High levels of anxiety!

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Yesterday, I've noticed that my anxiety levels have skyrocketed big time. I first noticed it when a guy gave me a disapproving look. My reaction was extreme. I literally feared that he was going to call the police on me if I tried to interact with anyone, even though the odds of that happening is zero. At the college, I feared that the fire alarm would go off if I passed by one.

I believe that the anxiety is due to stress over events that occurred over the past few months, most notably those relating to friends and social interaction.

I was going to try to hang out with friends after my summer internship ended on the last day of June. Guess what, in early July, my computer had to get a weird virus that prevented printing and the installation/updating of software! There goes my plans right down the drain, along with half of the money I earned from doing the internship! What's worse was that I promised two friends that I would hang out with them sometime in July!

Also, on two occasions since college started back up, I came across an old friend and I was completely unable to even say hi to them. The first was when I was walking to class. The second occurred at the downtown terminal after missing my transfer due to construction on the other side of town!

The stress and anxiety just hit me over the past couple of days. Tonight, I am having trouble getting to sleep due to the anxiety. So, I am posting this on here so that I could let it out without a potential risk of a meltdown happening.

Out of curiosity, does anyone else experience situations like what I just described?

when my working memory is depleted i often will have similar experiences.

Anxiety is, unfortunately, part of the cocktail that makes up what we are. I think it's partly due to an acute memory of a bad occurrence in our lives and deciding that every similar situation from now on will happen that way. Recently I had to call in sick to work to attend a wedding, and was very afraid that it wouldn't work, all because one time years ago I worked in a grocery store and tried to call in sick and the person I talked to said "no, come in." Even watching TV can get anxious, like whenever I see a scene of someone driving, I always think at any second, there's going to be a crash. Silly thing to be anxious about, but there you go.

Aside from therapy, the only real solution is to do whatever thing you want to do and ignore your fear. It's truly rare that things end up as bad as you can imagine they will, and if good things happen often enough, you'll find your anxiety levels go down significantly.

Remember: Fear keeps us alive, but courage lets us live.