My Path Towards Freedom

[Archaeopteryx]

I would love to read comments from anyone if any of my posts seem relevant.

I know I sometimes sound a bit too confident, but I'd love to share support and opinions.

Thanks in advance!

[Southern_Belle]

Hi Arc,

I have read your journal and although I do not personally suffer with social anxiety I believe I can learn so much from what you have written. You have a gift of the written word and I do hope this is what you are studying in college. I look forward to reading more of your journey where you are exposing how you are conquering these thoughts that we call anxiety.

By the way, I think you did do the right thing in giving your flower to the girls!

Take care,

Laura

[Nechtan]

It is very good what you have written, very enjoyable to read. Personally I can relate to alot of your thinking and alot of your dilemmas. At the moment i am waiting for Medical Services to call and I'm dreading it. Like yourself the phone brings anxiety for me too.

I hope you keep writing as I'll keep reading.

All the best

Nechtan

[Archaeopteryx]

(9) More Costs ..

I know it sounds simple, but the guy at the supermarket just gave me a pound (change) with two holes in it. I didn't notice until I walked away. I know some people would easily return it and ask for another one. But I didn't.

It's not about the one pound. This isn't what matters. If it was ten pounds I would have trouble going back too.

I'm just writing this to remind myself why I want go through the pain of exposure everyday. I want to remind myself that it's really worth it, and that I really really want to change.

[Archaeopteryx]

(10) Social Phobia VS Loneliness

When I was in the peak of my depression and anxiety two years ago, I had a single dominant thought:

I needed friends. I needed love. I needed care.

I couldn't think logically about anything. I just hated myself, my life and my past. I just dreamed day and night that somehow sometime someone will come and save me from this darkness.

But no one ever came, no one ever knew I was suffering, maybe they even forgot I existed.

I had to take the first step ..

But I only discovered lately that Social Anxiety is something different than lonliness. It's not just the lack of friends thats driving us crazy. Actually, the two problems sometimes overlap. But they are separate in their very nature.

You can have no Social Phobia but also have no friends, or you can have both!

The cure for each of the two problems is entirely different.

The key idea in making friends I think is focusing on what others need and caring about them. Trying to make them happy, trying to make them like you.

While the key idea in recovering from Social Phobia is to focus on your needs and care for yourself. I know this may sound a little selfish, but that's the truth. The Socially Anxious care about other people's opinions much more than they need to do. They think that they 'should' make other people happy all the time. And when they don't (which is always the case) they beat themselves up for that. They assume – subconsciously maybe- that their own rights are not as important as other people's demands or even wishes.

The complexity of the problem arises when we see that most of the Socially Anxious are lonely fellows. The avoidance actually gives us security and peace by hiding away from the problem altogether. And it is the avoidance that finally makes us all alone.

As human beings we need to socialize, we need to have friends, we need other people to care for, we need to love and be loved.

But that shouldn't be our driving force or our purpose when we fight the anxiety. Otherwise, we'll end up caring to much about what others think! And that's what causes us to be anxious in the first place.

Having friends will not miraculously solve all our problems. It may help. It may not. But anyway, it will never solve the problem alone. We have to do lots of work ourselves.

We should be able to stand us and shout within us that We Don't Care anymore about what others think. We will be assertive no matter what it costs us. We will stand up for our rights even when others seem to 'not like' the idea.

Our Anxiety has made us too cruel to ourselves and we need to fix that.

We don't have friends because people don't really know we are there. And that is because we simply avoid them. And we will continue to avoid them as long as we continue to fear their rejection and negative reactions.

What have we got to lose? Why do we continue to fear their rejection? Why don't we just treat it as something inevitable. No matter what we do. No matter how hard we try, SOME people will just reject us. And we can't stop that from happening.

We need to really accept the fact that we can't please everyone, and we need to stop trying to do so. When we go out and face the world, some people will reject us, others will respect us for one reason or another. But as long as we keep ourselves locked up .. truly we are safe from the rejection we fear, but does it matter? Our lives go down the drain in this awful prison.

Aristotle once said:

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing”

So is it really worth it?

Are we ready to be 'nothing's for the sake of false security?

I say: my life is much more important than all the comfort that avoidance can ever bring me.

I know that we need love and care. But why don't we start by trying to care for our own selves? Why do we continue to reinforce our depression, our low self-esteem waiting for someone to come and save us from this hell.

