Issues (get me a magazine rack)

[nonentity]

A quick rundown: I leave the house approximately every 8 weeks or so to see my psychiatrist. His office is an hour and a half away, and the whole time I'm in a frenzy wondering if my cat's okay, if the house is burning down, if bridges we cross will collapse, if we'll get in a wreck. I have such severe phobias about social interaction that I can't speak to my own grandmother on the phone. A good friend of my mom's and a man who's been very good to me is dying and I can't go see him. When I'm around people I feel that my every word and even every movement or gesture is stupid and wrong and later on I look back on everything I said and did and torture myself wondering if I made a fool of myself. Is there anyone who can at all relate to this? Am I a FREAK, a total abberation???

 

[Slothrop]

You're not a freak. Everyone here on this site has similar problems. We're all a bit different, but if we didn't find some part of ourselves irrational and hard to control, we wouldn't even call them problems.

It's important to keep your focus on what you can to to alleviate them, though. If you spilled a glass of water on the kitchen floor, you wouldn't just stand around thinking about how awful it is that it's there and that you spilled it. Don't let your problems pin you down like that. Focus on what you can do, even if you're not sure what will work.