Dear Ry:

“I asked her to call me when she had a moment, which she did”- it is nice that you added the italicized, being considered of her time, showing her that it is okay with you that she may be busy and not call you back quickly, sending her the message  that you don’t want to pressure or burden her. She did respond quickly.

“We had another easy and fun conversation.. I eventually did ask if we could hang out next week when she has time, to which she replied that would be great”- again, considerate of her time. She responded with enthusiasm, using the word “great”, and smiling so much that her face hurt.

“(She said her face hurt from smiling)”- strong emotion caused her to smile that hard. This caused you to get positively excited over the possibility of a love story happening here. But with that positive excitation there is also a negative excitation: anxiety, fear of being let down.. so you cautiously, self protectively put her expressed strong emotion (and your excitement over it) in parenthesis to weaken it, to mitigate it.

“So, that is a relief as I wasn’t sure she would because I notoriously hyper analyze”- anxiety is fueling the hyper analyzing, so as you proceed, you will have to manage better the expected anxiety to come, make a plan for it, including a daily or twice daily walk for example, maybe when you feel most anxious.

When you notice that you are hyper analyzing the relationship (friendship or more, whatever it is), ask yourself: is there anything I should do right now/today, anything that I should tell her today? If the answer is No, and that all you should do is wait, then say to yourself: well, there is nothing for me to do today, no problem that I need to solve today through talk or action- therefore,  I will think about all of this when it becomes practical. Not now.

“I feel that I just need to continue to mitigate my expectations”- to mitigate means to make less severe, serious or painful; to reduce, lessen, weaken. You want to weaken your positive expectations because they go hand in hand with anxiety and the resulting hyper analyzing. Expectations that this will turn out to be a wonderful love story is a positive kind of neural excitation, but in very anxious people, any neural excitation, including a positive neural excitation is involved with anxiety, a negative, painful neural excitation.

“While I feel a special connection to her, I know that time would only help to ensure that connection is both mutual and sustainable. Need to focus more on the time we spend together and less on the time in between, I suppose”- if you are anxious, the time in between will feel like a very, very long time, just as it had so far. This is why it is most important that you manage your anxiety on a daily basis, so that you don’t suffer while waiting, and so that the relationship has a better chance to develop.

Do you exercise/ walk daily.. listen to mindful meditations.. there are mindfulness exercises that can help you, and you can plan a daily routine with these things (?)

anita