Anxiety

Okay - I am desperately fighting the anxiety I feel at reaching out and calling my OA fellows. I need to call my sponsor, but I feel such anxiety about it. Interacting with other people - reaching out - gives me a sick feeling in my stomach and makes it hard to even function. My throat is closing up and my heart is pounding and it's still too early to make that call. I have to sit here with these feelings for another hour or so.

Anxiety is such a mystery to me. I don't know why I feel it or how it's become such a crippler in my life, but there it is raising up it's ugly head making itself known. I'm frozen with it. White knuckling through the goals I have set myself. It's important for my recovery that I begin making more connected relationships outside my immediate family. That means reaching out - and that means setting myself up for the possibility of rejection or betrayal.

I admit it - I'm scared. Afraid to the depths of my soul of more rejection and betrayal from those I admire or those I feel drawn to and those I want to make a deeper connection with. What's most worrying to me is that I feel this way about people that I already know care about me. But then again, I suppose a lot of it goes back to that feeling of unworthiness. I feel like I don't deserve close friendships - close relationships outside my immediate family.

I don't have the best social skills. I tend to not know what to talk about to people so I sit silently and uncomfortably with friends or acquaintances until those people feel as uncomfortable as I do and walk away. And I can't blame them.

An example is a friend from real life that I have an active friendship with on Facebook - we message each other and talk via the computer, but when I'm with her in person I just don't know what to talk about. I'm just frozen with fear of making a fool of myself or being too needy or silly or loud or obnoxious.

I do sometimes make it past my discomfort and interact with people, but later, on the way home or lying in bed trying to sleep, I begin to second guess every word I said and wonder what the ones I was interacting with are thinking about me now. I know I shouldn't care what others think of me - what matters is the relationship I have with myself and my Higher Power, but those insecurities are something I still need to work on.

It's really hard. I have some social situations coming up. First I need to get over my anxiety and start working with my sponsor - that means phone calls and face to face time. I also have a gathering I'm going to at some friends' house on Saturday - I'm looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. I just need to remember to work through the anxiety the way I work through my addiction: one day at a time - one hour at a time - one phone call at a time - one moment at a time.