PaperStreet
08-26-2012, 05:10 PM
This my first time visiting, much less posting, to an anxiety forum of any kind. Which is surprising as I've been living with severe anxiety for many many years. Current events have brought me to another kind of fear and loathing to which I'm willing to try anything to lessen or aleviate even in the slightest bit. Try as I may to be short and concise, I have a tendancy toward getting carried away and droning on endlessly and for that I must preemptively apologize. Nevertheless...
For the majority of my adult life I've been wandering aimlessly from minimun wage job to minimum wage job, rarely lasting more than six months. Usually these are jobs in food service, as a waiter or barista, all accross the spectrum, from tiny privately owned corner cafes to muti-million dollar restaurant/hotel chains. They always start out relatively well, mostly because I'm able to bullshit my way into my employers and coworkers good graces through politeness and a general friendly attitude. It doesn't take long, however, for my true nature to present itself. My fearful, nervous, self-conscious and general overzealous behavior in desperate attempts to keep these people's perceptions of me positive. At the first sign of any negative reaction towards me or my actions, it releases almost frantic overcompensation further disolving my interactions with them into an awkward, uncomfortable aura of which there becomes no escape short of giving up and starting over somewhere else. Usually before they find some excuse to fire me.
My relationships with women are not much different. They always begin on a high note. I'm active, social, running strictly off that rush you get when you just start dating someone you really feel a connection with. Once they figure out (you can really only fool someone for so long) that I have no drive, ambition, or life goals; once they see that my daily life is driven strictly by a sense of overwhelming fear and self-loathing, that's the bneginning of the end. It then becomes a long, drawn out affair where they make numerous attempts to either help me, in the only ways they know how, to get over my fears and at least try to live a semi-normal life or they simply cut-and-run, which is always the best avenue for them, to which I make sometimes ridiculous attempts to prevent but ultimately I realize that it's overwhelmingly obvious their lives are infinitely better without me in it.
I've been on and off Social Security disability for my conditions (currently I'm in the process of getting back on it with problematic results). I've seen a number of therapists over the years, to which they all agreed that I have generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and moderate obsessive compulsive disorder. I've taken various medications but haven't been on anything for the last three years, which is a massive part of the problem. I believed at one point that my issues could be resolved through sheer willpower and positive thinking. Through behavior modification and just a general "will to improve" and while I believe there are much stronger people than I who are able to achieve this, I am not one of them. I know I need medication, I need therapy, I need some form of treatment but I simply don't take the steps to get it. The process of treatment through government supplied means is so daunting a task, so long a process filled with so much time to wallow in fear and depression that I never get past the initial phases. I always give up, slink back into my own mind and long for release. So many times I've done this for months, years on end, constantly looking back and thinking "If I had only done X."
So I find myself in another untenable position. My girlfriend of two-and-a-half years (the longest I've been able to sustain a relationship) has recently realized that to continue to stay with me while I make zero effort to improve my life, would only serve to enable me to continue this way. This is someone with intense drive, ambition, talent and charisma to take herself wherever she wants to be in life. Why or how she ever could stay with me for so long remains a mystery and I believe more and more each day that to remove myself from her life completely would be the most humane thing to do.
I was ready to keep writing more inane things about my pointless existence but I realized I've already written over four paragraphs and it's way past time to stop. So there you have it, in a nutshell as it were. Thank you for enduring, those of you who've made it this far.
For the majority of my adult life I've been wandering aimlessly from minimun wage job to minimum wage job, rarely lasting more than six months. Usually these are jobs in food service, as a waiter or barista, all accross the spectrum, from tiny privately owned corner cafes to muti-million dollar restaurant/hotel chains. They always start out relatively well, mostly because I'm able to bullshit my way into my employers and coworkers good graces through politeness and a general friendly attitude. It doesn't take long, however, for my true nature to present itself. My fearful, nervous, self-conscious and general overzealous behavior in desperate attempts to keep these people's perceptions of me positive. At the first sign of any negative reaction towards me or my actions, it releases almost frantic overcompensation further disolving my interactions with them into an awkward, uncomfortable aura of which there becomes no escape short of giving up and starting over somewhere else. Usually before they find some excuse to fire me.
My relationships with women are not much different. They always begin on a high note. I'm active, social, running strictly off that rush you get when you just start dating someone you really feel a connection with. Once they figure out (you can really only fool someone for so long) that I have no drive, ambition, or life goals; once they see that my daily life is driven strictly by a sense of overwhelming fear and self-loathing, that's the bneginning of the end. It then becomes a long, drawn out affair where they make numerous attempts to either help me, in the only ways they know how, to get over my fears and at least try to live a semi-normal life or they simply cut-and-run, which is always the best avenue for them, to which I make sometimes ridiculous attempts to prevent but ultimately I realize that it's overwhelmingly obvious their lives are infinitely better without me in it.
I've been on and off Social Security disability for my conditions (currently I'm in the process of getting back on it with problematic results). I've seen a number of therapists over the years, to which they all agreed that I have generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and moderate obsessive compulsive disorder. I've taken various medications but haven't been on anything for the last three years, which is a massive part of the problem. I believed at one point that my issues could be resolved through sheer willpower and positive thinking. Through behavior modification and just a general "will to improve" and while I believe there are much stronger people than I who are able to achieve this, I am not one of them. I know I need medication, I need therapy, I need some form of treatment but I simply don't take the steps to get it. The process of treatment through government supplied means is so daunting a task, so long a process filled with so much time to wallow in fear and depression that I never get past the initial phases. I always give up, slink back into my own mind and long for release. So many times I've done this for months, years on end, constantly looking back and thinking "If I had only done X."
So I find myself in another untenable position. My girlfriend of two-and-a-half years (the longest I've been able to sustain a relationship) has recently realized that to continue to stay with me while I make zero effort to improve my life, would only serve to enable me to continue this way. This is someone with intense drive, ambition, talent and charisma to take herself wherever she wants to be in life. Why or how she ever could stay with me for so long remains a mystery and I believe more and more each day that to remove myself from her life completely would be the most humane thing to do.
I was ready to keep writing more inane things about my pointless existence but I realized I've already written over four paragraphs and it's way past time to stop. So there you have it, in a nutshell as it were. Thank you for enduring, those of you who've made it this far.