No one is coming.

I know it's really hard to accept that, its hard to take responsibility for claiming our lives, but remember what Helen Keller once said:

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

So, what's your choice?

[Archaeopteryx]

Laura,

Thanks for your compliment. I actually love to write in my free time. But these are my first trials in English. So I'm glad you liked them!

I love my college and my studies. Although they are in a different field.

I appreciate your support.

[Archaeopteryx]

Thanks for your reply Nechtan

Phone Calls ..

I can easily say that I simply hate phone calls. They always leave me with the feeling that I made a bad impression, or that my voice was bla bla or whatever.

Even when I want to order some food I let my sister do the job.

Phone calls are not impossible for me, but they are simply uncomfortable, sometimes too uncomfortable.

As I'm trying to stop all avoidance strategies, I want to start trying answering all phone calls and watching my feelings as I do. They are rarely for me, so my old habit was to never answer.

Yet today I made another 'uncomfortable' call to ask for some information. One step forward ... I hope.

[Archaeopteryx]

(11) Writing ...

Why I want to keep on writing here?

Writing for me is almost always a pleasurable experience. But why write here about my anxiety? The main reason I think is I want to get the problem up to my conscious awareness and understand it fully, accept my reality and explore the possibilities that lie ahead and my own hopes and dreams.

What can writing do to me?

It can give me hope plus It can actually change my automatic way of thinking. I'm almost pretty sure that forcing yourself to think in a certain way that you really believe is much healthier can eventually override previous 'programming'. I've seen this happen in other areas of my life where excessive thinking lead me to possible solutions I've never even dreamed of. Why? Because the simple act of exploring the world within me has changed ME.

I want to keep on writing as much as I can. I want to conquer all the dark thoughts and dark emotions. I want to get the things I fear most up on the surface so I can 'study' them, understand them and ultimately question their validity.

Another reason I'm writing this is because I wasn't lucky enough to find it already written! I've surfed some 'social phobia forums' searching for a detailed Positive Journal or diary or an inspiring success story that I could relate to, but I simply couldn't find one.

So I finally asked myself: Why not be the one? I don't know if my words will ever inspire others to work harder in order to gain control. But that's what I hope!

I actually want this journal also to be an inspiration for ME, months from now. Maybe when I feel 'down' and need some sort of evidence that God has given me the power to make little changes everyday. Maybe someday in the future I may be able to stand up and say that

I 'once' suffered from extreme anxiety... But I no longer do.

[Archaeopteryx]

(12) If You Ask Questions in a Lecture You Will Look Silly.

This is a simple yet destructive belief that I'm pretty sure many of the Socially Anxious can relate to.

Yesterday, I went with a friend of mine to a lecture about Emotional Intelligence. The lecturer depended mainly on interaction with the audience. He kept asking us to write things down, then asked some people to actually say what they have written aloud. I was extremely embarrassed to see others talking about their emotions in front of everyone. And I was even more embarrassed when some people started to ask questions about certain problems they had. One of them kept actually talking about a certain problem she had for like 10 minutes. And although the lecturer couldn't answer her. She kept repeating the question and explaining it more and more!

I was thinking like:

What the hell?! Is she human?? How could she do such an 'embarrassing thing'?!

At college, I essentially never ask any question in a lecture. I know the real reason is because deep down I think I will just look silly in front of all my 500 colleagues.



But when I'm actually in class and a question pops up in my head I usually try to justify my 'not asking'. I usually say that its just easier to search for the answer in my text book or on the Internet.

Let me repeat:

I don't ask questions because I have a false belief that states that if I do I will look like a fool.

How absurd!!

Anyway, ..

Understanding is the first step towards acceptance. And with acceptance comes peace and the power to change.

[Archaeopteryx]

(13) And Another Lesson

Part of the lecture was to play some 'group games'. I participated in one of those games where one of us would try to make a certain impression with his face and the others would try to guess what it is (angry – sad – happy – etc).

It lasted for a few minutes but I was so proud of myself for joining. They were complete strangers. I didn't pull back. I didn't run away. I just went on. I had fun during these few minutes. I enjoyed the experience. My initial fears were irrational and meaningless. And they were proven – in this experiment – and will be proven – in experiments yet to come – wrong and damaging.

Hope .. I love this word!