An easy start

The problem in having to deal with the rest of the world was that I had little or no control over things. Life just went along its merry way regardless of what I did. I had little influence.

Most of the time, I was in over my head (or at least that’s how it felt). I felt ill equipped to deal with anything other than the most basic situations. I was always so anxiety ridden that I didn’t have a chance to stop and analyze things. Had I been able to do this, I would have interpreted things a little differently – I’m sure of this. I was so worried about how I looked and acted, and of how I appeared to others, that I was just a freaked out bundle of nerves –and I know this was noticeable to others.

I just couldn’t concentrate on anything other than my own short comings. A laugh, a whisper, an odd glance was all it would take to set me off. I would go from neutral to feeling worthless in very short order. Once this happened, everything from then on would be horribly distorted. It was at this point that I would turn on myself and start the negative self-talk. I would keep this up relentlessly, during, and after the encounter.

So, knowing I didn’t have the resources to deal with many situations, it became very apparent that I would have to take control of my own environment. I would have to set boundaries, start very slow, and from the very beginning.

I would need to create an “incubation” stage in which I had total control over all aspects of my everyday life, and in particular, my social encounters. Within this world, I would have the final say as to the intensity and type of social exposure. While in this incubation stage, it would be very important to avoid other “higher” levels of social activity whenever possible.

Starting at such a basic level was what I needed to “seed” my sub-conscience and therefore re-program my belief system. I needed to extract very small bits of positive truth from these encounters, while avoiding the negatives, if possible. Hey, I could avoid most of the negatives because I controlled the amount of social exposure.

I needed to start with a sure thing and have the deck stacked in my favour. Later, I could introduce more risk and real-world exposures.

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