I stopped therapy a couple weeks ago (I think I’ve worked out most of my major traumas?) And I thought I’d plug into my weekly calendar a Buddhist meditation instead. Tonight I went to this group which I was excited about and it was a total *disaster* as I experienced the most social anxiety I’ve had in probably 12 to 14 years.

For years now I’ve proudly said, “My anxiety is 10% of what it was in my thirties,” but tonight it was 100%. I didn’t even know all that was still in there! So intense.

On the plus side, I was meditating during the arrival of the most intense part of the social anxiety and for the first time I felt the sensations of extreme social anxiety in every inch of my body. It feels totally terrible. It was like every cell of my body was on fire and all screaming “Get out!” (Which I did!)

Buddha teaches that we do not react directly to what’s happening in the outside world; we are actually reacting to our body’s sensations which are themselves reacting to what’s happening in the outside world. When we get more in touch with our body’s sensations we gain the ability to choose how we act next. Oppositely–in our default human setting–when we are asleep to these sensations then we are at the mercy of our choice-less reactions.

So with that said, tonight was a bit of a success. Even while I decided to also give in to the anxiety, and got up and walked out after 20 minutes. (I have long had a policy of not giving in to anxiety.) An older version of me would have judged me awfully hard for leaving. So even while old patterns surprisingly came up, I also know that progress has been made.