Last night before going to sleep I decided to take a quick glance online for online self-help resources for dealing with anxiety, and the first link that I clicked on in the search results was for The Anxiety And Depression Association Of America (ADDA) website.
The video playlist was short so I decided to watch it before going to sleep:
The videos were short and entertaining and well-done and gave some helpful tips, and I appreciate that these were free and I hope to start practicing these techniques.
Thank you Dr. Wilson.
I would also like to thank Lost Truth for inspiring me to try to work on this issue again, and so thank you very much Lost Truth. 🙂
*Update*
I am not sure what is going on or how long it will last but I applied some of the techniques in this video series today, and I have felt the least amount of anxiety in public today in as long as I can remember; it is amazing!
At work I felt the most comfortable that I have ever felt there since I started working there over a year ago, and I was able to walk around without feeling all self-conscious and uncomfortable and stiff and awkward and worried about being looked at et cetera!
It is like my subconscious turned itself down and / or I gained some control over it or something, but we will see how things go as I try to put myself in more uncomfortable situations to see what happens.
The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield.
Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.
The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story.
Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.
There are many voices in this novel: children’s voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden’s voice is the most eloquent of all.
Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure.
However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself.
The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart.
It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.
J.D. Salinger’s classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951.
The novel was included on Time’s 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.
It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality, and in the 1950s and 1960s it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.
Yesterday I was walking outside when a bug flew in my eye causing me to try to quickly get my eyeglasses off but I accidentally cracked one of the arms of my glasses when doing this, so I had to tape it and order some new glasses online, and hope that they survive for two weeks until my new slightly larger glasses arrive (the Zenni Optical Rectangle Eyeglasses 125116).
I did not voice record some of my dreams as usual last night, I have to get out of bed and walk to the living room to voice record my dreams so that I do not disturb other people who are sleeping, and so half of the time I do not voice record my dreams during the night so I forget some of my dreams and I forget some parts of the dreams that I do remember; and so now I can only remember part of several dreams from last night.
Dream 1
All that I can remember of this dream from last night is that I probably remember hearing music and it was probably the song Utopia by the music group Goldfrapp from their music album Felt Mountain:
But that is all that I can remember of this dream.
Dream 2
I am not sure if this was part of the third dream or part of a separate dream, and so I will type it as its own dream.
All that I can remember of this dream or this part of a dream is that it involved anxiety including generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder, but I can not remember if it was about my struggles with it and/or someone else’s struggle with it and/or if this dream was just about this topic.
But that is all that I can remember of this dream or this part of a dream.
Dream 3
All that I can remember of this dream is that it took place during maybe a somewhat gray day and that a fictional woman with whitish-color skin named Elaine was connected to things throughout this entire dream, the name Elaine came up many times in the dream, and Elaine was what connected various dream characters to each other.
Elaine was like a combination of Mrs. E from the LCS Job Center (employment agency) in the city of D combined with one or more women I know and maybe a woman I do not know.
I remember thinking of fictional past memories that involved Elaine, I think that she knew my dad and several other people like Mrs. CH (the mother of my former male classmate DH), and through one of these connections I was introduced to Elaine when she needed help with something (maybe she needed her computer fixed or something like that).
So in my false memories I went to Elaine’s house several times to help her with some things, I was probably introduced to her son who was about my age, and sometimes I would visit them at their house like I was a friend of the family.
But somehow we had not seen or communicated with each other in many years, those were old memories, and I wondered what they were doing now and why did we all lose contact with each other.
My memory is too flawed but during the dream I remember meeting my former male classmates JC and DH, but I can not remember any of the details other than talking with them.
I remember meeting Elaine for the first time in many years, and I also met Mrs. CH and Mrs. Elaine probably invited me and the others to her house.
Elaine lived near a pond in a field in a multi-story apartment-like house, and I remember talking with them about old memories and what has happened in our lives over the years since we last saw each other.
I remember feeling nostalgia and many other emotions/feelings, including a few mixed feelings that I could not quite translate or understand, and I got to meet Elaine’s son again for the first time in years inside the house on an upper floor.
I remember talking to him and I remember something about martial arts and political activism, possibly violent activism, and I did not want any part in violent activism so there was some disagreement about that and I refused to take part so he was angry about that.
After talking with Elaine’s son I remember Mrs. CH and one or more other women telling me that they always felt that Elaine’s son and I had a connection, they said that after all of these years that we were both single and married, and they took this as a sign that maybe we should start dating.
I was confused by this because my sexual orientation is heterosexual and I can not see myself ever trying a homosexual or bisexual relationship and I am not sexually attracted to men and I am only sexually attracted to women in real life/daydreams/dreams/et cetera so this made no sense to me, and I was even more confused that people like them would even suggest this to me.
