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Idk if this is valuable to you but it was to me so I'll take a shot. This is about social anxiety but can apply to other types as well imo.
I learned that my social anxiety was because I would not stick up for myself. Anxiety and "fight or flight" are physiologically the same thing, so my anxiety was my body freaking out that I may be abused in conversation with no way to defend myself.
I spent years learning healthy boundaries and effective ways to handle conflict and confrontation and in my mid 30s I finally feel like I'm crawling out of the hole.
It's a little annoying the thing I was anxious about and avoiding (conflict, embarrassment, making a scene if necessary) was actually the thing keeping me anxious in the first place but I'm glad I'm back on the climb out now.
I wish you luck in your journey, stranger.
I appreciate it. I've been feeling pretty down lately and this has helped.
I know I can do better.
Thank you for your encouragement.
I recommend mindfulness training if you can. There's a big difference between:
Brains and bodies will automatically attract to higher levels of comfort or peace, so you can start to see the trends in your mental health, it will literally pull you toward fixing it. It may not be a complete fix by itself, but you'll be surprised how much it will do for you.
You are not your illness. Would you feel empathy for a friend with anxiety? Likely yes. If you give them that grace, why not yourself too?
I hope/am glad if this stuff helps.
It does help. I'm totally overthinking every little thing involving a couple of my friends.
I really need to get out and try to meet some new folks. I know I can do it. I just need to convince myself that I'm worth the effort.
It's a funny thing, once the whole "boundaries" thing starts to click it sort of becomes addicting as you slowly realize "oh, I can say no to things I don't like" or "I can ask for the things I wish I had".
Eventually that leads to the secure attachment style (still working on this one myself). But since this began to "click" I have made 3 excellent friends that I don't feel like I need to perform around and it's wild to me.
Are you autistic/neurodivergent by chance? I am, and I read a book called "Unmasking Autism" by Devon Price, PhD and it helped a lot with this for me. Not sure if it would mean anything to people who aren't though.