The New ME!!!!

I am becoming a new me!  This is so exciting because I have been trapped in this crazy brain of my for years and I am finally beginning to break free and reach the surface.  If you had asked me a year ago if it was possible to feel happy and looking forward to what is to come, most of the time I would probably told you it wasn't.  Now I am finally there and I am starting to see that my life can be much different than it is and that change is possible.  This past week I took a trip to Disneyland with my mom and sister.  I think this trip is a great example of the new me in action.  On the trip I did several things that really challenged me.  Most people would see these as kind of lame, normal everyday things, but to me they were huge scary things that held me captive for years, but are slowly loosening their grip.  One major thing I did was go to Disneyland for a little while by myself.  In the past I have had a really hard time doing anything alone if other people are in groups but I did it and I even went on a ride.  For a little I walked around uncomfortable but then I got it together and did a ride.  What I realized is that people probably didn't notice me at all and if they did they might have thought I was walking toward my group and if not, did it really matter what they thought? (The answer is no by the way!)  In line for the bathroom I asked some ladies if they were waiting, they told me no.  Later I started beating myself up for it, "I should have know they weren't in line, that was dumb to ask, they probably think I am so odd" were all thoughts that ran through my head.  This time however rather than dwelling on these ideas and letting myself come to the conclusion that I had messed up big time, I stopped the thoughts dead in their tracks told them they were liars and moved on to something else.  (Just what my therapy tells me to do!)  It felt good to not beat myself up and later my mom told me she had noticed me asking and thought that was a good idea and she would have done the same.  The last big thing that happened was flying home.  We drove there but I had to fly home and that is a huge anxiety trigger for me (It is the security that does it).  Anyway I was a little nervous before hand but managed to keep it under control and when it came time to enter the line I kept myself mostly calm.  In the line it became clear that I would be going through the body scanner which is the main thing that causes my anxiety of security, I went through (this time without shaking, which did not happen the first and only other time I had done it), and I did get stopped and they had to check my pocket but it was all ok and they let me go on my way.  The whole thing was not as bad as I thought and although my brain still jumps to "oh you just got lucky this time, it will be bad next time"  I have the potential of using this situation to make huge progress.  I just need to work on my thinking and not let it drag me back down.

Dreams, jobs and secrets

These things aren't really related, but hey they're whats on my mind and isn't that the whole point of this blog thing? Anyway, might as well start with the first...dreams.
These little things are crazy! They are also quite awesome. I just love going to bed at night having no idea what kind of adventure is in store for me the next 10 or so hours. Not to mention the excitement of waking up and remembering the absurd dreams that occurred over the course of the past night. I love waking up after a good dream having those great happy feelings, though it sucks when you relize it was all just a dream. I would say the best dreams to wake up from are the bad ones,especially the ones about some upcoming event where everything went horribly wrong and you wake up realizing it didn't happen at all. It really is like having a second chance! But the fun ones are the crazies, you know the type, those d reams where you wake up and are like "what the heck was that?" and then you laugh about how absurd your night time brain is. I wonder if science will ever come up with a really good reason for why we have such psycho dreams? Though I think if they do it will take some of the fun out of it.
Well enough about dreams I've got to keep this moving or I'm going to end up with another novel! Anyway on to jobs. I have been spending the past few months trying to start my own etsy buisness and let me just tell you it is quite complicated. The government has this way of making things so confusing. All I want to do is open a tiny little buisness where I sell some of the things I make so I can go on crafting and not have my house explode. Yet this seemingly little task is not so little at all, it seems the government doesn't care if you are big or small they still have 110 hoops for you to jump through, not to mention all the fees.
And now on to secrets! I'm not really sure why I put the exclamation point there,it's not like this is real exciting, nope sorry I'm not about to give up all my secrets, at least not yet. I do have secrets though and that is just what I want to talk about. It's a little crazy that we still have lots of secrets in this age of technology. I mean information can spread to practically the whole earth in a matter of seconds. Not to mention all the sites that exist to help spread secrets, like twitter, Facebook or all these blogs, yet secrets still exist. I have a fair share of them. I'm not really sure if that is good or not. There is a part of me that wants to scream out all my secrets to the world, and then there is the part that continues to keep the secret. Sometimes I wonder if things would be better if I was more open, but then I freak out a little, I am so used to trying to be "normal" that I am not sure I could handle having people know I am not (what is normal anyway?). On the other hand I am dieing for my secrets to be know because they are a huge part of who I am and why I do what I do, and believe what I believe. Then of course there is the matter of telling people, do I just come out and be like "hi I'm anna and, laddie dahdie dah,"? Probably not but really how do you become more open about things. Maybe a blog like this is good, if people read it, I mean right now as far as I know I am writing this to no one, plus if people do read it I have no idea of knowing who knows and who doesn't. I did share some stuff about my social anxiety which is maybe good, if people read it. I know for me it would have helpped if I had learned about it earlier and how else to learn then if other people share. Plus it makes me feel more comfortable around people if they know I am scared out of my mind. It's kinda crazy that that is what I am partially scared about with people (that they can tell I am nervouse) and yet once they know I feel so much better. The worst part about sharing a secret is the moment you realize it is out there and yet you change your mind and want it back to yourself. So to avoid that I don't think I will share my secrets, at least not yet, we will just have to wait and see.

