fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6042 ]

[ SECRET POST #6042 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6042 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #864.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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What's something silly or that others find silly or simple that you have major anxiety about.

I mentioned it in my reply to the secret, but I am totally the person OP was going on about because commenting on fic is something I rarely do due to anxiety. Commenting anywhere makes me anxious, but sometimes it's something I can ignore or push through. Commenting on fic just gets me for some reason.

I have anxiety about the dumbest things and the list is long so I could go on forever. But I'll just choose one that I had to deal with today: mowing the lawn. I don't mind the chore itself, but I hate how public it is. I live on a busy street and there is a lot of lawn to mow and it is very hot and I sweat a lot and I always have that weird persistent anxiety of "you're doing it wrong and everyone walking by is watching you do it wrong" feeling. Headphones and music have helped, but it's still something I have to psych myself up for every single time and then just throw myself into it and hope for the best.

Being late. To anything. Doesn't matter if it's an informal gathering. If someone tells me a start time, I have to be there at least by then if not before. I had a friend who is one of those people who likes to skip the previews in movies (back before you could reserve seats) and she never understood why I would be in tears at not being there half an hour early and I didn't have the language (or the diagnosis) to explain it.

HOOOOO BOY:

1. Phone calls. I have to do them at work. I hate the awkward silences where they can't see me smiling or gesturing, mishearing stuff, misunderstanding them especially if the line is bad or crackly and hearing them get frustrated with me, worrying about getting details wrong and fucking up an order, panicking and babbling and mixing up my words, how incredibly overbearing I get out of sheer panic (AWESOME, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, HAVE A LOVELY DAY, TAKE CARE, BYE, BYE, THANK YOU, BYE)

2. Public transport. What if I get off at the wrong stop? What if I fuck up scanning my ticket and the driver gets annoyed at me? What if my card doesn't work and I hold other people up and THEY get annoyed? What if I stumble going down the aisle and knock into someone or just trip and look like an idiot?

3. Just, seeing people I know in the street. While I would be happy to go over and say hi, I often pretend I haven't seen them at all because I'm convinced they don't really like me or want to speak to me, and I don't want them to talk to me because they feel they have to.

tldr; I don't function too good.

Oh god seeing people I know while out and about. It should be a nice thing - hey, there's someone I know and enjoy being around! But nope! The mere thought of running into people I know out and about makes me so anxious. And if I do run into someone, I am so thrown off and get so frazzled I'll often just pack it up and go home after.

NAYRT

ToT Feeling this so hard. Am I supposed to say hi first? Do I wait for them to say hi? If I'm supposed to say hi, what if they don't want to talk to me? What if they don't say hi back? What if I talk too much? What if they talk too much and I don't know how to exit out of the conversation? If they don't say hi, does that mean they don't like me? Will I spend an unnecessary time going over in my head why they might have not have said hi?

To avoid all of that, I just. don't. want. to. run. into. people. I. know. And when it happens, I bolt out of there.

ToT

Uhh as someone who's struggled with germophobia forever I can't even begin to list. Just... too many things. From pooping (as a kid) to intimacy to taking care of pets or kids to swimming to (as of late) going outside at all. It's not as bad as it sounds as I have more reasons to not do any of these things but the germophobia certainly adds to it. It is, let me say, a highly irrational feeling because sometimes I will leave something rotten in the fridge for days because I don't want to go outside to discard it. It's NOT the pristine productive type of anxiety people often believe it to be.

I'm the same as you, rotten stuff in the fridge included.
I have an irrational fear of germs, but it's so random... Fear of intimacy is a strong one. To the point that SOMETIMES, not always, I have to immediately wash my hand when people with sweaty palms touch them.
I also have an impossibility of wearing open shoes (yuck) or short pants/trousers. I hate it when my naked skin touches stuff other people touch. Summer is not my season.

Thank you for understanding but also sorry about it. Yeah yeah, truthfully my phobia was very mild pre-pandemic but those triggers remained so I was afraid it might come back full force and hoo boy it did. Most people hear germophobia and think "your house must be spotless!" yes haha, let's just not talk about the corpses of insects that have been there for months because I just don't want to touch them.

But it's so hard for people to "get" it; the Aviator is the only work I have ever seen portray it accurately since it's based on a real story I guess. The protagonist refusing to go outside so he had to pee in bottles is how little sense it all makes.

AYRT

For me the Covid pandemic was mostly fine because I'm always mildly virus/germophobic. It was strange seeing other people looking at the world like me, like seeing germs and viruses everywhere. I was mostly OK because people sneezing in from of me always made me think of infectious diseases and death, even before Covid, so I was like "UUUH... same business as always I guess" /shrug

But I completely lost it when I couldn't find my brand of disinfectant and soap anywhere in my city, because suddenly everyone was like me and buying my specific type of soap. That was rough.

