Let’s Talk About Your Friend with Social Anxiety
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Let’s Talk About Your Friend with Social Anxiety

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

Someone you know is likely struggling with anxiety. Likely, many of you are, too, just like I am. With general anxiety running rampant across society right now, we can also assume that a large portion of social anxiety is going around too. If you have a friend who has struggled to keep plans or stay in touch, be kind. Recognize their anxiety and take a small action that sends the message that you are happy to see them. For me, it’s been a sincere hug or smile upon seeing me. It’s an immediate reminder that this person wants to be with me. There is an undeniable feeling that seeing me makes them happy.

They probably have no idea how much they have done by expressing that to me, but it makes all the difference in the world. I can immediately go from being all in my insecurities to all in the acceptance and warmth of long-time friends. It might not seem like much, but it is.

Running on Fumes

Running on Fumes

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

I heard someone on the radio use this phrase to describe herself as we were out grabbing a few last-minute items to assist with riding out Hurricane Ida. She was talking about evacuating her home in New Orleans at 10:30 last night, driving to Alabama to seek shelter, and then doing the show remotely from there.

Here, we aren’t in as much of a need to evacuate, we are further from the coast and the storm surge, but it’s still going to be a long, dangerous couple of days. So, we are spending a lot of time, and both mental and physical energy, preparing to possibly be without power, for needing to leave if the house is damaged, and so forth. It’s a lot. And that is on top of all the mental energy necessary to deal with large COVID outbreaks we’ve had in recent weeks, all of the recent events in world news, and the various personal and professional challenges that we are also dealing with.

Running on fumes is a really good description of how I think most of the entire state feels today, and yet, there’s a storm coming that we are all going to have to deal with, while everything else just continues on as well.

When People Show You Who They Really Are…

When People Show You Who They Really Are…

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

Now, as many of you know, I’m not big on politics, and never really have been. I am pretty accepting of most political views, and don’t really find that many extreme political views, one way or the other, are useful at all. This year though, this one has gotten to me. There are definitely some folks who I’m not really going to go out of my way to stay in touch with, and really it’s not the politics of the pandemic as much as it’s the fact that these views exposed something else that makes it obvious that these may not be great friends.

It’s because these views are often expressed with so much selfishness.

So, How Are You Doing?

So, How Are You Doing?

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

But, that’s not what I want to talk about today, because, frankly, I think we’re all talked out on the subject, or at least I feel like I’m all talked out right now. If you don’t realize that anxiety and other mental health issues are sitting heavy on all of us this year, I don’t know that there’s anything I can say that will convince you of it. I want to talk about some good things, because, why not? I want to appreciate the following:

No matter what happens with the election, the sun rose today. It will set tonight, and rise again tomorrow. And I am here to see it.

I am thankful for the many friends and family members we’ve been in touch with in the last few days, even if it’s just to text and say “WTF”?

Laughter, because sometimes there’s nothing else to do but laugh, and it’s good for you.

You are here, reading this. You’re Alive!

Hope, that as long as there is a tomorrow for any of us, there is hope in the fact that things are always changing in the world, and in our lives.

Love. For each other, and ourselves.

Nature.

The technology that lets us all check in with each other, across the world, at any time.

COVID19 as a Classic Example of Victim-Blaming

COVID19 as a Classic Example of Victim-Blaming

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 5 minutes

I’ve written before about how I believe that what we often see as victim-blaming is really people with a need to feel safe finding a reason why something bad happened to that person, and why it wouldn’t happen to us. Statements like “she shouldn’t have been drinking that much”, or “he shouldn’t have been hanging…