Hello?

First off I'm not really sure why I put a ? mark there (at the title) but hey it just felt like what I wanted to do.  Anyway I have had this blog for about a year now and have never written anything and I figured, its about time.  (I mean this is called shy girl speaks, so you can't blame me I'm new to this whole talking to people thing it just took me 12 months to warm up to it. ha!)  I guess I should start with the basics.  I'm Anna, and I have social anxiety. (Hi Anna)  If you don't know social anxiety is a form of anxiety disorder where the person is essentially afraid of people.  It is kind of a hard thing to deal with since there are people pretty much everywhere you go and it is hard to avoid them unless you become a hermit (which I would say I am... mildly).  I have had this problem for a long long time, like at least since 6th grade.  Unfortunately I didn't know it was a problem until maybe 10th grade.  At that point I knew it wasn't normal to be so scared of people but I still didn't know it was a real disorder.  I learned that it was real in my psych class in 12th grade and then researched it some more.  By the winter of my freshman year it was pretty bad.  I lived in the dorms for the fall semester and over the course of that semester I basically slid off the cliff.  I remember sitting in the stall of the girls bathroom for 20 min because there were people in the bathroom and I was too afraid to come out.  Now of course in my mind this made perfect sense I went in and then when I wanted to come out the girls were in the bathroom so I waited for them to leave only they didn't but after about a min of waiting it was too weird for me to come out so I had to wait for them to leave but it took 20 min.  That's totally normal right (WRONG!!)  After suffering through my fall semester, having no friends and basically never leaving my room except for class and to go to the group I was attending so I could feel a little less miserable because it took up 3 of my 5 evenings I decided college wasn't for me, at least dorm life and moved back home.  I knew I needed help but was too scared to get it and no one was going to get it for me.  It wasn't until February when I was in the hospital for totally unrelated things that I finally decided it was time and asked to speak with a psychiatrist.  The psychiatrist told me that I have social anxiety and some OCD tendencies, which was what I thought but it was nice to here a professional confirm my suspicions.  She prescribed meds to help me and they did.  I wouldn't say that they fixed it, actually far from that, but they made it possible for me to feel normal again, which was/ is nice!  Oh I forgot prior to meeting with the psychiatrist I had met with two different psychologist.  One of them didn't really think anything was wrong with me and told me to just talk to people and the other was a little too freaky for my liking.  I realize at this point you might be wondering "what is social anxiety? ...Scared of people, what does that mean?"  So basically when I am around people I am very uncomfortable and nervous feeling and can't act how I want.  I used to describe it, before I knew what it was, as if I was taken over by another person when I was around people.  She is "Whitey" as I like to call her, because when I am like this it is as if Anna left and all that is there in her place is a white, blank screen.  Its not that my mind is filling with things to say and I just don't say them, there is nothing there to say.  In addition to this I have many other fears, mostly centering around people but they include: airport security, driving, calling people on the phone, talking to people, asking questions, walking across a room, walking toward or past someone, seeing someone I know ,and strangely unrelated dams!  I am sure I have more fears but that is what I could come up with now.  One skill I have, if you can call it that, is avoidance.  I am very good at avoiding things, since I am afraid of something and it makes me nervous I usually avoid it so over the years I have gotten quite good at that.  The problem is that it is messing with my life.  I can't make or keep friends because I don't like to talk to them on the phone, also if they are a new friend I don't like running in to them.  I can't call anywhere so if the information isn't available on the web or in a book I must go without it.  I also don't like asking questions so if I don't know the answer I either need to figure it out or do something different.  I used this same technique for spelling, if I didn't know how to spell the word I just used a different one.  Unfortunately although there are many ways to say something there are far less ways to go about your life with the bare minimum social interactions and still have an enjoyable time.  In January I also got a book and CD therapy set to work through this with.  It is starting to help but I have been doing it rather slowly and it is a long process.  Also it is a lot of work because part of what I need to do to get rid of this problem is the very things I am scared of, which is really tough.  And that brings me to today!
          This was a good day for me, "Why?" you might ask.  Well I made a phone call to a real place, with real people that were strangers and asked them for stuff.  Now I know in regular people world this is not a big deal but in my world it is a huge deal, this is the kind of thing that I would dread for days, I might even loose sleep over it, and it could be as simple as calling a place to ask for their hours.  After making my call I have to tell you calling people is not that bad.  Its not exactly the thing I would like to do all the time but it was ok and I did it.  I got what was needed be be covered out, I got my information and I am still alive and just fine.  (on a side note if you are wondering why I am so scared of people or what I think is going to happen, for the most part I have no idea, some instances like airport security I figure they will think I am a terrorist and cart me off to jail despite me telling them otherwise and all this simply because I looked a little nervous.  Which is the problem I am nervous they will think I am nervous which makes me more nervous.  Ok well now that I have dragged you off topic so far lets go back)  That was only the 3 third phone call I can remember making in a few years.  (Pretty crazy for a 20 year old huh?)  So now as I continue on this journey to normalness (if there even is such a thing, ok maybe just a new craziness) I invite you to come along.  Its bound to be a crazy ride, plus I might even throw in a few explanations of my strangeness which is bound to be a little interesting!