Friday night was an all around huge success. I am feeling so proud of myself for preparing so well. I was able to concentrate during dinner on just eating what I wanted and thats exactly what I did. We had tacos and I ate one soft taco which was really good and then I was content so I stopped and no one said anything about it. I was able to enjoy and participate in the conversation and never had to focus on my breathing or positive affirmations. I think I was more comfortable than usual because I had told her before about my anxieties and so the pressure was off for trying to impress them and be "perfect" because the secret was already out. I had so much fun. We told funny stories and laughed and afterward went out to see a movie (1408 which I recommend, it was a good scary movie). After the movie we left to go home but I had so much fun I wanted to hang out with them again as soon as possible. Its very cool that I was so calm and collected. Granted, I took a little Clonozapam before I went and that might have helped but I'm okay with that.I feel that this experience will help me in my goal to break out of the captive fear of caring about what others think. It might be a slow crawl, the anxiety is still there, and some days are worse than others- but this was a huge success for me. I know that by writing it all out beforehand I was able to enter the phobic situation in a more relaxed state of mind which is what you are supposed to do before you "expose" yourself to your fears.
I am hoping that I can continue to document successful situations such as this so that they will outweigh the setbacks. Also the more success I have the more I can draw for proof to stop the overgeneralization that I will always have an attack in a certain situation. I might have mentioned this already but its so much easier to remember the bad situations because they leave a harder impression in your mind. The good times, the successes, are much harder to remember and so I want to remember this day, this feeling of pride and accomplishment and success. photo by simon24601

Thanks to everyone's love and support. I really do appreciate it.
I get a gold star for the day :)
2 comments:
Sounds like a great night. I haven't watched a scary movie since I was diagnosed, thinking that it would probably make me jump out of a window or something. But I do want to see that one because I'm a pretty big John Cusack fan. "Grosse Point Blank" is one of my favorite movies of all time.
I've had a lot of success recently, too.
CONGRATULATIONS! I'm so happy for you. See, it can be done, with a bit of preparation. And yes, it is work, but it's worth it.
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