So, I have anxiety. I take a medication for it, and my husband is aware and often helps reassure me when my brain gets stuck in a loop. It’s free floating, so it attaches to whatever I focus on, whether or not there is actually a problem.
It’s terrible in person as I know I’m weird and awkward and plus I’m super nervous and I’ll spend hours after an interaction chewing over the things I said and how horrid and awkward I was. They must think I’m a freak. That’s bad enough.
But the internet.
In person, you can sort of read the interaction and the person’s body language and get an idea of the severity of their reaction. I may not be able to objectively tell if it was good/bad/indifferent because of my anxiety, but I can tell how strong it was and eventually put it out of my head.
But the internet. The internet is SO HARD to interpret. Smilies and emoji aren’t helpful hardly at all!
And in this situation I did a horrible thing. There was a weather event someone had filmed, and I tried to share it from their page onto my Facebook page so that I could show my family.
It was friends’ locked.
*gasp* I know!
That person then posted it to my page so I could share it, and I immediately went into this spiral of anxiety. I TRIED TO SHARE IT WITHOUT ASKING PERMISSION went that voice in my head and I spent hours freaking out about it. Were they mad? Of course they were! They had to be! I was the absolute worst!
I mean, I was still flipping out at bedtime, AFTER I had taken an anxiety med. My husband was very reassuring, but he’s biased you know so that he doesn’t notice how awful I am!
I wanted so badly to send a long explanation and apology, but I resisted, because even I could tell I was wigging out. And by the afternoon of the next day things were better.
I can look at it now, and see it was at best a minor annoyance, and that my anxiety blew it all out of proportion. They probably forgot about it immediately. I hope.
Seriously though… anxiety, give me a break! It’s going to give me an aneurysm!
