Hi everyone,

This is my first time posting. I am posting here to learn more about other people who are experiencing the same things as me. Personal stories are really impactful but I've yet to read or hear anything that's truly resonated with how I feel.

I have pretty severe anxiety but I'm very outgoing. I think I'm outgoing so much in order to battle against my anxiety and overcompensate for it. I think people I know and people I just meet perceive me as being an extrovert. Typically, I enjoy being the life of the party, making people laugh, engaging in conversation and all the rest. When I feel comfortable and non-anxious I love being this way, but when I feel anxious I want so much to be the life of the party but my energy is zapped as soon as my anxiety is triggered.

Generally, my days are spent being very anxious about my conversations/interactions with people, ruminating thoughts about past interactions, and a ton of self-loathing and fear that anxiety will overtake my life. I'm working hard to accept who I am and love all parts of me including anxiety. But it's a really hard process as I'm sure most of you know.

Something else that is weird to me is that I've never experienced a big traumatic event to cause this anxiety. I had a normal childhood, with loving parents, and supportive friends. With help from my therapist I've come to realize that I've been more affected by smaller traumatic events or little T. But these little t events aren't something that I hear about from others. I feel a lot of shame for this bc I feel like I don't have an excuse for my anxiety and that it's my fault for doing bad things. I would love to know if other people lived pretty normally growing up and were affected by more little t traumatic events that have caused anxiety to be much more present in adulthood.

I don't know if I've provided all the information necessary here so please ask questions if you want more info about my anxiety, my past, and my experience with mental illness.

Thank you everyone!