Anxiety Forum

[change42008]

im pretty sure i have social phobia - but i have it for the strangest reasons.

about 5 years ago i had severe acne. at school i used to get made fun of because i wore foundation.

i met a stunning girl who liked me. but due to my sense of inferiority i never quite had the guts to follow through ever.

i then read dating advice from a person called david d angelo 3 years ago. funnily enough i stopped caring about my looks, because i learnt from here that personality can be as attractive as looks

however this is where my anxiety got to PROBLEMATIC STAGE! there was a lot of bad advice in this material. i got sucked into acting a role, and pretending to be something i wasnt. the problem was i was quite good at this and the persuasion and marketing of the bad advice guided me the WRONG way as it stems from trying to be a pick up artist.

i became obsessed in david d angelos stuff. i began to need it like a drug because it gave me this fake sense of confidence. i picked up a lot of anxiety than i had even when i had acne. i got a lot of panic attacks from it. even though i stopped reading any of it 3 years ago, i still dont know how to get rid of the anxiety.

my acne soon left and i got a lot of compliments from people saying im really good looking. even though its not good to rely on confidence just from looks, i would have been happy with this confidence initially. however im now ten times worse than before because of the dating advice. i must get rid of all the anxiety from the dating advice to continue living a normal life.

finally i know rationally that the dating advice doesnt all work. i know A LOT of things rationally now than i did 3 years ago, however emotionally i dont know how to deal with it.

what do i do? please ask as many questions as possible.