Stress Center Peer Support

Im a 21 year old female and I still feel like I'm not living my life. I mean don't get me wrong, I have much to be thankful for. But I can't stop dwelling on events in my past and what should have been. One event in particular where I pushed a boy away that I think I had feelings for....my counselor suggested facebooking him just to say "Hey" because she felt it was my perception that things went so bad. So I decided to take a risk and go ahead and friend him to get closure and move on with my life. But he ignored my friend request which proves that he still hates me. The kicker is it wasn't my fault I hurt his feelings.... the situation was that I couldn't say Hi to him due to my anxiety and panic which made me freeze and he thought I was snubbing him. I tried to make up for it later on but I'm thinking he must of had feelings for me to still be hurt. I don't expect him to come crawling back to me, since we are in college now and moved on with our lives but I just wanted so badly to make things right. Any suggestions?
I feel like no matter how hard I try to come up out of this that its not getting better. I'm still working on the program. I just feel like I could cry everyday. I had to go back on medication because I was freaking my self out so much I wasn't sleeping. I am a Christian and I'm doing my best to lean on the Lord and look to the future and just try and move on with my life.
I feel like if I would have had a great high school experience/social experiences that I wouldn't be so screwed up today. I blamed myself for the longest time about pushing people away and not being able to have a social life or go to dances with my friends. But I finally figured out it wasn't me it was the anxiety that got in my way. I want to keep on fighting so I can just be a normal 21 year old and live my life but so far no good........any words of encouragement?

I whole heartedly know what you mean about pushing someone you like away...I've done that about 3 times now with 3 diffrent guys. There was the constant eye contact and it was very obvious that they were interested but i was so afraid that hey maybe i was reading them wrong or what if they were just joking and I go over to talk to them and I make a fool of myself. So instead of going to go talk to them I end up not doing it and feeling really aweful about myself for not doing so. It really really sucks to feel that way.

So I decided to take a risk and go ahead and friend him to get closure and move on with my life. But he ignored my friend request which proves that he still hates me.

One way you can look at this is as if this was a court case. A statement like that would not hold in court because it is not necessarily 100% true. There are many reasons why people don't accept friend's requests, a big reason is because they have so many friend's requests and so they don't even bother to check them out so we really don't know if they have declined or ignored it.

So after saying that maybe just adding him as a friend at first isn't such a good idea but you can still send a message. Be honest, tell him that you felt like you were pushing him away but you didn't do that on purpose. You felt alot of anxiety about him and so it was really difficult. People are pretty understanding when you talk about your insecurities with them which i've experience a numerous ammount of time. Heck for all you know, he could have had anxiety towards you as well.

I feel like if I would have had a great high school experience/social experiences that I wouldn't be so screwed up today.

I understand why you are saying that, I was saying that exact thing as well but it really doesn't help that much to tell yourself that. You were suffering back then and probabbly missed out on a number of social events but that doesn't mean that because of that you will always miss out on social events.

I want to keep on fighting so I can just be a normal 21 year old and live my life

I read in this really informative book (Hope and help for your nerves) about the idea of fighting against the anxiety and depression and it had alot of really good points. 1 thing is that you are already in fight/flight mode when you have the anxiety and by fighting the anxiety you are just adding to it. The key to overcoming this problem is to stop fighting so you won't need that response as much. It's a very challenging thing to do and seems to be the opposite but it really does the trick. I highly recommend checking that book out to put your nerves to rest and so you can get on with your life. If you can go to ebay or amazon.com and find it, the book is really old (probabbly the 60s or 70s) so it will be a bit harder to find.


hope that helps,

Mike

Mike-Thanks for writing and giving me some words of encouragement. I have been thinking about writing him a message for a while and I will definitely consider what you said. I know no matter what I need to move on with my life and I will continue to try. I will check that book out you mentioned as well.
Thanks again

Your welcome. I'm thinking of doing the same thing with one of those 3 people i was talking about. Well when i move back to the city where he lives and get back to going to the gym in the afternoon (which is when he goes). Anyways good luck with that.


Mike