I tried to keep an open mind and think back and think deeply to see if there was any truth to their statements to make sure that I was not wrong about this, I tried to explore memories and feelings/emotions past and present and think of future scenarios, but I could not find anything except for some of those confused mixed feelings that I mentioned earlier and feelings of nostalgia about the past so their thoughts and suggestions still made no sense to me so I told them this.
Even after explaining this to them and thinking deeply about it they still felt that they were correct, I disagreed with them and I told them this, and I was still confused by this.
I saw myself as a past family friend of Elaine and her son, that was all, and my sexual orientation has always been heterosexual and I never see that changing and I have no interest in experimenting.
Even after telling them this I still was so confused and surprised by them even suggesting this because they know me and they should know that their suggestion makes no sense and because this was not something that I would ever expect from them, and so I continued thinking about this trying to make sense of why they would even think of something like this and suggest something like this but I woke up.
If I had awakened a bit later I wonder if I would have realized that the reason this all made no sense is because it was a dream, or would I still have been so confused and surprised that I still would not have realized that I was dreaming?
The Daily Post had a Daily Prompt today called Naked With Black Socks, and this is what it said:
Are you comfortable in front of people, or does the idea of public speaking make you want to hide in the bathroom?
Why?
And this is my response:
No, I am not comfortable in front of most people, and the idea of public speaking does makes me want to hide in a bathroom.
Because of social anxiety disorder and any other anxiety disorders that I might have, shyness, introversion, negative past social experiences, not being properly trained and adapted socially, not agreeing enough with or fitting in with or being associated with any group or groups, isolation, and many other reasons known and unknown.
I think that Sleep Paralysis is worth reading because it provides details about an unique and scary sleep paralysis experience that is unlike any sleep paralysis experience that I have had so far, I think that New Theme: Twenty Sixteen is worth reading because it lets the public know about the new default WordPress theme Twenty Sixteen which is a general purpose theme that I think is just good enough for that role to consider using, I think that Turbulent Emotions is worth reading because it shows a long and detailed response to a Daily Prompt compared to mine, and I think that Dream Journal 12/6/15 is worth reading because it provides details of a somewhat rare unbalanced and very negative dream compared to my usual dreams.
Dream
I can only barely remember part of one unclear transitioning dream from last night that I did not voice record which took place during the day in a slightly fictional version of the city of D, and I think that I was at my parent’s house working on or trying to fix a computer; and my parent’s were at the house.
At some point I realized that I had left my wallet at my uncle WC’s house in my cousin CC’s chest of drawers, and so I left to walk down the street to go get my wallet before someone else finds it because I was afraid that someone would steal my money and other things inside my wallet.
I noticed that my dad’s work van was parked in or too close to the yard where my aunt JE’s house is supposed to be and so I was going to move it once I got my wallet, and I remember walking down the street outside my uncle WC’s house and I remember thinking about my wallet; but I can not remember if I got it or not, I just remember walking back up the street at some point, and I moved my dad’s work van by parking it near where the garden used to be by The G House.
The next thing that I remember is that my former male schoolmate GR lived in the house where my aunt JE’s house should be, something happened where my former schoolmate GR got angry and he started threatening someone in my family and/or I and other people in the neighborhood, and then he brought a gang of men with him to force his will over the neighborhood.
The dream then became a bit like the video game Fallout 4 and I remember gathering all the people in the neighborhood together to unite them so that we could stand up to my former schoolmate GR and his gang to let them know that they were not going to force us to do whatever they wanted, I remember inspiring everyone with speeches and eventually some of us got weapons, and we waited until my former schoolmate GR and his gang returned so that we could face them and stand up to them.
We stood up to my former schoolmate GR and his gang but I can not remember if we fought them or not, probably not, and I think that my former schoolmate GR and his gang backed down; and so I guess my plan worked, and the next part of the dream that I remember took place in a fictional field near a building near the neighborhood where my great-aunt RC used to live that some people call/nicknamed The Old H’s.
My parent’s were there with me behind a fictional building that was probably not far from the B Electric building, I remember my dad mentioning a job and/or about me getting a job, and I remember him getting angry and there was a bit of an argument between us; and I remember my untreated social anxiety disorder and maybe generalized anxiety disorder being mentioned and effecting / affecting me in the dream.
I remember my anxiety levels going up (especially generalized anxiety, and my social anxiety when thinking about various possibly future social situations and various possible futures and my current situation) and I remember feeling afraid just thinking about the job and some other things that my dad mentioned and some other things that I thought about, I realized that things were worse than I thought, and that I probably should try to get some help with my anxiety disorders again after things failed the last several times that I tried to get help.
This part of the dream was negative and I was lost in my negative thoughts and feelings, feeling weak and pathetic and like a loser and mostly hopeless because I could not see/find a path/way out of my situation that was positive, as I tried to think about my different options and as I tried to predict the possibly future outcomes of each option and as I thought about the past and what my dad said et cetera; but that is all that I can remember of this dream.
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