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OceanDeep0812
88 M Embraced
PathStep 2 Compassion hearts7 Forum posts3 Forum upvotes1 Current upvotes1 Age GroupAdult Last activeNovember, 2018 Member sinceOctober 27, 2018
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Frustrated and In My Head... Thoughts? Advice?
Anxiety Support / by OceanDeep0812
Last post
 October 28th, 2018
...See more I'm 22, and I have always struggled with social anxiety. Although I have made vast improvements in recent years, there is one area in which I am reminded how far I still have left to go. Romance and dating. I still have roadblocks there despite the incredible amount of focus and effort I've put into achieving my own growth. And such has been a source of intense frustration lately. During my teen years, I had a couple of prolonged crushes. Neither of them became anything more, and that's at least partly to blame on my own behavior. Something deep inside of me was afraid of having them turn into something more. I didn't think I could– and that's probably because I really wasn't ready to– open myself up enough to someone to be able to have a romantic relationship with them. Within the last year and a half or so, my mindset has started to change, however, and I'm feeling more open to dating. I'm 22 now; I don't want to just fantasize anymore. While my mindset has changed, however, my self-sabotaging behavior has not. There is a guy at work I am attracted to and interested in just getting to know better and seeing what happens. I'm not afraid of opening myself up to him and the situation, and I am impressed with myself for that. And for awhile I was impressed with the progress I was making with him as well. We were building a rapport, and it felt surprisingly natural to me, and I even felt like with just a little more time something actually could happen between us. But now... my social anxiety and tendency to overthink has started to kick in again. I don't know exactly what triggered it... maybe the situation just started to matter too much to me... I started wanting too much for it to work out. But now I over-scrutinize every interaction of ours, and I overthink my every move with him. I'm also fully aware of the likelihood that my anxious thoughts will create a self-fulfilling prophecy... but that makes me more anxious, and it's a vicious cycle. I can't act natural around him anymore, and I feel like the rapport has been lost. I would really, really like to get it back, but that requires me to get out of my own head, and I just don't know how to do that.
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