social anxiety at 27? skill issue

plus, the signs as items at the grocery store

the author as she writes this

hello! happy cancer season!

excuse time: i injured myself carrying a heavy bag of cat litter home for a kilometre in late may and had a partially numb hand and shooting nerve pain up my arm, so i couldn’t write. it didn’t really get better until very recently. so that’s my excuse for not writing this newsletter for month, lol. even just yesterday i stretched weird and the pain came back for a moment and it scared the shit out of me. but i’m like 99% better.

i haven’t really felt inspired to write about much in the news or culture at all lately. i feel like i’ve been very focused on my own life and not noticing much or having many feelings about external things. which is weird for me, because i love having opinions and yapping about them. it feels kind of selfish of me to just feel inclined to write about myself all the time and how i’m feeling and how i’m doing, but at the same time this newsletter is a bit of a public diary. i like to share my feelings with hundreds of people. if i were more a psychopath maybe i could’ve been a vlogger. instead i’m just the kind of psycho that writes on substack and thinks about starting a podcast on a daily basis.

but i did want to write about this thing that’s been bugging me a lot lately. if you’ve read literally any of my past posts you know i struggle a lot with an anxiety disorder, but up until recently i was managing it quite well. not having panic attacks, able to stay calm in public, able to talk myself down from thought spirals easily, being rational, all that good stuff that came from years and years of therapy.

but lately whenever i leave the house i am just absolutely inundated with anxiety. some of it unplaceable, some of it very placeable, and all of it deeply irrational. this is how it usually goes:

• i leave my apartment to go for a walk. maybe i’m grabbing a coffee or want to go read in the park.

• after about 5 minutes it feels like my vision is changed, kind of fatigued and uneven, i can see everything clearly but everything feels “off.” when i take steps they feel unnatural and almost like i’m being driven by something outside of myself.

• i start to breathe deeper to make sure i’m not about to pass out, because sometimes i do get dizzy from low iron or not eating enough.

• that breathing starts to turn into hyperventilation

• if i manage to get to wherever i’m going, i feel out of breath and very nervous

• if i’m going to get a coffee i start getting extremely worried that i’m going to be acting weird, thinking too slowly or holding up the line, or when i’m waiting for my coffee maybe i’ll end up standing in the wrong place or having to wait somewhere that’s kind of in the way of other things

• i worry that if that happens someone is going to get really upset with me, either outwardly or i’ll just be able to tell by their face or the way they look at me

• if i become too overwhelmed by this, i probably won’t even go into the cafe and just go sit somewhere and try to calm down, probably head back home

• if i try to push through it, i can do everything i have to do but i feel awful about it the whole time. nothing goes wrong, i get my coffee and go sit outside on a patio or go walk some more

• if i’m going to a store, i wander around feeling overwhelmed by fluorescent lights and floor tiles, all of which feel too close to me, like i’m simultaneously a foot tall and 15 feet tall. i get everything i need as fast as i can and leave because i feel like i’m about to pass out the entire time

i’ve been dealing with this for a few weeks now, the social anxiety about ordering coffee or food started a bit before, but everything else has been pretty persistent for the past little while. strangely i don’t feel it when i leave my neighbourhood to go see a friend or run an errand far away. i don’t really know what’s causing this, if it’s underlying stress and agitation or my severe lack of sleep for the past 2 months or whatever else. but it’s super fucking irritating! i just want to do things i used to love doing.

like my bouts of worsened anxiety normally do, i’m expecting this to go away some time soon. i know it won’t last forever, and eventually some other fucked up manifestation of my chronic stress will arise to bother me down the line. but for now, i feel so deeply overwhelmed and upset by not being able to enjoy something as simple as a walk that i just feel horrible all the time. walking a lot was the thing keeping me very sane!

but it made me think a lot about how i even contend with my anxiety in my mid to late twenties. i constantly beat myself up for having this excessive amount of anxiety, and i act like i should’ve “outgrown” it as if it isn’t a mental illness i’ve had since my childhood that will likely affect me for the rest of my life in some way. anxiety, even as a sufferer of it, feels like a childish thing. fear feels childish. you grow up and you learn rationality and you learn how to not be afraid of so much or worry so much. you learn to let things go and let life do its thing.

but anxiety is a feeling all humans feel, we’re supposed to feel it when we’re in real danger so we can be activated enough to fight or flee. so when my brain is mistaking seemingly random or unimportant things as genuine threats and acting accordingly, why do i not have empathy for myself and understand that what i’m feeling isn’t childish or something to be outgrown, but it’s something wrong with the way i’m processing my surroundings. i can overcome it, but “outgrowing” feels like such a self-critical assholish way to treat myself.

even though i realize all of this i’m probably going to keep being mean to myself. oh well!

anyway, here’s an astrology list

the signs as things in a grocery store

aries - a very large tin of ground coffee (tin will be reused to light a fire inside for fun)

taurus - nice olive oil

gemini - a pack of cigarettes (this grocery store has cigarettes)

cancer - organic free-range eggs

leo - the most expensive yogurt in the smallest vessels

virgo - mildly but nicely scented body wash

libra - a bag of avocados

scorpio - very big bottle of bleach (and refuses to explain why they need so much bleach)

sagittarius - 3 scratchcards (they win $5 from one)

capricorn - conditioner

aquarius - a fun condiment that they think they will use more than once but won’t

pisces - barista oat milk