anxiety, fear, and a good bit of self-loathing

can a blog be your best friend?

[hankbrichardson]

this isn't really doing what I hoped it would

so it would happen that writing down the things that freak me out and my worries and concerns and neuroses doesn't really help me feel better about it. it actually just makes me more aware of those things and causes me to spend more time thinking about them. which is great. maybe it would work within the framework of someone helping me deal with those problems, but without it I'm just getting worked up about them. so yeah. I don't think I'm going to do this anymore. also, I find myself self0censoring for fear that I'll tell someone about this. blah. 

[hankbrichardson]

office party

my work an office party tonight.

like any social gathering I get really anxious about these. I get worked up ahead of time and I get worked up at it. At really bad ones or when music from my high school days come on, I get downright miserable and sometimes have emotional flashbacks where I find myself reliving the awfulness of my youth where I got stomach (why does the word stomach not have an "e" at the end I'll never know. it seems like there should be one there) cramps and get diarrhea or vomit from nervousness.

I'd skip the bloody thing, but that won't stand. 

That said, I don't really know how to act naturally at a party. I, um, I understand how to talk to one person and have a conversation, but I've never been sure about how to mingle at a party. I have a few work friends, but I can't escape the feeling that they don't really like me. and I understand that I should try to talk to new people. I don't like doing it, but I know that it's something that's expected of one.

anyway. I get really anxious at these things. drinking helps with the nerves, but I tend to find myself mildly hyperventilating in the bathroom at some point. I don't know why. A lot of it probably has to do with the crowd and the noise. much like at the diner I try to not hear it. When I'm not in public I'll just cover my ears or hide under a blanket (god this sounds ridiculous, but it helps. I'll just make a blanket fort and hide in it or I'll just curl up entirely under a blanket, but in public one coping mechanism I have is silly, but I have the ability, like many people - it's not a superpower or anything -to ear-rumble. so I'll try to block out as much sound as possible and then I'll breathe slowly. sometimes it helps sometimes it doesn't. when  it doesn't I'll just go to the bathroom or step outside for some air. that generally helps.if that doesn't I'll call my wife and she'll talk me down. which is nice. quite nice actually. anyway. I'm hoping that the party goes well. I'll post an update later.

[hankbrichardson]

breakfast went okay and attention problems

My father and I go out to breakfast once a week. we've been doing this for six or seven years now. I'm an adult by the way. very much one. with a wife, kids, and a house. it's something we do because he thinks it might help to make up for him being absent when I was a kid. It doesn't, but one only gets one family I suppose.  

typically, when we have breakfast at the diner there's a pair of gentlemen who sit one table away whose conversation is typically the cause of my loss of focus and concentration. Today, only one of the two was there, I only lost focus once when the waitress was taking his order. 

I've been trying to manage this attention/focus problem for a while now. I more or less lived without realizing I had one for a very, very long time. I had a glass shattering moment when an acquaintance noticed a few years ago that I tend to walk away from conversations without acknowledging that I'm going to do so and seemingly without necessarily appearing like I know I'm going to do so. after that I've realized that I often find myself alighting from one task or thing to the next without wanting to or completing the thing I was doing. For example, I started this blog post in the middle of writing an email to someone. I then stopped writing that email to fix a few odds and ends around the office. then I started cleaning. wrote more of this post. forgot about the email. cleaned more. saw the unsent email, got frustrated that Ihadn't actually sent the blasted thing. then found myself checking my social media and reading the news, forgetting about the email again, taking a few phone calls, eating an apple with peanut butter, installing some software on a server, testing that server, sending the damn email finally, and writing a little more. not on purpose or anything. that's just what happened and I really don't care for it. 

I'm trying to work on focusing on one thing at a time. I even printed out a work mantra or "slow down. make a plan. do one thing at a time" and hung it in my office, where I look at it and read it and think about it. it doesn't work, but I'm going to keep trying. 

[hankbrichardson]

Coping with being overwhelmed

So, I often find myself feeling overwhelmed when there are multiple things going on at the same time. I start to lose focus and get a feeling of panic and sometimes confusion as to whom or what I ought to be paying attention. This is especially true of times when multiple people are talking at the same time. I have a hard time focusing on what one person is saying and I find it even harder to say anything because I can't collect my thoughts to speak. I try to focus on one person and when it works it feels like I've made a tunnel between us and then I can focus, but when it doesn't I get frustrated and the other sounds start almost reverberating and pounding in my head making it even harder to isolate the thing to which I want to be paying attention. I don't much care for it and it gets very embarrassing when it happens in public as it often does in restaurants that aren't too full of people. Well, that's enough of that. I'll probably be dealing with this problem tomorrow morning at breakfast so I figured I'd write about it ahead of time and perhaps afterward. Found an article about the 7/11 breathing method. So I guess I might try that. I'll link it later.

[hankbrichardson]

Taking Watson's therapist's advice

Why not take advice from a TV therapist with less than five minutes of screen-time when you can't afford to see one in real life?

That said, this is my blog. My fears, anxieties, and other bits of pain are going to live here instead of in my head now. 

It at least seems like a good idea.