Can't Stand It

I never do anything because of my anxiety. I try to push myself but it's too big. Never is how it feels, I do succeed sometimes, but it's rare. So what's the answer? I don't succeed every time. When I do, I feel good but it comes right back and then there's days and days or weeks and weeks or months and months of just staying home, day after day, because I'm not succeeding at pushing myself to go out.

Hello,

I'm sorry to hear you are struggling with this. Do you think there's any chance you might be able to push yourself to go see a therapist to get some help for this? Or perhaps if that seems like too big a task at the moment, perhaps you could look into therapy that might be via skype or over the phone? If you are not sure where to start looking, perhaps you could look in the phonebook to see if there are any support lines that you can call to get some more information about where to find some more help....

It is important to keep trying, even though it's a really hard task...

I have a therapist. Is that your answer to everyone on this forum?

I think it's really good that you've had the courage to be seeing a therapist. I always feel like it's important to suggest therapy as an option to people first because it's really super important that a person has someone in their life who knows about their situation properly and can recommend stuff to them in the context of their specific situation... Cause a lot of people come on here and kind of want this place to sort of replace therapy and real life support, which is not really a healthy idea for them seeing as this is a peer support forum...

I think it's important personally, to keep your focus small, to each day and to set small goals for each day to make sure that you don't end up stuck in the house for too long. So like, today I went out to the clothesline to hang some clothes out, which was stressful for me because I don't usually go outside of my house during the daylight unless I absolutely have to. I've also been trying to go onto my balcony for about 5mins each day lately so that I get more used to being outside in an area that is as low stress as possible so it gives me more chance to succeed and have that positive re-enforcement of the effort I have put in...

What have you tried to push yourself to do today that might be a small improvement on yesterday? If you haven't done anything yet, perhaps you can think of a small goal for yourself for today and let me know how you go...

One step at a time...
I don't know how much tools your therapist has given you regarding relaxation techniques / changing thought patterns, I'm assuming here that he did give you some.

Try to find some small, reasonable goal. Easiest thing for you in level of anxiety. Then do it like everyday (applying said techniques), until you're comfortable with it. Your goal must not be to not feel any anxiety while doing it : it must be to stay until the anxiety has gone (always does). Victory is facing the anxiety, making the effort – only way to learn that there's nothing dangerous there – so don't be too hard on yourself. Ideally you should even reward yourself for all kind of effort at facing the fear (no matter how small it would look to an outsider).

Good luck !