AnxietySupportNetwork.com

December 15, 2009

Today, I have learned that anxiety is a journey, not a destination. There is no point where I will ever say, "At last, I am free from anxiety once and for all. Now I can die happy." It is more like a process whereby things continually get better. There is less and less anxiety, but it's never totally gone. It's just like wadding up a peace of paper and stepping on it. It gets flatter and flatter, but never goes away. To me, this is a positive, because even though I think that I am doing well right now, there are still tons of things I need to learn. This means that life will get even better, and in a few years, I'll probably say to myself,"What was I thinking when I was 27? Life is so much better right now." This is just some food for thought, and for me, it is very encouraging.

In regards to your site dan, i know you have your concerns over "will it be succesful?". Well i was just reading an article about social anxiety, and i remembered something.

When i was younger, if i had the opportunity to do anything, or to be involved in anything i always declined, played the situation down, and the chances went. I was holding myself back on purpose (i still do this).

If, by any chance you are not advertising (for instance) at somewhere that could make the site more succesful, or if you want to do things such as podcasts, but worry because you aren't sure about it all. Then basically what i'm saying is that perhaps its all about "taking risks". I really dont want to sound patronising here, but from what i read on the article it said "if you are worried about negative evaluation, you might not get the recognition and promotion you might like".

If you are doing everything you want/need to get the site moving, then well done, and of course: keep up the good work.

Well, thank you for the encouragement. Yes, I do need to continue to take risks. I have talked myself into some, but others I have a more difficult time with. I will keep this in mind as I make decisions about which risks I should take and which risks I should not take. It's a tough process. I believe that this site will work out on time, but the amount of time it takes will depend on how soon I am ready to take risks,and also I have to learn what works and what doesn't; that's just the nature of the game. So, thank you for the encouragement, and I am going to continue to work on it and see where it goes.

December 20, 2009

Well, things went well with the basketball and anxiety. Today, I unexpectedly had to coach the team and we ended up doing okay, which was a good thing. But, it was very stressful at first because I was not expecting it. What I learned is that when I am doing things that are aligned with my natural talents, I experience very little anxiety. I am good at being a leader and being in charge and putting people in their spots and getting them to work together as a team, and while we didn't win, everyone had a good time and it was our best game yet. But, this really cannot be placed on my talents; I did do some coaching and that helped, but the gusy have been learning and coming together better as a team. So, it was a very positive experience, which is a good thing.

December 22, 2009

Well, I have been struggling a little bit at work with some anxiety because I made a mistake and some other things have happened which are circumstantial and have made me look bad. The parent at this house is becoming suspicious of me and was even somewhat rude, rather than letting me know what was going on. The action step that I took, however, was to talk about this with my boss, who was very kind and supportive. She said that hse has been yelled at by this parent several times already too, and that there's only so much you can do to appease her, so we'll do our best. I was experiencing some deep anxiety and worry over the job and possibly wondered if I might get fired, however, once I talked to my boss and validated what I was saying, it all went away. Talking to people about what is bothering me, or actually talking to the right people really helps a ton, and my boss was the right person to talk to in this case. What a greta anxiety reducer!

December 23, 2009

Well, today was a very good day for me. At work, we had a party where there was lots of dancing and music. Well, for me, that kind of stuff is incredibly difficult because I am concerned about how I appear while dancing; I am not a good dancer at all; and well, I just plain don't like dancing and only really did it to get girls. This is honest living. So anyway, I felt very confident the whole day, and when we got close to the time to dance, I found that I was not self-conscious about dancing at all. I didn't dance as much as everyone else because it is just not my thing, and that is just the way that things went. I talked to a lot of people though, and I really didn't feel that lost in the whole thing for the most part, which was a good thing. For me, that is a resounding success. Most of the time dancing is a nightmare, unless I am out with some really good friends. One person even made a comment to the effect of, "C'mon Dan, look interested!" when I was walking around and talking to people. On a normal day in the past, that would shake me and make me feel very anxious, however, this time, it did not shake me at all, and I just passed on. That is the difference between an anxious day and a non-anxious day. Small comments like that can stick in my head for days and weeks, even though they are meant to be encouraging, but on a day like this, since my confidence was so high, it's in one ear and out the other. That was awesome, and I believe that as I continue on this journey of anxiey recovery, I will continue to have more days like this where things that were once difficult are now easy to pass by. It's a wonderful feeling to recognize that I have made progress.

December 27, 2009

Something that I have been learning lately is that anything the one ends up doing well is because of all the details. For example, with anxiety I find that I don't get better because of one try here and one try there. I get better because I am trying to find every little way that anxiety hampers my life and I am trying to work on every way in which it bothers me. Over time, each and every little detail added together ends up in one big difference and my life being a lot better. To me it seems that people focus too much on having this one thing go right or having this other thing go well or some other little detail. It's important to keep in mind the big picture, and that is that all the little attempts and successes that you make over time add up to a huge cumulative difference. I haven't made any significant strides in relation to anxiety at the current time, however, I understand that this is how things work. This keeps me motivated because I realize that while one step may not seem to be working as well as I would like to, if I keep making those steps, eventually they add up and one day I will realize, "Hey, that used to make me anxious, but now it really doesn't anymore." Just some food for thought.

January 2, 2009

First of all, I would like to say, "Happy New Year," and thank you to everyone who has been taking their time and spending it here at the Anxiety Support Network. I really am learning right now how to deal with people with whom I have friction. At this one kid's house where I work, I broke the mother's house rules, which was a mistake on my part, and she was somewhat angry and frustrated at me. I tend to take this very personally. Many times, when something like this happened in the past, I would check out mentally and pretty much discontinue the relationship. But, after some anger and personal distance away from this person, I am really, and she is as well, over the whole situation and our relationship is the same it was before the friction. So, that is a very healthy thing for me to learn, and it is one of the reasons that I have to keep going through this difficulty in anxiety over and over - to learn and grow stronger. It is difficult for me to go through, but I did go through it, and now everything seems to be okay again. I am thankful for situations that work out this way.

January 4, 2009

Now that my social anxiety is getting back under control, I am learning again what contributes to it getting better. The maint thing that is hitting me at this point is that I have more balance. I am not putting in crazy hours at work, school, and home just trying to make ends meet. I have enough to do, however, I am not overwhelmed. It is wonderful to be off school and just be working and interning. It gives me so much time to spend with my wife and doing other thins that help me to refresh, renew, and grow as a person. Read A Balanced Lifestyle for more information on this. Sometimes I forget these things and then life reminds me the hard way, and that is certainly what has happened over the past couple months. But, it was a good thing to learn and my life is now all the better for it.

January 5, 2010

Well, I made some wonderful progress today, and I am very thankful for it. I had been recently talking about how I tend to take things personally, and today there were a couple of situations that would have really freaked out my anxiety in the past. The first one was where this clerk at the DMV was unable to understand what I was saying and I had a hard time spitting it out. Even though the interaction was awkward, the great part was that I was able to let go. I didn't ruminate about it over and over in my head, so now it is just a matter of doing this routinely and on a consistent basis, which can be difficult at times. The other thing that really went well was this job interview. I asked a question, "Do you have any concerns about my ability to perform this job?" which could obviously cause some anxiety. Well, they did have a concern, and that was that I didn't have as good of a grasp on the professional terminology as they might have liked, however, they were satisfied with me very well overall. But, even though it was constructive crticism, I did not take it personally, and neither did I ruminate about it. So, that was progress as well, and that is what I am looking for. It's one step at a time, just like the site's motto. I might do worse tomorrw, but as long as I focus on this and keep the long range goal of complete relaxation in mind, I will eventually hit that goal.