bowel_of_chiley
Member
Hi,
Just wanted to raise the subject of what is, for me and undoubtedly many of you guys, my main trigger for anxiety these days.
There's a bit of a 'long story' behind why I've got to this place in my life, so I hope I'm not gonna bore you all.
I'm lonely as hell, sometimes to the point of despair, I get jealous of people in crowds having fun on a friday night when I'm heading for my local shop and this feeling also tends to get to me on my short, twenty min walk to work on weekdays.
I get along well with my colleagues, who are around the same age as me (I'm 24), but at the same time, I feel like a burden, because I'm not anywhere near reliable - I turn up late, and sometimes not at all, which has previously made me lose jobs in an instant. I volunteer for Mind, which is a central UK mental health charity, and since I started working for them in May last year, I feel as if I've neglected this great opportunity due to my crippling phobia.
And that really is all this is - phobia - this fear of being a 'loner' which I find perpetuated by things like walking alone amongst strangers in the daytime, going to my local shop on the weekend around crowds of happy pissed people, queuing in a supermarket, even facing a trip on the bus - often when I face these situations I become a mess; I feel doomed, everything suddenly turns black, then if it gets worse, I gasp for air and sometimes I feel my heart beating too fast, eventually remembering that this was the same anxiety attack as always, only that I just can't convince myself of this at that time!
Anyway, this 'long story' goes back as far as when i was a kid. I was always put down by my family; my mum, dad and my older brother; a lot of the things I said were laughed at by all of them, mostly if we were going on a holiday or 'day trip' somewhere as a 'family'; I would literally just ask a question about a tourist sight we were visiting and be answered with a roar of laughter by all three and be made to feel as if I was completely dumb and inferior to my bro. I'd also be blamed for fights between me and my bro the majority of the time. In a typical situation, my bro would intimidate me verbally until I would be wound up enough to react by throwing a punch and subsequently causing him to put me into a headlock while scratching the top of my head. Another example of this bullying came when I was just 5 years old. There was a regular occurrence, where my brother (who is four years older than me), got two of his friends to run away and hide with him while we were playing, just so that they could have the rest of their play time with only the three of them. I know that the fact that these kids i.e. my bro and our two friends, who were our only friends at that time, when we lived in a remote village in Cornwall, coupled with this early childhood bullying, are contributory factors to my low self-esteem.
This feeling continued throughout my adolescence, while I was hanging out with my bro and his mates in my hometown most of the time, because my friends were in the nearest city 20 mile away. When I started going to school, I was being called a wanker and a dickhead by my new classmates. The trouble is, to not show that I was bothered by it, I'd laugh it off, not report it and forget about it.
By this stage, I already had a vulnerability exposed that anybody could easily attack, so I went through sheer hell throughout comprehensive school as a teenager in terms of my confidence, with the townies, or 'chavs' as some people call them now, taking the piss out of what I wore, how I spoke and my demeanor in general.
Gladly, I grew strength in the sixth form (UK education system), when I fell for a more than beautiful blonde girl from the year below, who had apparently had a crush on me for months before we got together.
When we broke up after nearly 2 years together, I felt like there was no point left in life, and took a while to get back; at that very time I was starting a university course immediately after school, so everything felt a bit full-on.
Anyway, I'm bangin' on way too much now and have probably already bored half this forum to death with my life story, but I genuinely would like to hear from people who have had similar experiences, but want to move on from their past and try to attain a reasonable level of confidence, regardless of a negative conditioning.
The main hopes I have right now are in that I made a new friend through a music group I joined in my nearest city and that I've recently found a flat that I could be moving into soon, so I'm trying to stay positive.
Peace.
Just wanted to raise the subject of what is, for me and undoubtedly many of you guys, my main trigger for anxiety these days.
There's a bit of a 'long story' behind why I've got to this place in my life, so I hope I'm not gonna bore you all.
I'm lonely as hell, sometimes to the point of despair, I get jealous of people in crowds having fun on a friday night when I'm heading for my local shop and this feeling also tends to get to me on my short, twenty min walk to work on weekdays.
I get along well with my colleagues, who are around the same age as me (I'm 24), but at the same time, I feel like a burden, because I'm not anywhere near reliable - I turn up late, and sometimes not at all, which has previously made me lose jobs in an instant. I volunteer for Mind, which is a central UK mental health charity, and since I started working for them in May last year, I feel as if I've neglected this great opportunity due to my crippling phobia.
And that really is all this is - phobia - this fear of being a 'loner' which I find perpetuated by things like walking alone amongst strangers in the daytime, going to my local shop on the weekend around crowds of happy pissed people, queuing in a supermarket, even facing a trip on the bus - often when I face these situations I become a mess; I feel doomed, everything suddenly turns black, then if it gets worse, I gasp for air and sometimes I feel my heart beating too fast, eventually remembering that this was the same anxiety attack as always, only that I just can't convince myself of this at that time!
Anyway, this 'long story' goes back as far as when i was a kid. I was always put down by my family; my mum, dad and my older brother; a lot of the things I said were laughed at by all of them, mostly if we were going on a holiday or 'day trip' somewhere as a 'family'; I would literally just ask a question about a tourist sight we were visiting and be answered with a roar of laughter by all three and be made to feel as if I was completely dumb and inferior to my bro. I'd also be blamed for fights between me and my bro the majority of the time. In a typical situation, my bro would intimidate me verbally until I would be wound up enough to react by throwing a punch and subsequently causing him to put me into a headlock while scratching the top of my head. Another example of this bullying came when I was just 5 years old. There was a regular occurrence, where my brother (who is four years older than me), got two of his friends to run away and hide with him while we were playing, just so that they could have the rest of their play time with only the three of them. I know that the fact that these kids i.e. my bro and our two friends, who were our only friends at that time, when we lived in a remote village in Cornwall, coupled with this early childhood bullying, are contributory factors to my low self-esteem.
This feeling continued throughout my adolescence, while I was hanging out with my bro and his mates in my hometown most of the time, because my friends were in the nearest city 20 mile away. When I started going to school, I was being called a wanker and a dickhead by my new classmates. The trouble is, to not show that I was bothered by it, I'd laugh it off, not report it and forget about it.
By this stage, I already had a vulnerability exposed that anybody could easily attack, so I went through sheer hell throughout comprehensive school as a teenager in terms of my confidence, with the townies, or 'chavs' as some people call them now, taking the piss out of what I wore, how I spoke and my demeanor in general.
Gladly, I grew strength in the sixth form (UK education system), when I fell for a more than beautiful blonde girl from the year below, who had apparently had a crush on me for months before we got together.
When we broke up after nearly 2 years together, I felt like there was no point left in life, and took a while to get back; at that very time I was starting a university course immediately after school, so everything felt a bit full-on.
Anyway, I'm bangin' on way too much now and have probably already bored half this forum to death with my life story, but I genuinely would like to hear from people who have had similar experiences, but want to move on from their past and try to attain a reasonable level of confidence, regardless of a negative conditioning.
The main hopes I have right now are in that I made a new friend through a music group I joined in my nearest city and that I've recently found a flat that I could be moving into soon, so I'm trying to stay positive.
Peace.
gotta bounce!