I can't even type this its too hard to get out.

I think I'm heading into that dark place I once was when I was 16. My face is going red, my eyes are blurry, I can barely type this. I canceled the date I had tonight and he is a good guy...I have no idea what's wrong with me.

I have no idea why I feel so crazy right now. Does this mean I'm not ready?

Well it would depend on why you cancelled. I am guessing it is just the way that it happened for whatever reason and you might be trying to read too much into it by wondering if you were ready.

There is nothing wrong with you. Don't know all that is going on, but whatever it is, just has you down and it is just screwing with your thoughts. You just need a little time and to take a few long deep breaths. You'll get through it, I promise. Maybe you are not ready on some level, but really I think it is just fear trying to hold you back, and you just have to lift your chin and face it and not let it slow you down from the things that you think will make you happy. Just don't let it drag you into any dark places, because then you have to crawl out of them and start again. Always keep pushing forward.

Good luck.

It could mean anything. Maybe you should talk it out with a professional. I use to break up with guys before I would give it a real chance. I found out I was afraid of rejection, so I would end it with them before they had a chance to end it with me, making me feel like I was the one who came out on top. Don't worry you'll come to understand what it is.

Aw...darling....I've been there....I know what you are feeling.Major High Anxiety. it's what you think they expect and unsure you are who you think you are.....Take things slowly....What worked for me was doing volunteer work....just to take my mind off of my issues. After that, slowly engage people 1 on 1. Find a good friend that you can talk to about how you're feeling. In time.....this Anxiety will dissolve in the Light of Reality.

When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

I hope you see yourself, and if this fella's worth his weight in salt, he'll see YOU, too.

Much love. Hang in there. Breathe.

There is something a bit off if you're canceling a date with someone you say is a good guy.

There are a few key words here which tell me this is more than just mere anxiety, which then leads me to ask what was the trigger for all this.

I don't know anything about you or your past, but it really does sound like you should seek some professional help. For instance, I'm not sure what you mean by "not ready" or "dark place I once was when I was 16". I've had the impression that you have dated since you were 16, which would then lead me to think there is a specific trigger about this one guy that set off this reaction. And the "not ready" indicates that there is past problem which required overcoming on your part. So the signals are that this is about your past, not just dating anxiety or about the guy himself. I could be wrong...

I tried to gain a bit more info about you, to be of better help, by checking your profile. Unfortunately, you had already deactivated... Not sure why you would have done that. I hope you feel better soon.

I do worry a lot. Its in my nature. I tend to over analyze things sometimes. I'm not sure why I really canceled. I guess I was thinking about something else, maybe someone else.

Hmmm, interesting. You should probably know why you canceled unless of course their is something wrong with you, which I do not think so. Maybe you were to excited or perhaps you got cold feet. Whatever the case is, if you were really into him then you would reschedule or perhaps apologize. =)

You don't remember what you were thinking about when you canceled the date? That would probably be a good place to start to figure out why you did what you did, because you're the only one who will know why you canceled the date.

Yeah well, its a mix of things I can predict. A lot of it has to do with prejudging. Even though he's already seen me, the hard part considerably is over, right?

I got a text from him this morning asking how I was. I guess I didn't wreck it completely. Close call.

Fear is my #1 enemy sometimes. It trumps my abilities even though I know in my heart I can always just do it. Do my thing. Not give a shcitt. Guess it has a lot to deal with my own personal insecurities. They pile up I tell ya right before something, anything comes up like this. I'm just wondering why I'm still so reticent. I shouldn't be. Its the constant pep talk I give myself when I question my decisions. Why do I always choose that? Its not easy for everyone. I guess some people reading this may be thinking "wtf is wrong with her? Git it together woman!" First of all, how dare you call me by a pronoun, and secondly, everything I'm dealing with currently; my past, present and future, where I'll end up, its finally coming into full view for the first time. Scary a$$ shcitt. I'm seeing my life right in front of me. Its like hello, people kill for all these opportunities. Its never too late to turn it around.

Well, all I know is I came out of these feeling like the bad guy. lol I canceled something potentially great almost without thinking it through. Pretty phuckin shady. I guess I'm learning more and more that clinging to the gnawing voice in my head should never take place.

But today I woke up feeling a little better than I was last night. So its something... baby steps.

I see...

Well I see a girl who deserves more. Something...I feel like I do need to be treated with respect but I see in order to receive that kind of gift, you need to come to terms with the ultimate adversary...you.

LOL I think he is. I think giving people a chance is a step forward in the right direction to happiness. I constantly say I despise closed hearts, caged souls, but I'd be a complete imbecile if I didn't admit to sometimes being at the mercy of this craziness.

*exhales slowly* Its a process and for now, I am covered in it, finally facing the ugly monster for what it is. My own self-infliction. Nothing sadder. My Auntie Betty always told me this, she stressed the importance of drive, ambition and above all else, courage. She also said once one of those fall, the others and none too quick to follow. She used to babysit my cousin who committed suicide and I fought out she's never talked really about it. But she told me the complete story and staying over her house that night really made me regret trying to chase a certain kind of perfection as my environment has so greatly taught me to believe. For that, I'll never forget her words. They creep back every now and again when I feel like delving into my dark places. Once I am there, its very hard to get out.

