In the recent days, I decided to respond to some Reddit posts inquiring about partners or general conversations.

For some intermediate context: I’m a tall, well built tech guy with the most dangerous anxiety. Over the past months or so, I’ve lost pretty much any close friends and disconnected with family. In many cases, I simply withdrawal but this is turning into agoraphobia. Recently, I’ve had a first few panic attacks while in public and I’m afraid of it getting worse.

With this in mind, I thought it could be productive to start some online conversations and I even met a really interesting person who I felt comfortable confiding in… in a short time (maybe a 1.5day time frame), they deleted their profile and we’re gone. This hit way harder than expected, giving me a crazy heart racing feeling and a newly familiar panic. Before I knew it, I looked their user name up, and texted the first three or four numbers before calming down.

I recognize the feelings of loss I had were genuine, but they shouldn’t be that strong I imagine. I’m curious what questions I should ask myself to address this anxiety? There are a million subreddits to ask this in, but I also think this might be a good place. This was interesting person who I wanted to get to know as much as I could, so that is where some of this came from. Perhaps some folks have been in a similar situation and could help.