So I guess it's time for honesty

For a long time, I basically let this blog die. I have other blogs on less personal things and was never certain whether I would want to write a blog about something this personal. However, I put pretty much everything into writing because this is just what I do and have been doing for a very long time. I still have a very personal journal, a notebook into which I still write by hand. However, my style in there is not the best. If I write a blog, I really need to make an effort and can maybe still turn this into something useful.

I have been following other blogs on anxiety and kept thinking that certainly was not me. I do not have problems with anxiety. A little, maybe. Not much. Right? After all, I still leave the house and go to work. I travel abroad with my partner every year for Christmas to spend the holidays with his family. I ride my bycicle to many places. So I cannot have anxiety problems. Right?
Throughout the past months, I have had to admit to myself that, actually, I do have major problems with anxiety concerning a lot of things. The first thing is people. I do not dislike people and I can even enjoy spending time with them if I know them well, if we are in a relationship in which I feel secure because I know exactly what is expected of me. As soon as I need to get to know new people, I become anxious and insecure. The beginning of a new semester and new seminars is the worst: I sit in a room with a group of other students and often do not know a single one of them. I might „know“ the lecturer, but there are only a few with whom I actually feel comfortable. If I need to talk to a lecturer, I get scared. If we are asked to pair up for presentations, I get scared because I do not know the other students and that can make working together with them quite awkward. Last semester I was lucky. In one seminar, a student asked me if we should work together and in another one, I was paired up with a students who had decided later on doing a presentation and we got along quite well and did a good presentation. In one seminar, it was awkward since I had to work with two students who knew each other, but whom I did not know. Meeting my partner‘s friends is alright now because I have had enough time to get to know him. Meeting his boss is a different story - I generally prefer not to. I cannot help running into my own boss several times per week, but I am always relieved when she is not there.
The worst are family get-togethers: lots of people whom I have not seen for ages, too many people in one place, too many people talking at once and I am supposed to behave like I know them all well and like them and I am supposed to make polite conversation, but do not know what to talk about.
The funny thing is that I actually work in a bar. The reason is my anxiety about people. I have few friends here and sometimes do not meet any friends for weeks in a row. My social contacts are mostly work and university, sometimes my partner‘s friends, about twice per month I meet with my best friend and about three to four times a year I meet with another friend whose social life is a lot more interesting than mine. If I did not work in the bar, I would withdraw even more and it would be even harder for me to deal with people in my everyday-life. It is a small bar with lots of regulars whom I know well enough to feel quite secure with them. There are also a lot of guests who meet friends there and who want nothing but their drinks from me, which is also something I can deal with quite well. The worst is strangers who want to have a chat with me and it gets even worse if those strangers are men who have a crush on me. That is when I tend to be cool and less polite to make them lose interest in me as quickly as possible. I am in a relationship anyway, so I am not interested in any other men.
Aside from people, I have a lot of anxiety about fire. I had that in elementary school after having listened to an audiobook for children which was about a pyromaniac who kidnapped a child to set her on fire. She was rescued in the end, of course, but from then on I dreamed of fire and of burning in fire and when I walked to school in the mornings, I would anxiously look around all the time, fearing a pyromaniac might follow me. Connected with that was an extreme fear of thunderstorms. As I got older, hose fears weakened. However, a fw years ago, there was a fire in my parents‘ house. Only my father was a little injured - he burnt his hand - and nobody else was in the house when the fire broke out, yet it destroyed much of the house and my parents had to move out for several months since the house needed to be completely renovated. Even though I was far away, just the fact that it happened to my family made me much more anxious about fire again. Now I have certain rituals before I go to bed. I check the cooker, if all the plates are off and have to touch every single plate to check whether they are really cold. All the sockets need to be switched off and I check that several times. The only electric device which stays on over night is the fridge and I check that there is no paper near the fridge which might ge too warm. on TV, I can‘t watch any film or episode of a TV-series in which a person is on fire. That makes me so anxious I will get nightmares. The same goes for torn-off limbs, shark attacks and similar nasty things which the producers of films and TV-series can come up with.
Any apocalyptic fims I cannot watch either. My family used to be members of a Baptist church where they talked a lot about the end of the world and an absolutely horrible end for all sinners and since I never managed to be the perfect Christian the way the Baptists demanded it, I was far from sure that I would not be one of the sinners who would not go to heaven. Today, I am not a Baptist anymore and can definitely think in different ways about what I heard back then, yet I still get very anxious about it.

Generally, my anxieties concerning different things get a lot worse when I am being thrown out of my routine and my safe, regular life. I hardly ever go out. Every day is spent differently, tutoring or working in the bar, but altogether, these days make a regular week and my weeks have a routine of every day always being more or less the same. The more I can stay home, the less anxious I get. The more regular and uneventful my life is, the less anxious I am. If we had to move to a different city or a different country now, I would be in serious trouble, even together with my partner. If it was really necessary, I guess I could manage somehow, but it would be extremely hard. Moving in with him and to a different part of the city a few years ago was hard enough even though I was so happy to do it, but I was only alright once we had unpacked the boxes and once our flat was really a place to live in and we had settled into our new life.
Only two months ago, I had to have surgery on my knee. The anxiety skyrocketed. The closer surgery and my stay in hospital came, the more anxious I became. I did my best to still concentrate on my courses for university and work, but I got more and more migraine attacks and the morning I arrived in hospital, I was reduced to a quiet, shaky, nervous creature, my breathing fast and shallow, feeling dizzy and sick, completely exhausted, yet in a feverish state of hyperactivity. Fortunately, I was given some medication which must have been quite a strong tranquilizer and by the time I got the spinal anaesthesia, I was confused and a little drowsy. During my hospital stay, I got awful migraines every day, though and those only subsided once I was back home.

Since then my anxiety has worsened. My usual routine has been destroyed by weeks of not being able to do much, weeks without exercise and without cycling. When I only seemed to make very slow progress in physiotherapy, I could not sleep properly and was so anxious I could hardly function. I feared I might not get better and end up being disabled for the rest of my life. When I have these fears, I tend to get into a state of silent panic: fast, shallow breathing, my heartbeat seems to be faster, my whole body is tense, I feel dizzy and like I am hidden in a cloud of confusion, I get hot and cold, shivering while I am actually sweating, my stomach hurts and I am shaky.
Considering how much worse my anxiety is since my hospital stay and surgery, I have decided to seek help and have finally made an appoinment with a psychiatric doctor, hoping I can do behavioral therapy. I never wanted to have to see a psychiatrist or psychologist again, but this is something I cannot cope with by myself anymore and it is also getting increasingly difficult to deal with for my partner. Hopefully, I will make progress then and, eventually, have a more normal life again, a life which is hopefully a little easier.

So I guess I'm back

For a long time, I haven't been writing, mainly because I was not sure if I actually wanted to write a blog about what I was intending to write. A lot has happened within the past 1/2 year and I have decided that I will write again. I will definitely continue to stay quite anonymous for the simple reason that I would feel very uncomfortable if everyone around here knew these things. Not that I would actually write about secrets nobody is supposed to know, but probably about somethings that I don't want all the people around here to know.

I like to put things into writing and I need a lot of practise with writing which is my main motivation for this blog. Let's see what come sout of it.