Things are Alright.

Things have been going pretty good. I still experience high levels of anxiety from time to time but I like the fact that I don't obsess over these thoughts for days and days like I used to. I am still finding it difficult not to avoid situations at work.

Yesterday I had a meeting. I was sitting at a table in a room that wasn't all that big. I was feeling about a 6 on my anxiety scale at the beginning but felt worse as more people walked into the room. In the end there were about 15 people crammed into a small room to the point where some of us had to stand against the wall because there was no room to sit. Having all those people around me made me feel extremely uncomfortable and hot and I couldn't handle it so I made some excuse about going to drop something off at my desk. When I returned to the room I stood at the back where I felt more comfortable. At my worst I felt an 8 on my anxiety scale. I plan on developing an exposure schedule where I can practice being in these situations outside of work more often so that when I encounter these situations at work they won't feel so bad. I will discuss this during my next session with Stephanie at Clear Path Solutions.

I attended the meetup group this weekend after missing a couple of sessions and it was very informative. There were 3 naturopathic practitioners giving a presentation on things like natural remedies, diet, acupuncture and hypnosis. There were some things that were brought up that I found particularly interesting and I will give some of these therapies a try. The naturopathic doctor recommended certain vitamins, like vitamins B6 and B12, and natural remedies, like Rescue Spray, to help with anxiety symptoms.

I am really enjoying having the weekends off. I find it very relaxing to spend time with my family. On Saturday my family and I went out shopping and on Sunday my wife and I took the kids to park and had some pizza. My youngest boy loved it so much that when it was time to leave we had to drag him into the car to go back home and this was after spending close to 2 hours at the park. I got a lot of things done on Sunday like cleaning up the yard and putting together a storage bench.

Things are going pretty well but I feel that I still need to work on reducing the high social anxiety I experience and this can only be done by finding the time and different ways to practice social exposure more often. We'll see how it goes.