Tag Archives: atychiphobia

My Biggest Motivator

Fear

Yup… that is it.  And I am not alone in that.  There are many of us.  Fear completely over-runs all other motivations.  It is far too powerful for mere humans to overcome.  At least for this human.

Fear comes in to play as anxiety.  It can spike up so high I become immobile.  I can not move… My body will not respond to my thoughts.  It is a very strange feeling.  There is a lock in my brain that stops signals from getting to my legs.  There is something deep going on.

Anxiety to the actual stopper… but fear is the greatest anxiety producer.  And I have a lot of fears – going out, crowds, dogs, meeting people, failure, heights… the list goes on.

There are things I try to do that combine some of those into one.  It gets pretty bad.

If I just stay home, I don’t have too many problems.  But even here things happen.  Staying home saves a tremendous amount of energy because of so much less anxiety.

The issue then becomes – can I live a good happy life this way?  Yes… I can.  I can still go out locally for things I need.  And I can still go on trips, and visit places I want to see.  There are issues with those trips, but they are well worth it.

So why should I push harder?  I am happiest when I can just life my life at home.  I do need to find ways to make some things work better, but I can do that.

That is my goal… at least for now.  Once I get this working, then I can think about ways to get out more… perhaps.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel, is an Oncoming Train…

I need to stay home.

We have all figured that out by now.  I have about half the anxiety during the week if I do not have to do major shopping.  Got it…

My biggest problem right now though is that I no longer have a psychologist, and I no longer have any faith in the system.

So what do I do?

I Love my wife very much, and can not imagine life without her, but she does not understand the choices I have to make.  And she resents any change that makes her life more difficult.  She sees no need for any real lifestyle changes for the worse.

This is not because she is selfish.  She is actually a very giving person.  But… she does not understand the limitations imposed by anxiety, depression, phobias… and all sorts of social problems.  She does not see that simply getting older makes everything harder.

My increased physical issues are okay, but my mental decline is not.  I should still be able to deal with all the stresses, and anxieties, and depressions, I did when I was younger.  I can not decline.

Those are all things that cannot be solved just by wanting to… with a little effort… or with any amount of effort.  It hurts me when I think about the mental things I can’t do anymore.  It really is a terrible loss – I even often struggle to fully visualize 3D objects… and rotate them around.  It used to be easy.  My brain can not do what it could do 20 years ago.

It is nothing of anyone’s fault.  The great majority of people simply can not relate to any of it.  We are so far out of their experience, that they can not even imagine it.  So everything we say, can be dismissed… or worse.

But… I love her, so things go on, and will be really wonderful for us.  I just need somewhere else to connect with where I am, and can get help guiding me thru all the crap.  Right… I no longer have that person… sure, sure…

Life goes on.

Alone With My Thoughts…

I am lonely.  I spend virtually all my time alone.  It has been that way for many years.  It’s okay… I have to live like this.  As an agoraphobe, it is difficult to go out at all, and going out to socialize is pretty much out of the question.  I stick to running a few errands to local places I am familiar with.  The people who work in those stores, are the people I socialize with most.  We chat…

But then… I have just about as much fear of people being here in my home.  I feel invaded, and uneasy.  Even talking on the phone takes a toll.  Any conversation can unexpectedly become way to stressful, and I have to get out of it.

I am usually on Facebook, and that is pretty much the limit of what I can do socially – I can’t even do that some of the time.  So I deactivate when my brain is swimming in too many thoughts.

Basically all this means that I am best when I am home alone, with little or no contact with the outside world.  It is what I have to do, not what I want to do.  Normally I make the best of it.  I have been getting better at doing things at home.  I am even enjoying some of my time.

It is not the life I thought I would be living.  Lori helps.  She tries to make home more fun, and pleasant for me.  We can even go out sometimes.  But going out takes a great deal of planning, and so many things can go wrong.  So most trips get cancelled.

I guess there is really nothing new in this Blog, but it seemed to want to be written.  When I let people down because of my phobias, I know I am slowly pushing them away.  Sometimes it is easier for me if I just go ahead and push them away, so I don’t have to spend so much time having anxiety about it.  They are better of that way too.

