The last few months, I’ve managed to do quite a lot and push myself way past my comfort zones both in therapy, socially, in the workplace, in my personal life, and in my own mind. I’ve challenged my anxiety by putting myself in socially terrifying situations and navigating my way out of them while learning to combat the anxiety at the same time. I succesffuly managed a retail cashering job that forced me to socialize and actively engage with people on the daily, experimenting with makeup, performed my own original pieces in weekly open mics amongst other local artists, launched myself into the dating scene, lived with roommates on my own in the world, and I learned what it meant to be me socially (found myself so to speak), but while a lot of progress has been made, I still have much to do.
I’m still haunted physically by my PTSD, and as a result, I am controlled by my fear the same way my anxiety and panic attacks used to greatly limit me. However it’s not as easy a task to challenge my fear because it’s not fear itself that I need to challenge it’s specifally physical fear I need to challenge. My greatest fear is that when I return to school in the fall, I might fall into a situation that greatly scares me, and I might freeze and dissasociate once more as I do when physically frightened. At the moment when in a situation that reminds me of my trauma even ever so slightly physically, I freeze up and/or dissasociate similarly to what happened during my traumatic event regardless of however prepared for that situation I might have been.
Therefore my problem isn’t knowing how to protect myself because I was a champion karate fighter growing up, and I had taken self defense classes at my school targeted for these situations, but nonetheless when I needed it, I froze and couldn’t move. I don’t want to not be able to live my life fully always living in fear that I won’t be able to act. I want to know that I can help myself. With this as my ultimate goal to help me feel more prepared and ready for returning to school, I’m undergoing my own exposure therapy to help teach my body to act through physical fear and not freeze up. This exposure therapy will target many and ideally all my physical fears, but, to be quite frank, there is absolute no guarantee that this might even work. I could just be metamorphing into a dare devil, but, at this point, I’m pretty much willing to try about anything. So, don’t be surprised or startled if you begin to see pictures and posts about some of my adventures. I have sky diving, bunjee jumping, rock climbing, and many more physically terrifying activities on my to-do list this summer. Wish me luck!
❤ life as an agoraphobe
life as an agoraphobe 