I’ve been struggling with anxiety for a few years now and at the beginning of the year I decided to see a psychologist because it was getting too much.

Since seeing her weekly for about 7 months now I feel like she has helped a lot, for example before seeing her I struggled with even just going out to eat with my close friends as well as even the thought of going back to university for the first time since the pandemic. Now I’m back on track when it comes to going out to eat with my close friends, and I go into university without feeling overly stressed out. Now don’t get me wrong I’m super proud of that, but every time I think about it, I think back to before I used to get anxious and how it’s no big deal, and can’t help thinking I should be better. My therapist said I’m being to hard on myself but sometimes I just struggle to remind myself I’m only human and I am making progress.

The bigger problem to me is I really want to make new friends, but I’m really struggling to make new friends particularly when it comes to female friends, and especially when I set out a goal to make a new friend, that makes it even worse because I just overthink it which makes me even more anxious and in turn nauseas, causing me to back out completely from the plan. However if I’m just doing something random and not planning on anything I’m completely fine and can interact with new people adequately enough to make friends. The thing that bothers me though, is I’m 22 years old and have been single my whole life and I see my friends in loving relationships and just yearn for that for myself, but I worry that I’ll never be able to get there because I’m too anxious to go out and make new friends.

An example is my friend is having a halloween party and invited me and told me there was someone perfect for me who might be coming to the party and that we’d get along so well. Which is really awesome in theory, but when I thought about it, it just made me horribly anxious because i was already slightly anxious and now I couldn’t let the thought of me going to this party to meet this person escape my mind even though they may not even come and I’m already starting to overthink it and I just don’t know what to do.

I guess I wrote this for two main reasons, one, just for some affirmation that I’m actually making progress, and two to find out if anyone else feels like they get more anxious when they plan for something rather than just being thrown in the deep end and if they have any tips for someone experiencing that to make it easier.

Sorry for the long wall of text, I appreciate you taking the time to read it all if you do!