Pushing People Away – an Example

Today I messed up plans I had been working on for weeks – months actually.  It was to meet someone I have been wanting to meet for years.  How much of that should I say?

It was all set for next week.  And then cats going to the Vet, and Mother’s Day came in, and I blew my plans apart so completely, that I ended up having to unfriend this person on Facebook.  (Yes I am back on Facebook)

I can not go out very often.  When things get too complicated, my brain stops relating to it, and it all has to go away – Start Again.

I am sure this is one of the major reasons I do not have any close friends.  When it comes to going out to do things, it is all rather problematic.  It is actually easier to have people over… but we live a little out of the way.

ANYWAY… my point is that when plans get upset, they generally fall apart entirely, and may then never happen.  That amounts to pushing people away.  My brain must eliminate the cause of the distress… It ends up being bad for me, and I have hurt someone.

My brain is my own worst enemy.

Monday… My Day of Rest

Monday is a day I have set aside for low stress.  I do not hold myself accountable for doing very much.  No chores, shopping, or projects – unless I truly feel like it!  Of course I still have to feed the cats… and myself.

It also gives me a little time to slow down my thinking, and even allow new thoughts to penetrate my brain.

And I can reflect some.  I am trying to make some changes… more than just cosmetic.  I need to see how things really are, and it helps to step back from them, to see truth.  I never really know where it will lead.  And on Mondays, I am fine with that.

I will be 58 years old next month.  Not a major milestone, but I am still trying to find my life… out there somewhere (figuratively).  I get very tired sometimes – too often.  It gets hard to do anything.  And I want to move ahead.

Today I went for a morning constitutional <—  I love calling it that!  Even though I am having back issues, I am trying to do some walking early in the day.  I does feel good, and gives me a little time out of the house.  Small steps… not that I walked in small steps mind you, but I am making small steps forward.  It’s a sort of metaphor.  I never metaphor I didn’t like.  Got it?

All seriousness aside, I just want to feel better.  And for now, that means feeling better staying at home.  I need to feel more like my life matters, and I am having some fun.  Then I can think about going out more.  The world will still be there.

I need to find myself, and find ways to be happy, and have fun.  That is first, and foremost.

The Fear of Failure has to be Curable

Atychiphobia has to be curable because it is not really a disorder… it is the result of a disorder.  Results can generally be cured.  The fear of failure can be disproved thru direct action, with the help of others.  It can not be done alone.

This is not a primary issue.  But it is one that has to be dealt with.  So… I need to have more successes.  Small ones at first… around home.  As I start to feel better about things here working out,  I can start to stretch myself a little bit.

I need to slowly, thru time extinguish this fear – at least diminish is substantially.  I have a few little plans to try to help with that.  But there is some fear of failing to deal with the fear of failing… hmmm…

Shopping Error Makes Me Feel Terrible

I ordered something from one of my favorite on-line places, and it arrived today.  It will not work for what I was planning.  And now I feel terrible… as if I am a huge failure for making this mistake.  I know I should not feel this way, but I can’t help it.  I feel empty.

I will be able to use them for something… and they are not worth the time and effort to send back.  So I will set them aside, and figure it out later.

But I am still feeling terrible about it.  It has dragged me down into a pit.  It’s been a bad day anyway – I am having a lot of back pain, and my toes are hurting whenever I try to walk.  Those things are probably affecting how I am feeling… but this has happened many times before, and I always feel so bad.

This is one reason it’s so hard to make decisions sometimes.  I know how I will feel if I make a mistake.  There has never been room in my life to make mistakes.  Even small things like this – a $12 item – make me crash into myself.

I will feel better later.  But it will take a while… I will be alright in a couple of hours.  Even so, this kind of thing should not be happening at all.  Atychiphobia – the fear of failure.  It drives me sometimes to take months to decide little things.  And when I don’t take a long time to research, and think thru all the options, I am taken down by mistakes.

Sometimes it drives Lori crazy that I just won’t decide!  I have to be way too careful.  I think I am better… but right now I just don’t know.  Being in the pit makes everything seem so much more hopeless.  How can I ever get better?

Can I get better?