Be Excellent To Each Other

Splitting off from the thread about Bipolar Bits And Bobs, I would say that I have some mild anxiety issues about stuff the general population seem to think is completely normal. The main one being using the phone. I HATE IT. If it's a choice between getting a company to honour a warranty or picking up the phone and calling it in, I'd much rather just go buy a new one. Thankfully the Xbox 360 warranty return was completly online, even down to arranging a UPS man to the door.

I was suprised, to be honest, how quickly it felt "normal" after Dimmers shot me that first Burny Pee invite and we were sitting chatting...I guess it's his lovely beard of CocoPops that does it.

Any of you guys n gals suffer similar tendancies to avoiding "normal" activites to the point you'll go out of you way to do it? More to the point, what methods have you developed to deal with it?

I hates phones too. I'm also morbidly terrified of going shopping in a big supermarket, and not having enough money to pay for all the items.

I would do almost anything to avoid using a phone. Or talking to people I don't know..and sometimes talking to peopel I do know.
Going out to new places. Hospitals have given me panic attacks from the amount of people there. As does my Doctors surgery.
I take meds, I hide and don't look at people..though I'm told by various specialists to ease into making myself do certain things.
They would say we have 'avoidance issues'.

I've had anxiety for almost as long as my chronic depression made itself at home.
Must be going on 18 years now.

It's such a horrid feeling when it hits me, and panic attacks are nasty but the worst thing is when people think you are just odd or lazy or say it's inyour head (obvious joke) or pull your socks up. Worst possible things to say to people with mental health issues.

I get palpatations, sweats, shakes, rage, headaches, feelings that are harder to describe, the urge to leg it etc.
Meditation helps control some of it, my meds help some of it...otherwise..I'm still looking for my answers.

credit card FTW!

Aye. With bigger places I'm not too worried because I have my Debit and Credit cards on me at all times in case of stuff like that but smaller purchases like some bread and milk from Spar, I find myself counting coins 3 times over, even when I'm in the queue, just in case I look silly at the checkout. Although a few weeks ago this happened when Shewolf and myself when to get some bits and pieces thinking we would use her Debit card, then realised we left it at home ><

Luckily I only live round the corner so I raced back and got it but by then we'd held up people in the queue and as I got in the door she voided it and we lost our place. Evil checkout girl. EVUL.

I hate going to London. I'm better than I used to be because I know I can cope. In fact I'm OK outside of rush hour. But what I hate is all the people and all the rush. If I get even abit lost I can get really stressed.

You've just got to try and stay in control really.

This happened twice? The one time I remember it happening she didn't void it.

Oh heavens, this. I hate talking to people on the phone. It's a very bad dislike to have in my job, though, as a large amount of my work is done via the phone....

It also means I'm quite bad at staying in contact with people - people I have wonderful, engaging conversations with face to face but cannot do so on the phone. I refuse to answer it when it's ringing, in fact. I wait and get Mrs Chris to answer or call them back for me.

I even hate calling take away companies - I get Mrs Chris to do that for me too.

Hate it hate it hate it.

I don't like ringing up banks, shops, etc, either. It's weird because I use the phone all the time at work and cope fine.

I had an ambulance called out for me a couple of months ago due to anxiety issues (I thought I was having a stroke). I'd never experienced it before so didn't know how to deal with it (I've dealt with depression before, but never had anxiety attacks). I went to my doctor and he gave me this self-help guide. It states a lot of obvious things in it, but really helped me out.

It turns out it was mainly due to the stress of buying a house that I was feeling this way, and haven't suffered any attacks since. I still have to deal with season-related depression (or SAD, or whatever you want to call it), but it's nowhere near as bad as when I was younger.

Which is exactly what you cannot do when you have mental issues.

I'm fine on the phone. In person, I'm pretty shit, unless I have a reason to talk; ie. I'm at work and I'm actually providing a service. I seem to do almost anything to avoid looking people in the eyes for too long.

I hate crowds. I used to listen to music when walking through town, but I became so self-conscious of my breathing that I felt really uncomfortable.

Man, I'm shit.

Oh I appreciate that. What I experience going to London is nothing like what some people experience.

Pull yourself together, peasants!

I used to hate phones. Then I worked in a call center for two years. Now I can't fucking stand them. I never, ever answer the phone, unless it's my girlfriend because.. well I don't want to appear too eccentric. When I do get anybody on the phone the conversation lasts about 30 seconds, and I usually say I'm running out of credit or my phones dying let's go meet someone and talk the old fashioned way. There's something about phone conversation that irks me. I'm quite an sarcastic fucker and it's very difficult to guage how people are feeling without body language to give you guidelines.

Mobile phones were put on this earth to torture men everywhere. I didn't actually get one till 3 years ago, about 5 years after everybody else had one.

Would you prefer to be beaten by animal, mineral or vegetable?

Bloody hell, this place is excellent, as it's proving that I'm not alone with my anxieties. I hate using the phone unless it's someone I know very well. And I hate talking to people I don't know, especially if I'm sober. And I hate making smalltalk with people at work when I'm really, really not that interested in their lives. (This makes me sound like a proper misanthrope - I don't hate talking to everybody at work, just people who drone on and on about nothing.)

I once ate a whole nutmeg. This made me think I was going to die, briefly, but after the worst effects wore off (a couple of days later) I found I was suddenly morbidly afraid of using the phone.

After a few months that wore off as well but I still don't really *like* to speak on the phone and as a result don't really have any RL friends. Or that might be for other reasons. Anyhoo, the moral of the story is not to eat a whole nutmeg. I hope that has helped someone.

