My nerves are shot

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Hi. First post here, although i have been visiting the forum every now and then for a while.

My nerves were shot to hell when i woke up this morning, something i haven't felt in a while. It's not depression exactly, just felt an enormous anxiety. I'm getting better now, after about 9 hours (woke up a lot earlier than usual), but not feeling a 100%.

The reason for this, is that i stepped out of my comfort zone yesterday. Didn't have anything in particular i felt like doing, so i went on omegle and met this really great girl. I installed kik on my phone and we started chatting there and we exchanged some pictures over e-mail. She seems genuine, although i'm not stupid and realize that you can never really know for sure when you meet someone online.

Before i go any further, i'm gonna tell you a little about myself, and how i've been living. About 9 years ago i moved to a different city where i didn't know anyone, on purpose, and I have been living under pretty extreme social isolation for over a decade. I have not worked or gone to school in 13 years, and i don't socialize at all except for with my closest family that lives 3 hours away. I have one single friend left from the days when i was still socializing, but he lives 5 hours away and we only really talk over phone, sms or e-mail, once in a while. Despite all this, i'm relatively happy, and things have been getting better for me in the last 3-4 years. I have my physical health, financial security and a lot of freedom, that leaves me with very little to worry about. Been going better socially as well, and i handled two weeks with my family this Christmas like a goddamn champ.

That is, until i decide to push my limits, which makes the chemicals in my brain go haywire and my body breaks down. My appetite is especially affected now, which hasn't been a problem in a couple of years.

Actually, on second thought, i'm not gonna talk about the online encounter too much cause that's not really what this post is about. I can handle that myself and don't need any advice. As you can probably gather, my social skills acted up, and things got a little confusing ... and i'd like to clear it up if i get to talk with her again. After that i'll be happy to just forget about the whole thing. We talked for hours, and she seems genuine so i might have gotten a little more emotionally invested than i frankly should have been. Guess i might be a little more lonely than i like to admit.

The point is how this affected me. I'm very careful about staying away from romance or serious social commitments and when something does come up, i get a pretty brutal reaction both mentally and physically. What i would like to do now is clear this up, forget about it, and wake up with a clean slate again tomorrow, and hopefully it'll be a few years before i make the same mistake. Then again, there is a part of me that realizes that something's missing and having other people in my life might be a good thing. It's tough though when my anxiety breaks me down physically, which is why i've been actively avoiding these things for such a long time. Think about it, this is a relatively anonymous online encounter, that i can easily get away from ... imagine how i'd feel in real life.

It's entirely possible that i'll keep isolating myself and keep living as simply as i can. I have my hobbies and ways to entertain myself, and life is generally good when i avoid becoming a part of society. From the way i reacted last night and this morning, seems it might be tough to make any significant changes, and in a way, i'm ok with that. You can get used to everything, i guess.

Any thoughts? Do you recognize any of what i've been writing about? Feels good to spill my guts, actually.

Yes, I can relate. My experiences of that type gave me a great appreciation for why people sometimes refer to dating as an emotional roller coaster: big highs followed by big lows.

Once when I was doing the online dating thing I met someone for the proverbial first face/face coffee. They made an interesting point at the start that one of their friends had advised them to limit the first face/face to twenty minutes. I thought that odd; we ignored it and talked for an hour.

I did, though, monitor my emotions during that hour. I noted that during the first half-hour my feelings were ambivalent, but thereafter I slowly began to develop rose-tinted vision and subconsciously picking out china patterns for the wedding.

After we parted that day our correspondence went no further as cooler heads prevailed. But the experience did teach me a lesson in the value of 20-minute guide the other person mentioned. I learned that I can very easily get overly involved emotionally too quickly. And when I do that, I am placing myself at the top of a roller coaster ride and setting myself for a rapid emotional decline.

So moving slowly and monitoring my level of emotional involvement is a big help, when I can remember to do it.

Best wishes in pulling out of the uncomfortable place you are now. - And welcome to WP

Thanks. I'm feeling better already actually, these things passes quickly. I'm gonna watch the latest episode of True Detective now, and then make myself some dinner.

