New places make me uneasy

LucyLou

Silver Member
I joined the gym recently and I've booked a spin class for Thursday...but I didn't think it through 🙈 If it was my old gym that I'd been to before, I'd be fine but because it's a new gym I've never been to/I don't know the layout etc I kinda feel like I need someone to come with me for the first time but there is no one I can ask. I feel ridiculous but I have issues with anxiety. I don't know what to do 🙈 please tell me It's not just me like this! 🫣
 
It isn’t just you. I am going through the same thing. I am rehabbing a knee after stem cell injections. I had never been in a gym before. If I wanted exercise I would jump on my bicycle or grab a shovel. I tend to get disoriented when there is too much going on around me. Thankfully buspirone really calmed down my anxiety. Anyway I signed up for the gym which was giant for me and I did it without any help. Then I signed up for a trainer twice a week. I just renewed that for another 12 sessions. The people at my gym were wonderful and I would not have hesitated about telling them the new situation felt a little intimidating.
 
Solution for this : loads and loads of people feel exactly the same as you about gyms. Totally not alone. Speak to the reception team, ask for a tour of the facilities, they’ll show you round happily.

Wear earphones, take some water & a little towel with you, make sure you give yourself plenty of time to park and go in and get yourself set up, so you aren’t rushed and stressing.
 
Go to loo, and then walk around, without exercising. Then go find somewhere fun to spend half an hour (coffee shop, whatever), nearby.

It may not be a seeeeriously human thing, anymore, marking your territory… but there’s something about using the bathroom, in a new place, that makes it familiar. Even a strange restaurant on a blind date. Much less anywhere you expect to spend time. Excuse yourself, go to the loo, return faaaaar more confident. Just because lizard-brain. The walking around is why salespeople give “tours”. As people are infinitely more prone to return to places they’re familiar with. Not just the looksee what WE have, but the psych component, of returning to the familiar. ANYWHERE you wish to return to? Go to the loo, and walk around, seeing everything. Entrances, exits, components. Familiar. Yours. Ownership.
 
I joined the gym recently and I've booked a spin class for Thursday...but I didn't think it through 🙈 If it was my old gym that I'd been to before, I'd be fine but because it's a new gym I've never been to/I don't know the layout etc I kinda feel like I need someone to come with me for the first time but there is no one I can ask. I feel ridiculous but I have issues with anxiety. I don't know what to do 🙈 please tell me It's not just me like this! 🫣
you are not alone in feeling like this. i often feel very afraid to go to places where there are lots of people, or its an open space. one thing my therapist used to tell is that I should just go and do what I want to do and that I will find after a while the feelings calm down because I would get engaged in the activity. It is hard to do, easer to say, I know.
 
more assurance that you are not alone, lucy lou, and this assurance comes from a bred and born road warrior who has traveled 3 continents extensively for 69. having been raised in ever-changing places didn't go too awful far in easing the discomfort of unfamiliar places/people. if anything, the trauma of all that instability seems to have heightened my discomfort. the silver lining to that cloud is that it also gave me tons of coping mechanisms, many of those coping mechanisms were provided by the therapy support network which helped me recover from all that.

"stretching my comfort zone" is one of the therapy provided tools i use for the phenom. when i start feeling the fall into agoraphobia, i gently stretch my comfort zone to show myself that i can do so safely. taking a class just outside my comfort zone is one of my more successful approaches. your spin class sounds pretty close to the approach i have used. someplace familiar, but just different enough to challenge me without too much shock to the system.

springing from there, i solidly suggest you at least try to carry through on the class you already signed up for. if it doesn't work out, it's no great loss. the willingness to try is the important part in my just-a-patient therapy book.
 

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