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Old Dec 29, 2014, 08:30 PM
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CosmicRose CosmicRose is offline
Poohbah
 
Member Since: Sep 2014
Location: USA
Posts: 1,026
Yes I listen to audio self help speakers on a daily basis, I've done a lot of self reflection and inner work. My anxiety comes from the same place as it always has, for 8 years I've been living with the exact same anxiety I've always felt and it hasn't gone away. My anxiety is focused around work and people, it used to be school related but now that I'm in my 20s its work related or college related. I thought it was social anxiety but I think its more than that, I think there's an underlying self esteem issue and I don't know why its there because I generally have good self esteem.

I can't really decipher my anxiety. I was diagnosed with GAD and PTSD from a traumatic childhood. I was raised with an alcoholic mom who I personally believe is undiagnosed bipolar. I grew up constantly fearing for my dad's life because he was in and out of hospitals with poor health. I lived with a sense of doom, as if the stability was going to be yanked out from under my feet and that's exactly what happened at age 14.
A few more years and a couple more traumatic experiences later, I still struggle with my footing and establishing my own personal stability.
I'm just really scared to go out in the world and make a name for myself in a career, it terrifies me to imagine going to work every day and I don't know why! Everyone has to! I fear workplace failure, getting fired, awkward social interactions, and doing a bad job or messing up or being embarrassed at work.

I'm really struggling right now to figure out a career and this is where my anxiety comes from, its all connected from even 8 years ago when this began happening. My anxiety was so bad at school I started homeschooling. I've daydreamed about starting my own business just so I can be in total control and stay mostly at home. I'm obviously running away from something, and that's no way to live life.

There's something about establishing work place relations and seeing the same people every day that freaks me out.
There's something about servicing people like customers that freaks me out. I have no idea why. It makes me want to just stay home.
I also have a tendency to push boyfriends away.

Sometimes I legitimately feel like I can't handle "life" in general, I can't handle constant stimulation and interaction, constant evaluations from others, politics. If I could find a job that required me to work mostly alone and I felt confident doing it, and wasn't constantly evaluated or whatever, I'd be happy. First I gotta go to college, and that's another hurdle. Everyone else seems to have no problems with these things. All my friends are so happy going to their jobs and moving up the career ladder, how are they so uninhibited and I'm feeling this stuck? Anyway that's the nature of my anxiety.
I have physical reactions to anxiety like hands shaking, feeling flustered during conversations, being a little awkward, I shouldn't be so low in self esteem because I love myself so I don't know where this fear of other's opinions, critique or reprimand, is coming from.

This sounds weird but if I had money and didn't have to work at all and was still financially set, I'd have zero anxiety in life. I'd do anything without anxiety, talk to people, everything. I think part of my anxiety comes from the fear of being "forced" to make a living, I know how strange that sounds but its something I've thought about a lot before. I think something about "having to" have a job and support myself with a job, the uncertainty that comes with it, is scary to me. To go a step further, even if I just had my own business and was successful, being my own boss, etc... I would have much less anxiety.
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"Re-examine all you have been told, dismiss what insults your soul." - Walt Whitman

"Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence." - Christopher Hitchens

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience." - Mark Twain

Last edited by CosmicRose; Dec 29, 2014 at 09:00 PM.
Thanks for this!
wolfgaze