Does it help to know that there are more of us out there? I say amen to the dog anxiety + people anxiety + hypochondria + anxiety with flying and newly discovered anxieties about crowds in general (thanks to covid). We would assume WFH would help but it kicks in right when zoom puts the virtual “spotlight” on my display picture! The best part of this is that I am seemingly an extrovert to close friends (but internally I seem to hate meeting people and covid has helped a ton in reinforcing this behaviour)!
The only thing that helped was exercise, which doesn’t really get rid of the anxiety but only reduces its magnitude and duration. I don’t know if I have a solution but here is an “amen” to everything you said and hope it helps to know there are more of us out there.
It definitely helps. Listening to more people talk about it has been wonderful. More interestingly, in the work context, recently a manager who was pretty high in the org admitted it to a roomful of people saying he forgot his 'pills' for stage fright. This changed something for me making it a condition rather than something I used to be ashamed of before. Exercise definitely helps - any physical thing actually. I sometimes fall back into my lazy routine and this is when my gloomier, anxious self re-emerges more.
Does it help to know that there are more of us out there? I say amen to the dog anxiety + people anxiety + hypochondria + anxiety with flying and newly discovered anxieties about crowds in general (thanks to covid). We would assume WFH would help but it kicks in right when zoom puts the virtual “spotlight” on my display picture! The best part of this is that I am seemingly an extrovert to close friends (but internally I seem to hate meeting people and covid has helped a ton in reinforcing this behaviour)!
The only thing that helped was exercise, which doesn’t really get rid of the anxiety but only reduces its magnitude and duration. I don’t know if I have a solution but here is an “amen” to everything you said and hope it helps to know there are more of us out there.
It definitely helps. Listening to more people talk about it has been wonderful. More interestingly, in the work context, recently a manager who was pretty high in the org admitted it to a roomful of people saying he forgot his 'pills' for stage fright. This changed something for me making it a condition rather than something I used to be ashamed of before. Exercise definitely helps - any physical thing actually. I sometimes fall back into my lazy routine and this is when my gloomier, anxious self re-emerges more.