Anxiety Management

Went to anxiety management today. I absolutely adore my group, but they are all in so much pain. When you get wrapped up in your own problems you tend to forget that other people have feelings and a story to tell. These session have been such a wake up call. It's good to feel that I am not alone. A couple of people have been getting emotional and every week we are revealing more about ourselves. There's less and less people turning up each week, most only turned up for the first session and I think it was too much for them. I'm sad that they are missing out and I feel these sessions could have been very beneficial to them if they had stuck it out, but the decrease in the number of people has made me feel brave enough to talk about my feelings and contribute the discussions. I am the youngest member of the group, everyone else is in their late twenties/early thirties upwards and many of them have children. They all look like normal people you pass in the street, you would never imagine the pain they feel inside and that they were all secretly fearful and anxious. I don't even think some of their friends or close family realise. People are so much more complex than we think. I've been making goals in each session. I haven't told anybody about them, they're my own private goals, but my main goal is not to beat myself up too much if I don't manage to complete some goals. It does more damage than good when I rush myself and push myself too hard, I learned that when school didn't work out. After the first session my first goal was to try and contribute to the next session. The next session arrived and I was so nervous, I kept trying to open my mouth but the words were getting caught in my throat. But a lady that sits next to me started talking and like me she was very nervous and deadly quiet in the first session. Her bravery made me want to talk and I plucked up the courage to contribute to discussions and I even started some of my own. After this session I made a goal to order something for myself. I have been absolutely terrified of interacting with cashiers when buying things so I usually get someone else to go to the tills for me. I achieved this goal but something didn't feel quite right. I made another goal to compliment someone in my third session. Not an insincere, forced kind of compliment though. A lot of people in my group have low self esteem and often say very negative things about themselves. The old me would have paid the a compliment and disagreed with what they were saying. But I am so painfully shy and so scared of rejection that I have just been keeping quiet. In today's session one of the women started crying when she was talking about how she used to want to commit suicide. This woman is so lovely and I really wanted to comfort her but I was too afraid. The woman that sits next to me who made me feel brave enough to contribute to the previous session kept saying really negative things about herself that are so not true. She seems to think she is useless and defective in some way and I really feel it would do her the world of good if I told her how she made me feel. But I am too afraid. I know I said I wouldn't beat myself up for not completing a goal but I can't help it right now. I really wish I had of been brave enough to say something, the old me would have. I spent so much time hating the old me and wishing I was someone else, but now I would give anything to be her.