Tough exposures

Hoo-boy. After deciding this week that if anything seemed scary I was supposed to go for it, I realized that public bathrooms have actually become more scary to me recently, not less.

So yesterday and today I went down to the grocery store down the street. Usually their bathroom doesn't scare me that much, but the whole way down there I thought, "I don't want to, I don't want to." It was crowded in the store (and the bathroom) both days, which added to my stress. But I did it. My anxiety spiked quite high both times (maybe an 8 or 9 out of 10?). I planned to take a shower last night, when I was still feeling really anxious, but my anxiety came back down pretty far, and I was really tired by the end of the day and just went to bed.

Today after about an hour, my anxiety is already pretty okay. I do know that as I move on to "unknown" public bathrooms this will be even tougher, but I feel like this fear is a huge limitation to being able to go out and do the kinds of things I enjoy, since I can't be away from home for too long.

I also had an accidental exposure this morning that REALLY made me want to look something up on the internet, but I distracted myself, and after a few hours the urge went away. That was extremely satisfying.