Welcome
I hope you enjoy your time here. It seems to me that anxiety is like a slip-knot. Not sure if that makes sense, but it seems to me like this cycle of making my world smaller to alleviate my anxiety, which works - but where the price is that my world gets smaller. It just seems like the anxiety tightens when I try to appease it. I used to be a social person, but I dread social interaction more and more. When I go to the grocery store or the gym or the laundry, I often find myself sitting outside in my van for a long time before I go inside. Sometimes I just go back home. I don't know when it happened - in fits and starts I guess over the last few years. Depression used to be my main schtick, but now anxiety has become at least as big an issue in my own life. I post here, I read here, but I don't interact so much anymore. I am about to spend about 24 hours with friends and going to a large event, and I don't feel up to it. Thankfully I have benzos which I will be taking. I try not to take them too often for fear they will stop working or that I will become addicted. But to endure being around both friends and strangers, I will be making use of them.