10:06 am 7/22/09 Wednesday

My therapist wants to encourage me to stop avoiding my anxieties over my anxieties. I am so fearful of my anxieties that I run away from them by distracting myself with addictive web surfing (e..g. checking out news websites) or wasting my time fixing minor problems so that I don't have to face how overwhelmed I feel when I confront my inner fears. Blogging helps me to stop running and uses journaling and sharing my journaling to help me to face my fears over my fears. I have a fear of failure, an almost unshakeable belief that I can't do things, that I will flop. I am so afraid of my fear of failure that I normally try to ignore it or bury it under mindless busyness. 

10:15 am

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10:35 am

I'm afraid of finding out what will happen if I finish a job or if I ask for something. I '.m so sure that whatever I have done or ask for will be rejected or elicit resentment and unwillingness. I keep reliving the rejection and the resentments of my past in my present life.

10:37 am (9 min plus 2 min) 

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2:12 pm 

I feel so antsy that I just want to crawl out o fmy skin. I want to sooth the anxiety and numb the fear by addictive web surfing of news or erotic sites. The healthier part of me wants to resist numbing the pain by mindless surfing. The healhier side of me wants to stay present and not run away. I would like to work on stuff that terrifies me because I am sick of running away from what I am afraid of. I've been running most of my life. The more I try to avoid my problems, the more they pile up. I feel like my head is going to explode with fear, like in the science fiction movie, Scanners, where people's head explode because their brain couldn't handle the information. That's what I feel like is going to happen. Like my head is going to Ka -Blooie and splat all over the room. That s the fantasy that runs through my head. I need God to help me find the courage to stop running. I wonder if David felt terrified when he was facing Goliath with only a slingshot.? I bet he was scared but he took courage in the Lord. 

2:19 pm (eleven plus seven equals eighteen minutes of blogging today, my goal is to try to do at least twenty minutes a day worth of blogging, usually in five or ten minute increments here and there). 

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2:23 pm

I feel like I want to run away and to  bury my head in the sand like an ostrich does when he is afraid.

2:24 pm

The anxiety is so intense that I feel like i'm in a foxhole with mortars going off around me. Help me God. Boy I think of D-day and the invasion at Normandy and the withering fire. I feel like I am in the middle of an emotional d-day with my subconscious Nazi blasting away at me. I feel petrified. It's crazy since it's all in my head and I know it's all in my head but it doesn't help much with the nervousness. 

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4:20 pm 

I feel so ashamed that I have don't things and procrasinated and stalled. I feel I will die of embarrassment and shame which just leads me to continue to procrasinate and stall. It becomes a vicious cycle. 

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5:04 pm 

I feel the temptation to sooth my anxious emotional pain with erotic web browsing but the healthier side of me wants to resist wasting the time and wants to stay focused on what I need to do but am afraid of working on. 

5:06 pm  (twenty-two minutes)