Before; After

Working Through: Essay 4

So often in therapy sessions, we talk about the interconnectedness of emotions and emotional experiences. For instance, anxiety forces me to alienate myself, and that, in turn, increases my loneliness.

I really hadn't connected my feelings of alienation and loneliness with anxiety until later in life.

When I was still living in Dallas, I found it very difficult to reconcile my feelings of wanting to be present in my friends' lives and the excuses I created to cut myself off. I'd need at least three days advance warning to prepare myself for any social interaction. Spontaneous get-togethers were tough on me. Sometimes I had the energy to go along with my friends. Most of the time, I'd say "No," despite knowing that I'd have an excellent time with them if I went.

Everyday activities—chores, if you will—also present problems for my anxiety. Grocery stores are about as fun as being descended upon and pecked to death by a flock of pigeons. Any kind of shopping can be a horrible experience for me. The people. The lack of order. The lights. The sounds. The options. All of it together can be an overwhelming experience. So much so that I find myself holding off on buying groceries for sometimes months on end, or if I am in desperate need, I will find a store that is quieter, smaller, and more expensive. Sometimes it feels like my emotional stability is worth the extra cost.

Again, these were experiences I chalked up to normal. "That's just the life of an introvert, I guess," I'd tell myself and believe it. Having no outside experience to compare, I just thought it was all a part of how I am wired.

In part, this is true. Our biological makeup, not to mention the incubating environments of our childhood, contribute to the adult that emerges. Yes, I am sensitive to overstimulating environments. Yes, I find prolonged engagements with a lot of people to be emotionally draining. Yes, I need alone time to recover and recoup after long periods of time spent in others' company.

However, what is weird is the push-pull I feel, the conflicting desires of wanting to interact with others, even crowds, and not wanting the overstimulation, not wanting to face another week of further isolation.

To determine whether or not a personality characteristic is normal or part of a disorder, specialists have to consider if the experience has a debilitating effect on the individual, whether or not the conflict rises to the level of distress.

But, how do we recognize an experience as distressful when we've lived with it for so long that it just is? How do we distinguish between personality traits and the effects of a disorder that has lodged itself so firmly into our lives that it has become a foundation of our identities, of how we see ourselves?

Removing a key characteristic of one's self-image is a terrifying experience. Who are you once it's gone? How to triangulate the position of yourself when the stars that had served as guides are no longer there? Better to be alienated and lonely. At least those feelings are familiar and recognizable.

Alienation and loneliness contribute to and are products of the anxiety cycle, which is desperate for an equal share of emotional energy. My anxiety exhausts me into alienating myself, even when I want to be social, making it more difficult for me to make meaningful connections with others. Friends, true friends, are in short supply in my world. I have a lot of people I consider friends, but mostly because "acquaintance" sounds too formal.

Yes, "friend" can work, but I treat the word more carefully than that. For me, a friend is someone with whom I can talk about anything, including, most importantly, fears and humiliations. There aren't many people who fit into that category. And so, I place my friends into their own categorical levels to protect myself. I assess their character to determine if they qualify for a promotion to the next, higher level. Rarely has anyone reached the uppermost levels, the loneliest levels.

My anxiety is the avoidance of emotional pain, the avoidance of failure. My loneliness is the desire to connect and to be seen. Both work together within a cyclical dynamic, feeding off of and reinforcing each other.

To be seen, I must first make myself visible. To find connection, I need to reach out despite the threat of falling, despite the pain of rejection. Being emotionally open terrifies me as it does so many others.

Recognizing and naming the forces that govern our lives may be the first step in healing, but that doesn't mean the difficulties stop. Growth requires failure. And although we need safe places to regroup, to center ourselves, we need to reach beyond those safe places if we want to grow beyond the boundaries set by fear.