Today was my first day of therapy with a Psychoanalyst and it was good to talk to someone other than an addict about my core issues which I covered up with alcohol through the years.  After going through my history with him and talking about the present, we spoke at length about social anxiety and how I am currently dealing with it.

I found it interesting that after describing my feelings of social awkwardness to him, he told me he had the opposite impression of me.  This got around to dealing with the Johari Window.  That is–what I think others see and what I choose others to see are vastly different.  Internally, I don’t like the spotlight because I think somehow I am making a fool of myself (or will at some point) and therefore withdrawl before I can make said fool of myself.

Externally, he said he thought I was very outgoing and seemed to have energy and confidence.  This is the disconnect I have trouble with.  I also have trouble with worrying too much about what others think to just be myself.  I hope that through talking these issues through, I can get past this “fear” and just let myself vunerable to whatever may come of my interpersonal and group communications.

After that session, my fear was put to the test when I went to a new AA meeting with someone in my house.  It ended up being this meeting called Students Of Life and was ALL kids sub-30 and many were late teens, early 20’s.  I was uncomfortable to say the least being 41, but I ground through it.  I am pretty sure it won’t be a meeting in my regular rotation, even though it ended up being fine.

To me, there is a gulf between myself and kids that age when it pertains to recovery.  In some ways they have it pretty rough with many years of temptation before them.  However in many respects, they do have many advantages that they have so many opportunities in front of them–youth being one of them.  They can more easily choose what they want to do in life than I can.  It is much harder to change course at 40, than clean up your act at 25.  I struggle with this almost daily–the remorse of opportunity lost, youth squandered.  I wish I could find a meeting with just 30-40 yr olds.  They seem to end up weighted at either end of the spectrum.