Note that i'm not really the online dating kind of guy, rather far from it, it's only the last month that i've spent a little time chatting with random people and gotten to know a few a little better. It's clearly not good for me though, so i'll stay away from it once i get this out of the way.

Emotional roller coaster indeed, you could ask yourself how people willingly go through it. If i had to deal with this in real life, it'd probably kill me. Not to mention all the problems that can arise once you actually find someone.

I know exactly what you're talking about. I've been there several times in the past, when my loneliness became overwhelming and I tried to become romantically involved with another person against better knowledge. In all these cases, I ended up in a worse place than before, both emotionally and financially. I wasted money on travel expenses (money that I could really use at this point), was painfully reminded of my limits, slipped into depression and became even more withdrawn than before.

But it could have been much, much worse. Whenever I meet someone who actually seems to like me, I immediately develop a major crush and put them on a pedestal. I see them as utterly flawless and the one solution for all my problems and woes. When I eventually realize that they're ordinary humans who can be just as thoughtless and hurtful as everybody else, I feel somehow betrayed and push them away. So imagine what would have happened if I had actually gotten involved with somebody. Maybe even moved in with someone and made financial commitments that made it impossible for me to go back to my single life.

That almost happened once when I met someone online who was just as broken and desperate for company as myself. I could have completely ruined my life by destroying my safe little niche that I've carved out for myself. I have a relatively quiet place to live, cats to keep me company, a disability pension, shops and doctors in walking distance... I will never again find a future-proof living arrangement that suits me so well. And I was about to throw all this away — including my pension, seeing that the other person lived in a different country — for a shot at something that I know full well I could never cope with for an extended period of time. With someone I never met face to face at that.

I don't really have any advice on how to deal with this, and you seem to know your limits better than I did in the past. The only supportive thing I can say is that it gets better with age. Around the time I hit 40, this terrible self-imposed pressure to find someone special somehow went away. So did my need to socialize with anybody at all in RL. It no longer feels terrifying to be all on my own, as if I stood along against the entire rest of the world. This doesn't mean that I'm happy and content, but I've come to accept that this is my life and I'm lucky if it doesn't get any worse. That sounds depressing, but it's actually less depressing than this desperate need to live an impossible dream that I had before.

Thanks for your reply. Seems we have a similar way of thinking. I feel close to a 100% today, by the way, and this little incident is almost completely behind me. It's easier to just walk away when you don't take it too far. My appetite is back, and i'm looking forward to my meals again. In a way, this is a reminder that i'm in a better position than i have been in years, as my anxiety used to be much worse. As long as i stay in control, i can be relatively happy and do the things i like to do, while shutting out the real world, mostly.

You're right that we just have to accept that this is our life, i think like this most of the time. When i look at the life the average person is living, with a job, wife, kids and everything that comes with it, it scares the hell out of me. Frankly, i don't want it. Of course i would want a woman in my life, but i know i have nothing to offer, and it would be selfish of me not to let her have someone that would be better for her. I need to make a lot of changes in my life before i can even start thinking about being a man with something to offer. All of this is in my mind whenever i talk to a woman i like, and that's probably the reason why it affects me so much.

I'm not gonna comfort myself and say i wouldn't like to function better in that department, but i honestly feel that if the way things are now, is all my life will consist of, that would be ok.

I don't think i will be very active on this forum, cause even this puts a toll on me, and gives me a little too much to think about. I feel like my days are short enough as they are. But i will keep checking this thread and probably drop by the forum every once in a while in the years to come. It feels good to write about this, cause i never really tell anyone about these things, and there seems to be a lot of people here with similar experiences.

Seems you are in an ok place as well now, Solitudinarian, so that's good. At least we get to be alive and experience all the crazy technology humanity is inventing, right? Just that makes waking up in the morning worth is, as far as i'm concerned. In fact, i wouldn't mind living for a lot longer if we can find a way to do something about aging, but that's a different topic altogether.

Idk. You can avoid some feelings and anxiety by avoiding what ever it is. But in this case I think you give up too much for stability and peace.

Ultimately, at least for me, turbulence with a companion is better then peace alone.