Ok, not all about Anxiety...but I think I just spotted the first side effect of my new 'you'rementaltakethis' medication.
which is odd since I've been taking it for two days. Two.
It's not a nasty one as in it's making me ill..it's just making me eat. More than other drugs. Help.

I'M SO FUCKING PECKISH, CONSTANTLY

Belated contender for Post of the Week.

So they prescribe cannabis after all! Things are looking up.

Stay away from the fruit shortcake biscuits.

It really IS like having the munchies..which sucks royally as I'm trying to not eat more than I should.
All my drugs increase weight gain..I'm going to cry soon.

Thanks dude! I liked Lave's raw meat one. It's been good today actually, I think we should have a stories thread every Friday.

This. All of this, to a scary degree. Right down to the takeaway thing. In fact, just substitute "Mrs Malc74" for "Mrs Chris" and I might have written it myself (er, except that I don't, thankfully, need to use the phone much for my job).

I think avoiding using the phone is normal considering the amount of people I know who think the same thing. I'll use it if required, but I tend to avoid it.

Excellent - so the people using their phones all the time are the ones with the mental problem? Awesomes.

Same here, except Mrs Dimrill is just as bad.

Avoiding using the phone as much as some of us do is not normal, sadly. There is just a lot of people with issues I think.
I'm not talking 'I don't like doing it but I have to'. I cannot. I so very rarely use a phone and I am lucky to have someone that will phone for me. I'm dreading not having someone there to phone for me.

I'd rather go without tasty takeaway goodness than actually phone for it. I'm fine with answereing phones, fine on the 360, but if I have to actually call anything I break out in a cold sweat and panic like a panicking thing.

I'm also blood-freezingly scared of spiders and broken noses.

And yet you will all pour your hearts out through a keyboard on an internet forum.

That's not a dig btw.

Getting them or looking at them?

Of course, you will find most people who hate communication love forums.
I don't have to use my voice. No picking up of a phone, no face to face communication and I can be as annonymus as I wish.

Make all takeaway, appointments and jobs have an email/online option I say!

Yep, it's definitely in my top two, along with that one from Dimrill in the CoD4 thread.

With me it's because I have an opportunity to think about what I'm communicating, rather than it just tumble out of my gob in a mess on the phone.

Either and both. I broke mine once in a club in Morecambe, because I'm cool, and it was the most horrifying sensation ever. Not long before that I was watching a documentary on rugby, and a guy got his nose splattered across his face in a rather vulgar fashion. I almost passed out at that.

This has taken ages to type, as I keep having to touch my nose to make sure it's ok...

And I'd rather type on a forum for a million years thn call one person one the phone.

I hate using a phone if there's no clear goal to the conversation. Organising a night out, getting a credit card bill settled, booking an escort for the night... no problem.

But chit-chat? Fuck that.

Ah yes. This.
Even so, communicating via text on a screen can prove a hassle, thigns get mistaken and taken out of turn all the time and I still make cock-up's because thigns sound perfect in my head and sound like gobbledygook to others...easier than making odd noises over a phone though.

Predictive text is the spawn of Satan. I once texted my (now ex) girlfriend to ask her if she "fancied going out for a neck tonight". She's not a vampire.

I agree, I never use predictive.

I always use predictive to make sure I'm not stuck in the 20th century.

I use it because I can't spell.

Nor can it half the time

Another enemy of the telephone, here. Partly because they all have a horrible, nagging, urgent sort of sound about them, which I think someone on WoS likened to a stranger walking up to your house and shouting "hey, talk to me!" into an open window. I'm no good at chatting on the phone unless it's to a dear friend, but I'd be much more inclined to pick it up if it played the music from the underwater levels in Donkey Kong Country, or something.

I'm generally very friendly and personable 'in person', but when I was a teenager I'd often bugger off for a walk at break times during my A-Levels, sometimes because my chums weren't around and I didn't fancy loitering lonesomely, and sometimes because I really couldn't handle the prospect of engaging in small-talk with someone new. Happily, I can pretty much talk to anybody now, but whereas I'm quite comfortable with moments of silence, I find that other people misconstrue them as a lack of interest on my part, or as awkwardness. Also, I'm still not very good speaking within a group of people, unless they're all my mates.

I can chit-chat with my mother, but that's it.

I have a horrible habit of saying yes to friends even when I know I can't make whatever I am being asked to. I seem to justify it in my head that I will tell them later, then never do. I know as I think about it that if I say no to a mate they will be fine with it but for some reason I try to please a couple of people and end up pissing off pretty much everyone.

I get exactly the same with bills that haven't been paid. A few years ago I was out of work for a while and got mortgage demands which I just ignored. After a couple of months I was forced to address them by my, dad who had stumbled across a late payment when he was round my place. It wasn't as bad as I had imagined but the fear beforehand was immense.

Even though the trauma of dealing with this was not as bad as I imagined I still leave stuff to the last minute that might involve conflict or explaining myself. Including asking for leave at work. Which is a human right.

Mr Dave, that's the best post I've ever seen you make. You didn't say much, but yes. THAT.

I was listening to a guy on the radio with this problem, he got called a comulsive liar because he jsut felt he needed to please everyone all the time.
I have never been like this but it must be horrible when people get arsey. I guess you have to really try to do the things you say yes to or remember, somehow to say no and they will not think less of you for it. I hope your friends can help you with this.

My friends are sort of used to this. It is not that I don't do things when I say yes as such. I just do a few things in a lame half arsed way which I think will appease people but everyone thinks I am not bothered about their feelings. It is something I have to work hard at to stop doing. I am trying to change my behavior as we speak.

Well, you understand why you do it which is half the battle. Keep at it, Sir, and best of luck to you.