Fear of People, it's painful effects, and irrational pain,dealing with haters

hi guys! I'm in an unusually big band sometimes up to 30 people! Many of these people are my dear friends; but a couple of rotten tomatoes can spoil the pot.

Backstory: my best friend moved back to town, learned an instrument and joined the band. This was a friend of over 15 years! Idk what happened our relationship went south: we couldn't stand each other. and I endured her painful presence in my most treasured space: the band and its music for over 3 years. It was awful! It almost ruined me.....cause I had an antennae of fear go up every time she was around. A previously amazing and glorious space became a war zone in my head.

Well, after 3 years she finally quit the band and left town and as you can imagine my fellow TMSers I was overjoyed. (Trust me I did all kinds of work around his in those 3 years including EMDR (really helped) meditation, writing, I apologized, etc. but I couldn't get over my perceived betrayal by her---and she me.

AND I STILL CANT! She's the Bear in my calm forest. And, she's coming back to the forest- as we go on tour she will join us for (just) one long weekend. I have built up a bunch of anxiety and fear around this and I don't want to ruin my trip.

I am wondering how to deal with this type of fear patterns and thoughts; this is actually something that is not wired correctly in my head and distresses me immensely. I don't know if it's caused physical symptoms, but he emotional pain is quite great: and I don't believe it has to be this way.

She's not a bear and I'm not in the woods.

Your thoughts and successes are invaluable - thank you.

 

Sorry that you're going through this. It can be a hard, confusing, painful and frustrating experience that can definitely have physical manifestations.

Here are some ideas that you may find helpful?
-- try thinking of your mind as something that publishes a newspaper every time there's a thought/emotion. Shortly after it's published, that paper is distributed to and read by all the cells in your body. What would you rather have them read? Messages of danger/distress/fear/anxiety or of safety/strength/ease/resilience? Next time you go near that person or even think about them, try visualizing publishing a paper with messages of "you're all safe; you're all secure; there is no danger here. If there ever comes a problem, we will deal with it later. We're confident we can handle this".

-- try distracting yourself any time thoughts about that person come into your mind. The more the mind spends time focusing on them, the greater the buildup of anxiety and fear. What's around you in terms of smell, sights, sounds, touch? Reach out and interact with those sensations. I think if this is done for as short a duration as a minute, that's enough to send your mind away from that person.

-- try meditation, affirmations etc. There's plenty of these out there and they can be helpful in calming the mind.

-- try humor, even if it's just with yourself. Can you imagine sharing a joke with that person? It may be hard to start with, but worth a try.

-- there's a fine line between thinking too much over how to avoid feelings related to that person vs. just not thinking about it at all. I find that sometimes, the more one thinks about how to solve a problem, the worse the problem can get...so perhaps give yourself some slack and acknowledge that it's ok if you're failing at feeling better.

-- try graded exposure to that person. Maybe start with a text, a phone call, a brief visit, a chat with other people nearby etc. If you start to feel anxiety while this is happening, remind yourself that you're safe and that you can handle it if it gets too bad.

Healing wishes to you.
rain.

 

Rain these are brilliant suggestions!! As usual this community is an amazing resource. Retraining my brain is a minute by minute thing and really hard (and annoying) but what a better life I could live if I could succeed! Lately I’ve been practicing the ancient TMS art of calling out on myself “fear thought” “worrying again” - - before this forum I had no idea I was scaring myself so much! The whole Buddhist “don’t react to your thoughts, just let them pass” is finally making sense after hearing it for so long; not that I’ve achieved it yet. But maybe I’m on my way to success in this obsessive mind/body area::: one that has confounded me FOR YEARS.

I look forward to these posts so much so again thank you.