An Anxious Girl In A Scary World

Making new friends is tough. Especially for someone who has such crippling anxiety. These last couple of months I’ve been enduring some of the worse anxiety I’ve had in a while.  One of my best friends is getting married and I am one of 6 bridesmaids. Which is all fine and dandy except for the fact that I have to interact with all of them on many an occasion.  I’ve had to endure dress fittings, brunches, movie & t-shirt decorating parties, long distance drives, and bridal showers.  These things are not out of the ordinary for a bridesmaid but to me it’s almost been torture.  I’ve been so self conscious about not only my body, but about how I talk, what my laugh sounds like, what my makeup looks like, how I’m acting. I’m constantly worrying about whether I’m talking too loudly or laughing too obnoxiously. I’m worried about saying the wrong thing or oversharing. Every time I’m with the girls I’m in this constant state of anxiety.  I will say ...

There must be something I’m not learning from all of these relationships or something that I’m not accepting about these relationships because I keep finding myself in the same ones over and over again. Today’s reading in The Language of Letting Go was about surrender. It was about overcoming our current circumstance and how the circumstance we are in right now holds a valuable lesson for us even if we don’t know what that lesson is now. The reading also says, “We must go through it until we learn, until we accept, until we become grateful, until we are set free.” So, until I learn my lesson I have a feeling that I’m going to end up in this endless loop of damaged no good men. I also have a feeling that the lessons I must learn are how to put up boundaries and self-advocate. I know that those are the two things that I struggle with not only in my relationships but in my everyday life. Another lesson could be that I can’t change these men no matter how hard I try or how much I wa...