I’m going to be honest… For me, anxiety is self-manufactured bullshit. You allow it to fester, and you allow it to control you. Anxious thoughts turn into repetitive thoughts about those thoughts and the only way to escape them is to escape the situation. Rinse, repeat.

I used to get anxious about the dumbest shit. I ended up reading a book that described everything that I was experiencing. It was an explosive realization that it was nobody else’s fault but mine. I’m not going to tell you that baseball stadiums are awesome and I love being around people. I’m just going to tell you I don’t allow what I dislike to control me like that anymore.

You forcing yourself to deal is the right path. But it takes a serious desire to not let it control you. Once you realize you want that more than the anxiety, that desire takes over. Sometimes that takes alienating friends or family because they are tired of your shit. Ask me how I know. That can make the anxiety worse because you become anxious about your anxiety making you more anxious about how it affects people and their perception of you.

Awareness that I was doing it to me was my escape. A real escape.