Do you have social anxiety?

Yes, I experience the same thing, especially when it comes to work. I think this is normal for people who suffer with anxiety. We start to think the worst before even entering into the situation, and dread the anxiety that follows, creating a vicious cycle.

I get worried about getting stressed, then being anxious. It happens to me even when things are going okay, sometimes. I try to focus myself back in the present and really pay attention to what I'm doing right now, and just take things one short step at a time. I find it helps.

This is a super common thing. It's what makes people who have anxiety avoid situations. It's the fear of the fear. I used to give myself anxiety attacks being worried about the possibility of having an anxiety attack!

I think one of the best things is to tell yourself, yes, you may have anxiety but you totally know how to deal with it. And anxiety is a common human emotion. If you need help, people will be there and pretty much everyone can relate to that awful feeling.

For me, it was being okay with having some anxiety that really helped me to get past that.

I totally had this, to the point where I absolutely strategised how to handle it. I had some people coming to stay and was terrified of how I would show my deep and extreme insanity: I had to work on how I would react if something upset me.

I knew that I was getting insanely upset at things that turned out to be nothing, so I made an executive decision that I would take the hit. I would pretend it didn't bother me if something happened. If it turned I had been right later to have been bothered, and getting upset would have been the right thing to do, I had to say to myself I'd deal with that if it came to pass.

And since then I've survived all sorts of things that were freaking me out. I remember them. The stress was a killer but when I was freaking out I'd go hide in my room or in the loo.

More recently someone came to stay and walked out of the kitchen holding a litre tub of yoghurt I had bought for everybody, and she was dipping brown bread into it, eating the bread, and dipping back again. Every instinct wanted to scream 'what the hell are you doing?' but I quelled it. I did not so much as bat an eyelid.

That goes down in history because doing something like that for me, when I have NO money and that yoghurt had to be thrown away and when anyone not born in a pigsty would have put a portion of yoghurt into a bowl, showed I had mastered my own reactions and was able to, if not not have them, then at least not show them.

Not showing them is absolutely as good as not having them, when you have social anxiety. :D