I'm in kind of a strange place now. I don't think
I'm very emotionally literate a lot of the time,
but I'm coming to better understand the anxiety
which I feel, and some of my responses to it.
I've always been a procrastinator, and frequently
I'm probably 'unreliable' (at least in a
professional sense), but I always just figured I
was either lazy, or avoiding conflict.
As I get older (nearly 40!), and I begin to slow
down and spend more time to understand my own
mind, I think so often these are byproducts of
deeper anxieties. I'll procrastinate to avoid
confronting that anxiety, or I'll cancel meetings
or call in sick to avoid the deeper feelings. The
thought of meeting other people in the real world
is horrifying to me. I like videoconferencing
because I can still be in my own bubble. I hate
the thought of a large crowd, or being in an open
space surrounded by people.
For sure I'm more in touch now with the general
feeling of axniety. It's like a restlessness, or a
sense that I can't focus or do a single thing
until something ELSE is dealt with -- but that I
can't deal with that other thing. So I end up
stuck, and all I want to do is hide away and avoid
any sources of stress.
But I still don't understand the cause. I though
for a long time that I was happy around people,
that I could handle extroversion, and that I
should encourage that in myself. But now I realise
that being around people takes so much energy from
me. I know this is a trite observation now, but I
absolutely loved the pandemic lockdowns for this.
I didn't have to interact, and a whole source of
stress went away for me. I also realise that
pre-pandemic, when I was drinking, a lot of the
time I was trying to paper over the anxiety, or at
least neutralise the natural introversion, or
replace it with drinking, or cocaine, or whatever.
