I have social anxiety — I was diagnosed about a year or so ago and I have been on medication since. My attacks usually center around a fear of upsetting people by failing, with the symptoms feeling like an enormous pressure squeezing me tight.. When it would spike I would feel like I had to escape, whether it involved fueling my fits with negative self-talk or purposefully drawing out arguments that I really have no grounds for continuing. It was my only method of calming the fire.. As rediculous as it sounds, prolonging the anxiety attacks like that was soothing and actually led me to tire out.
I’ve been medicated for about a year and a half now, and have shown amazing progress. I can feel when the anxiety flares up, rather than it just whizz by before I could pick up on it. But now, I’m not so sure it’s not all uncovered.
After over a year and a half of not being able to go into actual behavioral therapy, I managed to start going to a doctor. The exercises and logic sessions have helped me learn to break some of the habits, but my last session was a little disturbing.
The doctor asked how I was when I was little: when my parents divorced. Simply put, my mother was kicked out of the house and my Dad took care of my brother and I all on his own for eight years — day cares and fast food was the norm, as he worked from dawn until dusk.
He asked if we had a checkerboard. I said no. He asked if we had board games. I said no. He asked if he usually hugged us.
I said no.
Is it that after doing his best as a single parent that the environment I grew up in influenced my anxious nature?
Now here’s the weird part.
I’ve been thinking about crossdressing (I’m male). I have a very slim figure that girls have envied over the years (and still do). I’ve always been a little on the thin side. But lately I’ve been getting some definition and sometimes I find myself wondering what it would be like to grow my hair out a bit more, put on a scarf, and wear cute women’s clothing.
I’ve had experience with it. I had to wear a dress for a school play that went to competition, where I proudly played as a crossdressing Shakespeare in front of each acting class of most of the county schools. I absolutely adored wearing it — it was a navy blue velvet Victorian outfit. Girls loved me for it, too.
Is this how I’m channeling some sort of longing desire to be loved? I want to look more into this and find out if this isn’t just some odd phase. I’m 18, and completely straight. I just want to be adored. Is that too much?