Today was my mom\'s birthday. She has helped me out SO much these past years I wanted to do something special for her. I HATE going out in public so this afternoon I was going to go to the store to pick up some dinner items for her to make her dinner and I couldn\'t bring myself to go. I had to have my husband do it while I stayed home and baked a cake.

My mom came home early from work (I live with her and my husband) because she was having chest pains and needed to relax. I just felt bad for her because her blood pressure has been high and I feel like I\'m not helping her stress. So I told myself I am going to go out and get her something for her birthday.

My husband came with of course, and I didn\'t drive (haven\'t driven in probably 7 months). But going inside a store is a huge huge deal for me to do. First we dropped off some clothes at a dry cleaners for my mom, and usually I would stay in the car while my husband would run in to the store. I actually went in there this time. Next we went to a video game store to return a game and I also went in and even looked around for about 15 minutes. Then went over to the dollar store to grab a couple cute nik naks for my mom, birthday bag, tissue paper…walked around there for 15 minutes. Last stop, target. That was the biggest one for me. I browsed around, shopped for my mom and I actually did it without having to leave or getting a panic attack.

I\'m glad my mom had a wonderful birthday, she was really happy and that made me really happy!

But that brings me to now. I was exhausted from having anxiety doing all those things and took a short nap. Woke up with an overwhelming feeling of anxiety. I have noticed that when I do something that is hard for me, I crash and burn later or the next day. Like my body is making up for the anxiety I didn\'t have when I went out. So here I am, tons of anxiety, thoughts racing like crazy in my head, obsessively thinking, losing my breath. My hands are so clammy, ugh. I hate this. Just go away. And these thoughts…get out of my head!

Sigh…

And I do feel the need to self-injure to help take the edge off but I\'m fighting it with everything I have.