be okay.  I never know if that counts as anxiety, proper clinical anxiety, or panic or whatever, when it's just, well, anxiety and panic. No physical symptoms. I just CAN'T DO IT. Brain says no.  (Sometimes there's the tight chest and palpitations and stuff, but not always. I tend to stop at the rising panic, it's just too much and I have to make it stop.)

I feel like I'm appropriating terms that don't really belong to me.  I don't know.  At the same time it's these avoidant behaviours that are causing me a lot of trouble.  It's not *just* social stuff though.  I'll get it with things filling out forms, or cleaning the kitchen, or leaving the house.  Sometimes I just can't do things I need to do.

And then I get mad at myself because I must just be lazy.  And I hate myself because everything that's wrong is my fault, it's because I'm lazy and procrastinate and don't do things.  But then I figure if this is just laziness, if this is just my fault, why don't I just stop? Why *can't* I just stop? I want to.  I want to do the things I need to do.  I want to get all those forms filled out.  But I think about it, I try to do it and I just. I can't. Brain just slides away, can't face it.

When I'm not depressed a lot of this gets easier. Which I try to remember, and hold onto as proof that I'm not just lazy.  A lot of the social anxiety stuff sticks around though, the example I gave of my friend that came to visit was slap bang right in the middle of my relatively stable period recently.  But the being able to fill out forms and clean things and so on gets a lot easier.

I really need to talk to someone about this and get some help.  It's been about 9 months I think since my psych assessment and referral for counselling.  I feel like 6 sessions of problem-focussed CBT is really not going to fix all my problems somehow, but it would be a fucking start.  Although despite desperately wanting some help I'm terrified that when it comes around I won't be able to make myself go to the damn appointments.  I have enough trouble making myself go to my regular GP appointments.