Bumping in to a friend unexpectedly

lookyloo

Member
Hi everyone, I'm new to the site. This is my first post. I used to be extreemly outgoing, very social and always made friends easily... that is until about middle of last year when I lost a ton of money in the stock market and work got really stressful working for the hedge fund. To make a long story short, I developped extreem anticipatory anxiety and mild agorophobia. I didn't want to take any meds since I've read everywhere that when you quit taking them, the anxiety returns, so why take them in the first place...
I'm doing a lot better, I started taking yoga, working out more and forcing myself to take trips and going to restaurants with friends.
The only big thing is that I have trouble when I run into people unexpectedly... For some reason, I feel like kinda freak out for a few seconds, I look left and right with my eyes about five or six times (I think trying to avoid eye contact) and get very nervous... start talking fast and then finally pull it together somewhat, but does anyone else on here get this? It really sucks, I feel like I look like a crazy person doing this...
Any help or advice would be great!
 

SilentType

Banned
Yeah this happened to me just yesterday. Not much you can do but try to manage it and take control over it. And you're right about the anxiety meds.


Peace
 

Perfidion

Well-known member
You know what I really loathe? Bumping into someone you knew at school who was an absolute shit to you, and suddenly they're all "Hi, how's it going? Haven't seen you in ages! We should catch up." I want to slap those people with a brick.
 
Hi everyone, I'm new to the site. This is my first post. I used to be extreemly outgoing, very social and always made friends easily... that is until about middle of last year when I lost a ton of money in the stock market and work got really stressful working for the hedge fund. To make a long story short, I developped extreem anticipatory anxiety and mild agorophobia. I didn't want to take any meds since I've read everywhere that when you quit taking them, the anxiety returns, so why take them in the first place...
I'm doing a lot better, I started taking yoga, working out more and forcing myself to take trips and going to restaurants with friends.
The only big thing is that I have trouble when I run into people unexpectedly... For some reason, I feel like kinda freak out for a few seconds, I look left and right with my eyes about five or six times (I think trying to avoid eye contact) and get very nervous... start talking fast and then finally pull it together somewhat, but does anyone else on here get this? It really sucks, I feel like I look like a crazy person doing this...
Any help or advice would be great!

Hmm, that's interesting. I was just reading in my psychology book about stuff like this. Your amygdala processes sensory inputs and decides if there might be a threat - if so, it ramps up your heart rate, etc. But it's not based on very much information, so it's not very accurate, and it tends to err on the side of caution. Meanwhile, the sensory input also goes to your cortex, where it can analyze it in more depth. But it takes longer, so when it realizes it's not a threat, it sends signals for your body to relax.

It might be a conditioned stimulus type thing - like if certain people appeared around a rat before it got shocked, it would learn to fear those people. So maybe all the stress of working with hedge funds caused an association with all the people you were working with, and your amygdala is afraid of running into them on the street.

Anyway, that's just a guess. Some kind of desensitization training might help if that was the case. Eg print out pictures of your coworkers and look at them, then eat some ice cream or something? :) I dunno...
 
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