Thank you for many very interesting and thoughtful ideas about anxiety and groups. I especially benefited from hearing your thoughts about your own participation in groups. Work related groups have never been an issue for me, even though most of my work now is solitary or intensive work with a client. I spend a lot of time writing. I find it easy to work with other people, with rare exceptions over the years when I had an actual job and actual colleagues (as opposed to the independent consulting I do now). I would be starving if I could not work effectively with many different kinds of people, as I rarely am hired by the same group.

I'd like to figure out how to do what you do, bring people together, but that is clearly not my something I do well. I think my main issue in community based groups ATM (hasn't always been this way, mostly in the past years) is I don't feel I get much out of the group or I just don't enjoy my participation or think it's worth leaving the peacefulness of my home and interacting with others. In the case of one creative group I've been a part of for more than 5 years, it may be that I've outgrown the learning and other offerings of the group. Another group I tried just last week was a new group but with people who have similar interests as one of the best groups I was involved with half a dozen years ago. It bored me to tears. And while I think it's possible that the boredom I experience in groups recently is because they are in fact boring, I sense that is not it. I think I am lacking, or have lost, some intangible ability to engage with others in the ways that I used to. It's definitely not based on the behavior of others or how anyone treats me. But outside of group activity, I am never bored, never have been, have always found many different activities/ideas/etc interesting. So that's what I'm trying to figure out.