Social Phobia, Anxiety, and Ergophobia

My therapist suggested that I set aside 15 minutes a day for worrying, and to postpone any potential worries until that scheduled worry time. Well, I wasn't able to do that today.

Today someone was rude to me at my volunteer job and it totally shot my day to hell. For the entire rest of the day, I was unable to relax or enjoy my usual activities. I spent most of my day wondering why I react this way, whether I will ever be able to comfortably interact in regular everyday social situations, whether maybe I really don't like most people after all and I should just go back to being a hermit, etc., etc. It's time for bed, and I'm still up feeling all agitated. My back muscles are so tight that even shifting positions in my chair hurts.

I am so tired of this. I realize that I am making progress: I go out in public, I volunteer, I go to support groups, I see friends occasionally. I'm able to drive across town. I even got a part-time temp job- finally- and I start tomorrow.  (I'll tell more about that sometime, maybe.) I'm just not making enough progress to achieve my idea of what a somewhat normal life would look like for me.

There were times in my life, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, when I could just think that people were bozos and then I could move on. Why can't I do that any more? It almost seems like I had a certain amount of capacity to deal with social unpleasantness, and I have exhausted the entire amount of capability I had- I exceeded my lifetime limit, and it's just plain gone. That's how it feels.

Today I was worrying about how I can ever hold a job successfully if I can't deal with other people evaluating me, or criticizing me, or saying anything that even remotely seems negative, or even looking at me the wrong way. I guess I'll just have to try.

Even Nice Dogs Get Insulted

In our society it is considered perfectly acceptable to make rude remarks about fat people. Lately while volunteering at the Humane Society, I've found that many people will also freely comment on fat dogs.

Yesterday I was in the kennel brushing a beautiful Shepherd mix named Sadie Lynn. A woman walked up and said "Isn't it terrible that anyone would let their dog get so fat?" Now, I happen to be fat myself, so perhaps it didn't occur to this woman that a comment like that might make me feel badly, too. In fact, I have a bigger percentage of weight over the accepted ideal than Sadie does!

                                                       "But I'm a good dog!"

I tell people who make these thoughtless remarks (and there have been several) that I walk and exercise Sadie frequently, and that Sadie is getting "in shape" (a phrase that implies that there is a certain kind of shape we should be...hmmm....) much faster than I am.

The other day I was about 25 feet away from a boy of about 7 who looked at Sadie Lynn and said "Look at that fat dog!"

To her credit, the boy's mom said, "Look, you hurt that poor dog's feelings! (Dogs are quite sensitive to human emotions and even if they don't understand all the words, they totally understand the tone of voice.)
And then the little boy said "I'm sorry, Doggie. You're a good Doggie." That moment improved my faith in humanity, at least a little bit anyway.

Dogs also get subjected to canine stereotyping/dog racism. One day I was walking a bully breed mix (probably Lab & Pit Bull) by the name of Sancho. He was the sweetest old dog you could ever hope to meet. One day I was walking Sancho back to his kennel, and Sancho flashed his famous smile at the people nearby, since Sancho loved all people and wanted them to know it. Some kids were delighted by him, and the mom noticed, and pulled the kids out of the way and said in a horrified tone, "Oh no, that's a Pit Bull! We don't want a Pit Bull." Sancho waited for months to be adopted even though he was the nicest dog in the place.

                                             "I Iz a Labrador Retriever I Promises"

I Want to be Happy in the Morning

Sometimes I am, shall we say, less than perceptive about the manifestations of my anxiety and depression. Like, after I left my last real job eight years ago, my life got much better. I started volunteering at the Emergency Food Program. I turned their weedy yard into a highly productive vegetable garden full of lettuce, cilantro, collard greens, kale, tomatoes, beans, corns, and squash. I was having the time of my life.
My relationship was great, my home life was good, I felt excited about what I was doing.

But I would still have constant bad dreams about the workplaces where I had been so miserable. And I would still wake up every morning with a sense of dread and impending doom.

I kind of shrugged it off, saying I'm just not a morning person. True enough. I like to stay up till about midnight every night, and I pretty much always have.

It has finally dawned on me that I shouldn't be waking up every morning with a sense of imminent disaster. And I have just now realized that perhaps the reason I feel this way every single morning is that maybe somewhere in my subconscious mind I think I'm getting up to get ready to go to Work (capital W "Work", as in Job, as in Office, as in Corporation), not work in the garden, or work around the house, or work on an art project, or volunteering. Work, that bad place where I used to have to go. Even though I haven't been there in eight years now!

So this could be the reason that I am more likely to be deeply depressed first thing in the morning than at any other time of the day. It's because my conscious mind takes a while to catch up to the fact that I'm not going anywhere bad that day, not if I can help it anyway.

Anxiety Over Volunteering in an Office

I have been volunteering at an animal shelter for the past eight months, working directly with dogs. The shelter needed help in the office with data entry and telephone work, so I volunteered for this.

Now, keep in mind that I've been volunteering there for several months, and I walk past the office area every day that I'm there. It hadn't bothered me at all. I look forward to going to the shelter, and pretty much enjoy every minute I spend there. In fact, it's one of the most fun things I've ever done in my life.

The night before I was going to work in the office, I started feeling weird. I was thinking I wouldn't like it, and thinking that the people in the office probably wouldn't like me. I was worried that maybe I wouldn't be able to do the job anyway, and then maybe I wouldn't like volunteering at the shelter any more.

The next day, I woke up really early and paced around my house nervously. I was worried about every damn thing, whether my clothes were OK, whether I would be able to learn things and remember them, whether I would say the right things, etc., etc. I felt ridiculous about the silly things that I was obsessing about. I sure hoped nobody would notice how nervous I was.

Well, I've done this assignment twice now, for four hours at a stretch, and as far as I know, nothing went wrong. I even got complimented on my performance (I hate that word "performance" in relation to work. Maybe I should think of a different word.)

Yesterday at the shelter office, there a few things that gave me anxious feelings. First of all, the supervisor was wearing a suit to work that day. He usually doesn't, so perhaps he was going somewhere special that day. For all I know, it could have even been a funeral or something. Evidently business suits trigger anxiety in me.

Then, he wanted to introduce me to his boss, who works in a corner office. That made me feel ill at ease too. He seemed like a nice enough person.

This whole experience has made me very aware of my strong desire to be free from these specific types of anxiety, since they are obviously interfering with things I want to do.

Work or Volunteer Positions That I Liked

Looking back over my life, were there any types of work (paid or unpaid), that I mostly enjoyed? Here's the list:
- Working for two underground/alternative newspapers in the 70's- I wrote articles and poetry, and did layout/pasteup
- Cleaning hotel rooms. I liked the fact that I could think about whatever I wanted to while I was working, and it was good exercise.
- Being a Resource Assistant at the Women's Studies Union at the University when I was 18.

The next one is 30 years later....
- Volunteering at the Emergency Food Program. I planted and maintained the vegetable garden to provide produce for people in need.

And then.....
-Volunteering at the Humane Society. They let me hang out with the animals any time I want. I'm there about 3 or 4 days each week. Sometimes even more.

I'm not afraid of dogs.

I also like to proofread term papers and essays for my friend who is from Japan; she's in an MFA program, and the papers she writes are fascinating: art history, comparative cultures, social issues, and other interesting topics.