Gosh, Brokenbones, this post could have come straight out of my own mind, I so deeply relate. For me, the dread of anticipation is often the worst part, yet is sadly often all it takes for me to find a reason not to go. Such dread can truly plunge me into terrible, guilt-ridden, fear-laced depression for the entire time between the date being fixed and the point at which I either go or, more likely, cancel, and then the guilt and shame and regret, the crazy illogical feeling that I have been robbed of a chance at connection, as though someone or something else stole it away from me and it wasn't actuallly my own doing...
I think it all reflects my very complicated, very conflicting feelings of abandonment and clingyness, longing for human closeness and desperate need for isolation, and this hopeless bind seems to be tightening its grip on my life more and more lately.
As others have said, usually, if I do actually get there, it isn't nearly as bad as I'd feared, though I am prone to withdrawing away into myself, consumed by feelings of intense inadequacy and unbelongingness which can leave me almost frozen and mute and very much not the pleasant social companion I'd have hoped to be. I can obsess myself to near despair through then feeling as though I must be the most awful, dead weight, depressing social companion, and why on earth would anyone want me near them... etc etc etc.
It's still hard to admit to the depth of this self sabotage, even though I know in part it is typical. Wish I knew a way through it and out the other side...
Maddog
I think it all reflects my very complicated, very conflicting feelings of abandonment and clingyness, longing for human closeness and desperate need for isolation, and this hopeless bind seems to be tightening its grip on my life more and more lately.
As others have said, usually, if I do actually get there, it isn't nearly as bad as I'd feared, though I am prone to withdrawing away into myself, consumed by feelings of intense inadequacy and unbelongingness which can leave me almost frozen and mute and very much not the pleasant social companion I'd have hoped to be. I can obsess myself to near despair through then feeling as though I must be the most awful, dead weight, depressing social companion, and why on earth would anyone want me near them... etc etc etc.
It's still hard to admit to the depth of this self sabotage, even though I know in part it is typical. Wish I knew a way through it and out the other side...
Maddog
