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Belongs to: Can you relate to zach s struggles with anxiety sh
I suffer from anxiety, always second guess myself, have adhd - break out in a sweat when standing in a small area with lots of people I don’t know. Just keep pushing through.
Relatable - it’s that sense of fragility, of vulnerability - honestly, it’s so easy to feel exposed when you’re around a bunch of people you don’t know. There’s literally no way to control all of the variables. And if you’ve experienced a ton of rejection / criticism / negativity towards yourself in the past, it’s easy to “assume” everyone thinks or feels that way towards you just naturally.
Personally, I grew up thinking I was a disappointment. I felt like I could never do anything to make my dad / coaches / etc proud of me. Like I was always failing in some way or another. And so I developed this idea that that’s just who I am. And when I’m in situations where I don’t feel like I can “perform” my way into approval, I feel naked. Like all people can see is the “baseline” me, and the baseline is a disappointment.
In that sense, I remember walking through the mall one time in particular by myself and thinking - holy shit, I literally have no one. All of these people hate me. Which - again - totally bogus, but the FEELING was palpable. It’s really hard to beat back our own conditioning - especially in the moment. So what we’re left with is the messiness of life just pushing all of our buttons and making us sweat, lol.
Second guessing yourself is a tough challenge too because you can get into these mental quick sand moments. Where you want to make the right decision. But you second guess yourself. So then you try to make another decision. But then time ticks by, and you think about the first decision you could have made, but then because time has passed, you feel like you’re failing, but then you feel like it was the right decision in the first place and now you’ve ruined it, and so then you start to spiral because now there’s no good options, and it feels like it’s all your fault, lol.
You may not experience that exact situation (I have, ha), but some flavor of that - of your own mind keeping you from making decisions and then just criticizing EVERY CHOICE YOU HAVE. It’s hard. Life is hard, man.
But I appreciate you sharing here because we get the chance to say - I see you, I am like you, you are not alone, we are not alone. And there is hope! Because if we’re not alone, we have one another, and we’re not reliant on our own strength. Community is powerful. Thank you for sharing here so we can show that to one another.