As for spotless houses: LOL. My shower is very dirty and I can't bring myself to clean it. I hate it when there is even a single stray hair in hotel's shower, but in mine? I don't care. It's my dirt. It's all OK.
But then every time I touch the ground or a rusty piece of metal I immediately think I'm going to die by tetanus, ahaha. WHY, BRAIN?!

I will look into the Aviator! I don't know if I'll be able to watch it tough...

Yeah I mean I think that's how it felt for all of us. But then they started NOT CARING again and realizing how much they don't actually care in their day to day lives made my own issues (which hadn't been bothering me in over ten years except for the aforementioned triggers and some more like puking .. :( ) come back. Like "everyone is careless so I need to do thrice as much!!!!!" you know. And then social anxiety said "heyyy my old friend" and things spiralled.

Oh ......... yes I mean. Don't even mention everything I should be cleaning pleeease ........ sometimes I bring myself to do it and it is SO PLEASING but most of the time I will try to simply not use the thing so I don't have to even think of cleaning it because cleaning is anxiety-inducing in itself. Which well rationally I know not cleaning it is the wrong choice if you want to fight germs and it feels bad to live in a messy place. But then brain does the brain thing and "what if I just don't touch it and avoid the enemy in the same room?" seems like a great choice.

Introducing myself to people and joining conversations at social gatherings. If someone doesn't invite me, it's agonizing. The thing that makes this seem silly is that as a kid, this manifested as keeping to myself and never speaking to anyone at lunch or recess, but nobody believed I was "shy" (because it was the 90's, what even was "social anxiety"?) because I loved doing school plays and never had trouble with giving speeches.

Whoa, same here. I am always afraid of speaking over people or joining in when I shouldn't have. Social rejection is a huge fear of mine.

Interacting with people that I will have to interact with again.

Like, I weirdly do better with talking to strangers that I likely won't get to talk to again (at the last convention I attended, I had gone by myself and had talked the most to so many people that I had done since pre-2020 where I had mostly talked about fandom stuff).
Whenever I talk to coworkers, frequent acquaintances or people I'm kind of friends with - I always feel awful afterwards as I over-analyze every 'wrong' thing that I had said/done, which puts me off from going to meeting up with them for fun activities with the belief that I'd just ruin it somehow. It has certainly put me off from trying to date anyone because I never feel good enough to go through any of that in the first place, so potential dates might actually kill me via anxiety.

My anxiety (semi-diagnosed? the one therapist i went to in college was more focused on The Autism but mentioned the idea once or twice?) is so bad around sex that I've basically just stopped dating because my sex drive and desire for a relationship isn't enough to make pushing through it worth it.

Like, okay, first off you have to be naked, which is awkward and weird and I always feel like my body language is off when I don't have clothing on, which just makes me more awkward and weird. Then there's the whole issue around communication - what if I suggest something the other person doesn't want and it makes it awkward? what if I talk too much or too little and make it awkward? what if the way I Do Sex is just weird? what if my body language is off and things go off from where I expect it? I mean, even if we decide to just Not it's not like I can just ditch, there's gonna be like 5 minutes of being awkward, even more if this is, like, an actual relationship.

Also, I fucking hate any kind of talking dirty, but I've found that a lot of people tend to not like just being silent during sex. So they'll be trying to do a thing, but like half the time that involves pointing something out about my body/body language/actions, and even if it's positive it's still just awkward because it's not like I can just smile and nod if I don't know what to say. They expect me to actually say something back, and I can't formulate a compliment that isn't extremely awkward to save my life. And if it isn't EXTREMELY explicitly positive I wind up second-guessing whether it was a compliment or them pointing out something awkward or what.

Sorry this is so long, I have a lot of thoughts about how weird and awkward and anxiety-inducing sex is :/

Amateur fireworks and the mere idea of being happy/content

Escalators, elevators, bridges, being underground too long. Yeah yeah I got aerophobia too.
I live in a major city in an appartement building, so it's interesting. Escalators is the newest one - I've got vertigo sometimes and I get legs cramps, nothing too bad, but oh boy does it make escalators fun.
Bridges are the funniest. I am usually normal about them, but on my bad days big one can defeat me.

Reading replies to my AO3 comments. I usually leave long, enthusiastic comments and they tend to be well-received but I'm always feeling super anxious about coming off like a weirdo (which, admittedly, I am). Mild to no anxiety when I'm writing and posting my comments. High anxiety when I'm getting the reply notification. Before reading the reply, I usually minimize the homepage and Crtl+F my way through the text, looking for markers of a positive reaction ("thank you", "thoughtful", "love"). I've done it for years.

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[ SECRET POST #6042 ]

Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

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Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!

Re: Inspired by #1 - anxiety!