This is a topic from YOUTUBE. Reply as normal, and we will post it to the user on YouTube.
Belongs to: Therapist and Vocalist react to One By Metallica
I have anxiety and can’t really be around people, but the only thing that helps is other people HeartSupport
@Flum666 Glad you have that support of people that help you.
Hold Fast
-The Video Editor
Man, I feel this with you. For what it’s worth, you’re definitely not alone feeling stuck in this loop, in this paradox that anxiety creates. Isn’t it ironic how much the very source of fear and absence of safety that wounds us over and over seems to also be an essential element to healing? People. Connecting with others, interacting, seeing and being seen at the same time. It feels both like an amazing dream and an absolutely terrible reality at the same time. Almost like a bad joke that the universe has created against all the people who carry a wound that exactly comes from connections with others. It’s hard to wrap our head around what feels like a pure contradiction and foresee any possibility of healing through it.
Having known my share of traumas early in life, then dealing with social and performance anxiety for most of my life, being told one day that healing would need to also happen through rebuilding safe relationships was a perspective that paralyzed me. It was absolutely impossible for me to even conceive relationships as something safe and non-stressful, something I wouldn’t have to prepare myself for mentally over and over.
There is something profoundly scary and unpredictable when it comes to relationships, and somehow anxiety, as damaging as it can be, speaks about the pain we’ve been carrying. It makes it so hard to feel like being with other people can happen at a more intuitive level, and certainly not one blurred by all of our fears and negative thoughts. When it’s something you’ve known for a significant time, it becomes your normality, almost more familiar and more safe than trying to put yourself out there.
There’s for sure a need to take risks in order to heal, to give the benefit of the doubt to the possibility of experiencing connections that would feel safe… but goodness that’s purely terrifying. I think to be scared of it, and to say it no matter how many times it’s necessary. Humans are messy, relationships are messy, and it’s somehow something we all try to figure out one day after another, with our unique story and memories.
I think, something that can help ground ourselves sometimes, is to remind ourselves why healing is important to us, and why taking risks - i.e. connecting with others -, is important to US. Even though our anxiety makes it so that it feels like it’s a lot about others (what they think of us, how they see us, what they’ll do, what they’ll say…), while really it’s about us. To multiply our experiences is difficult, but it’s also what helps us grow and heal. We force our chance a little bit, then we have the possibility to end up pleasantly surprised by how beautiful being connected with safe people can be. At other times, we can be hurt or disappointed by them… which them becomes an opportunity for us to practice reconnecting with ourselves, with our worth, with the fact that their behaviors and words will define us. This is your life, and you are living it for you, no matter what your anxiety may try to convince you of!