Venting about Social Anxiety once again...
I feel really alone at the moment. I haven't heard from my one friend in at least a week and a half and I have no way to call him as his phone doesn't work at the house that he moved to. I only get to see my other friend for like an hour and a half once a week. And my third friend is always working so I never get to talk to her, and when I do, we never really say anything... Also, to rub all of this in, my family isn't helping. They keep saying that I have no friends because I am not an open person or because I never want to go do anything. It is not that I don't want to go do anything, I have no one to go do anything with. And also, I am sorry that I have social anxiety and there are days where I feel like I am having a heart attack and/or panic attack just at the thought of going somewhere where there are people I don't know. It isn't really enjoyable when I am freaking out the whole time. It also didn't help that the times my parents were referring to was when I was in my 4th and 5th year of college drowning in homework and studying, which somehow no one seemed to understand until my final two classes. I am just so sick of my family inferring that I will never be able to make friends. Well I am no longer in college and I am actually trying to work on my problems now. I am going to keep working really hard to change my bad habit of avoiding situations that make me extremely nervous. Today I actually managed to order my own refill for a prescription on the phone without feeling completely anxious. That is progress. From now until January, I am going to try doing every last thing on my own that I am usually too terrified to do, such as pay at the check out by myself, ask for help finding something in a store, making calls to set up appointments, etc. And yes, I am 23 and still suffer from all of these problems, which is a major problem. I was able to ignore it while in college because I still live at home, but I need to fix that if I am going to be starting a career soon. I am sick of making myself feel like my own existence isn't important. I am sick of holding myself back. I am sick of not being able to make new friends and do new things all because I am afraid of the "what ifs." I know I say I am going to work on this a lot, but I have to keep declaring it in order to keep myself going seeing as my entire family doesn't even believe in my ability to over come this. They just keep saying it is going to pass, but if I never work on it, how will I get over it?
