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On agoraphobia, anxiety, and social exhaustion: some thoughts, with bonus Whose Line
Who's Noah, and who's Noah's wife?
I don't talk much about my day to day life—mostly because I was away from LJ for a few months, but also because there's just not a lot of it to talk about. These last few years I've become increasingly home-bound, largely by choice. I don't work, and I dropped out of school. Devon and I live together, of course; I live with his family as well, but I spend most of my time in my room. I see my family once a week. My social life is largely online, and at this point (as I'm spending most of my time reading) fairly limited. All of this is more or less intentional. It's how I cope with agoraphobia: I'm rarely afraid of being unable to flee when there's little that I'd want to escape. These days, I'm more likely to desire social contact than be frightened by it.
That means that the boy and I go out about twice a week, though it's usually just the two of us. And recently, what with my limited online social life, I've had even more energy for time spent in public. But the agoraphobia and anxiety are always ready and waiting, even if I've gotten better at avoiding them. Yesterday, after a couple of days in a row of going into town with Devon, I went out on our street (we live off an unpaved road at the edge of town where there are hedges and fields everywhere) to cut grass for the guinea pigs (no pictures of them lately, but they're fine) and ran into one of the neighbors. I've met a few of them this way, which is fine; this was just five minutes spent talking to a man (in his 60s, perhaps?) that live a few houses down. But it was just too much for me, that unexpected conversation. I came back to the house and crashed hard. It took me all of today to recover enough that I wasn't exhausted and unfocused and continuously replaying the conversation (my anxiety often manifests in obsessive thoughts).
I read a lot (the sequel to Maledicte, yay!), and watched a whole lot of Whose Line.
I'm used to this cycle: I conserve my social energy, actually want to expend it, enjoy expending it, but as soon as it's gone—I'm out for the count. Luckily I can crash in safety these days, but it's still impressive how hard those crashes are when they come.
Yeah. (The best line of that clip: the very last one.)
I don't talk much about my day to day life—mostly because I was away from LJ for a few months, but also because there's just not a lot of it to talk about. These last few years I've become increasingly home-bound, largely by choice. I don't work, and I dropped out of school. Devon and I live together, of course; I live with his family as well, but I spend most of my time in my room. I see my family once a week. My social life is largely online, and at this point (as I'm spending most of my time reading) fairly limited. All of this is more or less intentional. It's how I cope with agoraphobia: I'm rarely afraid of being unable to flee when there's little that I'd want to escape. These days, I'm more likely to desire social contact than be frightened by it.
That means that the boy and I go out about twice a week, though it's usually just the two of us. And recently, what with my limited online social life, I've had even more energy for time spent in public. But the agoraphobia and anxiety are always ready and waiting, even if I've gotten better at avoiding them. Yesterday, after a couple of days in a row of going into town with Devon, I went out on our street (we live off an unpaved road at the edge of town where there are hedges and fields everywhere) to cut grass for the guinea pigs (no pictures of them lately, but they're fine) and ran into one of the neighbors. I've met a few of them this way, which is fine; this was just five minutes spent talking to a man (in his 60s, perhaps?) that live a few houses down. But it was just too much for me, that unexpected conversation. I came back to the house and crashed hard. It took me all of today to recover enough that I wasn't exhausted and unfocused and continuously replaying the conversation (my anxiety often manifests in obsessive thoughts).
I read a lot (the sequel to Maledicte, yay!), and watched a whole lot of Whose Line.
I'm used to this cycle: I conserve my social energy, actually want to expend it, enjoy expending it, but as soon as it's gone—I'm out for the count. Luckily I can crash in safety these days, but it's still impressive how hard those crashes are when they come.
Yeah. (The best line of that clip: the very last one.)