Are these tears of morning?...

...or mourning?

Awakening this morning to a phone call bidding my presence at Funky Monkey in Santa Rosa, where children run like wild animals and parents (already in a heightened state of anxiety) maintain their sanity. The automatic response continues to be from the voice of my agoraphobia telling me I won't be able to maintain my sanity; I will lose it. "What if?" this and "what if?" that. Using my workbook, I have decided to counteract these statements; these useless, terribly untrue statements.

When a situation begins to present itself, I immediately think of how my anxiety can fit into the picture. However, what I notice is I don't give chance to the positive aspect of the opportunity and rather look at it as another instance where I'll be anxious and I will become exhausted from keeping myself in check. And because it exhausts me so, I become unwilling to try and instead find ways to make the situation not happen, creating avoidance. At what point is it avoidance?

Funky Monkey isn't going to happen today because my friend no longer wishes to go. I feel relieved, and yet guilty for feeling relieved because now I'm not going to be putting myself in an uncomfortable situation. Am I avoiding it? Or am I scrutinizing everything? I think the latter.

I read and have been told once a while ago that knowing TOO much about the issues in your head can be MORE detrimental than good, because then you can no longer behave normally; you'll always be second-guessing every decision or action you make. So I try to look back on how I've behaved before this breakdown: if I didn't want to go to Santa Rosa, I didn't go: end of story. If plans with a friend didn't work out, I sometimes felt relief: it's perfectly normal. I also felt anxious about going places but still went and got through it and never scrutinized so much over the little details of everything. It's so unnecessary.

So I'm going to figure out SOMETHING for today, whether that's staying and cleaning the house or going out for a walk with a monster or two or visiting a friend. I don't HAVE to have a plan for the day to feel like it's not time or practice being wasted. There's SO much to look forward to, so I'll concentrate on that instead.