Recently diagnosed and in my 30s. I’ve always felt like everybody else have received a user manual that I’ve never gotten. A user manual on how to be human and how to interact with other humans. It’s especially interacting with people that trigger my anxiety. I explained this to my psychologist. Her initial response was that I didn’t seem like I had any issues interacting with her, so either that wasn’t true or I’m just really good at pretending. Now I’m sitting here, going over what she said, second guessing myself, and I just don’t know. This was relatively early on in my session, so I think she understood my anxiety later on. She definitely opened my eyes regarding being more aware of my own needs.
I don’t know. Now I just have this nagging feeling of maybe I’m faking my anxiety in regards to socializing.
Idk as someone with a lot of anxiety I feel like it makes sense that you’re less anxious around your psychologist. Cuz I feel like with therapy, there’s a bit of a script, your therapist asks you questions and steers the conversation so you don’t have to think of conversation topics, and you don’t have to worry about being too much because you’re literally paying the therapist to listen to you. Like you said, there are certain people that trigger your anxiety. And just because you’re not constantly anxious in every single situation doesn’t mean your anxiety is insignificant or fake. You don’t have to prove that your anxiety is debilitating enough to need help.