Dealing with yourself and all these issues is just the strangest thing I've ever had to grapple. I'm trying now to know this and recognize I can't live in a complacent reality anymore. Who does that? People sometimes hide their feelings in so well its hard to tell if they feel anything. My main problem is I feel way too much. Draining this could help my vision be a little more clearer in the scheme of things.

Perfectionism, to my mind, is a real curse. Think about what it means to be perfect. If you are perfect, you have nothing left to accomplish. If you are perfect, nobody else can be your equal, because I guarantee you perfect people are extremely rare. So, how boring a life does that sound like?

I was brought up by two perfectionist parents and really bought into it, and it's been a long hard road to get past it. I call myself a reformed perfectionist. I actually spent time encouraging myself to do things like leave my bed unmade for days on end, yadda yadda. One thing I've noticed is that perfectionists often think of the world as black and white. So if you're not perfect, automatically you're the scum of the earth. But somehow I learned to put myself in other people's shoes, and that taught me that EVERYONE else thought better of me than I did. Eventually I realized that it was actually arrogant of me to assume that all of them were wrong and only I was right.

One of the most important things to understand about feelings is that they come and go. The only reason that a feeling stays with you for a long time is that you're feeding it (brooding about it). So these feelings of anxiety, maybe you can deal with them by telling yourself that they're just feelings. They don't have any basis in reality, not this reality right now. Living in the moment is a better goal.

I've been there and I would think it means you have stuff to deal with before you plan your next date. If you ever wanna talk, I'm a pretty good listener.

"""EVERYONE else thought better of me than I did. Eventually I realized that it was actually arrogant of me to assume that all of them were wrong and only I was right."""

?? They all thought you were better than you thought you were, but you did not believe them, coz you were better than them?? Meaning that you were right and they were wrong.

If you were right, and you thought you were worse than what others thought of you, then their thought of you as a woman who thought she was not as good as they thought was wrong.

In this set-up, the elements were in harmony. No projection or opinion in the set of juxtaposed opinions as per above was in contradiction with any another inside the set.

So I don't know why you needed to change that set of juxtapositions. Everything was in harmony; there were no discrepancies that could have possibly motivated you to change the set-up of opinions. Motivation to change a social arrangement or inner mental model of a real structure always stems from a feeling of inconvenience or pain, which is a resultant of seeing discord or friction within the system's distincts elements. There were none like that in your earlier "purist" or "perfection-monger" stage of life.

Unless... unless you were getting tired of putting yourself down. But that's outside the closed system of others thinking you were better than you thought you were, your thinking you were worse than what others thought of you, your noticing this as it was becoming more and more apparent to you, your being right, and others being wrong, in the sense that you were right as a perfectionist in spirit, and they were wrong in the sense that you were better than you thought you were. This, as described, is a stable logical/ psychological / values-philosophical system, physically speaking at a low energy state, so there was no reason to gather up enough energy to move it out of its stable state.

Why did you do it?

(Please don't ask me to explain my question. I can hardly follow my own line of reasoning, let alone analyze it to such depth that I could explain it to the understanding of a normal person with normal brian functioning.)

OP: Please forgive me. I am not trying to hijack your thread, and the only reason I said nothing about your condition as described is that I am stumped, I have absolutely nothing to say about it. My ineptitude, not yours.

I met a woman who seemed to have this happen to her, in the 1970s. She was about your age, a Crustafarian, and she was beside herself and cancelled a date. I was devastated, and wrote her a long, very supportive letter, but then again I was young and dumb then, I did not know at the time that I did not know anything about her condition. Now I know how ignorant I am, so I keep my mouth shut. Not that you would notice that I am keeping my mouth shut. (Haha.)

Yep, its a double curse when you're brought up by controlling/overbearing perfectionist parents. I wanna say it was my fault for being subject to this treatment but in reality, I was just a kid. I led a sheltered life until I was 18. Didn't even start meeting people, actual people until I started college. I haven't really seen anything yet or experienced real people, feelings, opinions or attitudes. My longest relationship was a controlling scumbag but then he had his way of never allowing me to completely know him, or if I made a mistake it was amplified and he always put me down. I meet a lot of regular people who do that, I'm beginning to see a pattern here. Being weak around people is almost the story of my life. Despising it doesn't come close to what I'm really thinking.

I think I have a lot of maturing to do when it comes to the opposite sex. I need to stand up for myself and what I want. Being such a pushover growing up, almost letting people walk over me, school, work, social situations, not an easy life. I can attest this to years and years of extreme anxiety, and ant-social overall persona. Its the worst thing and I'm dealing with it now. Can't tell you how many times I've talked about this with a professional, I even went to a marriage counselor, solo, like I wanted to fix things with him, but was it really me that needed the real fixing? lol Like he really wanted to marry me. Unless I wanted to be married to someone so cruel and heartless.

They do. Especially mine and I have a lot of them. I'm letting it get to me. Its all something I'm doing to myself, no one is controlling me right now. I'm here. Its just me. Thinking about trying to mend it should stop. I guess when told by others over and over its just not good enough, your mind really starts believing you can't do anything. I'm not proud of this gullibility. I need to wake up to what this is doing to me. I guess it takes going through something like this to finally coming out possibly intact. Whole. lol One could hope.

LOL Yeah for starters. There's a lot of inner stuff I'm dealing with at the moment. I just want it all to make sense one day. Maybe one of these days it will. Not be perfect but I'll things and accept them for what they are. Thanks *hugs*