It's interesting you mention gym anxiety. I've had severe social anxiety my whole life. But the gym has been my outlet for 20 years and a great way for me to be around people in close proximity with really ZERO obligation to interact beyond gym etiquette and such ("how many sets you have left?", asking for a spot or being asked). It's a low risk social situation and helps me stay motivated to be around other people training. Get out in the world in a regular predictable way.
Due to a back injury (from pushing myself too hard, it wasn't just a shit-happens injury hencemy user name) that had me in horrible pain for the last 2 years I now get literal panic attacks in the environment I used to go to RESOLVE a panic attack. Ain't that some shit? My fear of reinjuring myself and going through the whole experience again is just too much. Even though I've learned my lesson and just desire to stay fit and functional I don't think I'll ever step foot in a traditional gym again. I like being able to sit down to make a poop in the morning without a burning ice pick shooting up my spine... I see what pro athletes talk about when a catastrophic injury and the painful and lonely recovery process robs them of the confidence to perform.
In between the pandemic and this injury the last 3 years have been very isolating. I've developed real fear of being in public from the amount of time I've been alone and physically confined. I feel like I got out of a 3 year relationship with a crazy overbearing girlfriend that no one could stand to be around and realizing how it just pushes people away.
Is getting better but doing things like progressing from a coffee to-go from a cafe, to actually sitting down for prescribed lengths of time and observing the waves of anxiety has been... interesting. You have to continually and willfully push your boundaries as you said but in safe increments the same way you increase your lifts in safe manageable increment. But it's hard to quantify how much more difficult one social setting or situation will be versus another. What's the "add 5 pounds" for exposure therapy? Haha. I'm sure it's different for every person.
I work with a therapist and it's going to be a process. Just started doing in office visits again. Social calluses indeed.
In the same way I associate discomfort and stress with progress in powerlifting (and subsequently in physical therapy) I try to tell myself that I'm not going to improve socially by putting myself only in comfortable situations.
Good luck. Looks like you've got a program that is working.
Whenever I hear the phrase "that guy" in a guitar/music thread I can never not hear Guthrie Govan cracking jokes (also funny, in context to your comment considering it's pronounced "guh-van" despite the spelling)
> No heuristic is perfect, but it's fairly easy to quantify empirically from activity/records. Developers who are productive (actually write and ship large amounts of quality code) tend to be valuable and those that don't, aren't.
I've got mine collecting dust in a drawer along with a few other impulsive purchases (why did a buy a jar of ferromagnetic fluid again?). I'm a few months into 3d printing I'm seeing the value of using an RPi as a print server to monitor long prints. Now that I see how it could make my life a little easier I'm more motivated to get it set up.