Social Anxiety at the Supermarket: Peanut Butter, Cereal, and a Whole Lotta Gagging

 Opening my fridge one weekend morning, I surveyed the contents (mustard, Mountain Dew Code Red, and a months-old brownie), and decided that unless I wanted to eat a stale brownie topped with mustard for breakfast, it was time for a trip to the supermarket. 
     Now, for all the Normal People out there, a trip to the local supermarket is fairly predictable. The Normal Person goes in, throw a bunch of unhealthy things they don't need into a cart, tosses an Us Weekly magazine in at the last second, and leaves. Mission accomplished. However, for I, the reigning Princess of Panic, an ordinary trip to the grocery store can be quite the ordeal. I am surrounded by people I don't know (and don't want to know, and you wouldn't want to know them either if you've been to my grocery store), in a large noisy place, wedged in narrow aisles knowing the whole thing will probably take about two hours. (I am a very picky eater, and I also spend lots of unnecessary time in the shampoo aisle reading the ingredient labels intensely. I am vehemently opposed to using shampoos that contain sulfates, so I scour the ingredients list before I buy a new shampoo. Perhaps this is a sign of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I hope not or I will have to start a whole other blog focusing on yet another one of my issues.)
     Back to the topic at hand, the doom of the impending grocery store trip. I feel nervous even thinking about going to that darned busy supermarket. Why do I feel nervous? Simple. The reason all panic princesses and socially phobic studs feel nervous about going places: what if I have a panic attack in the middle of the cereal aisle? Will I have to abandon my cart and rush to the bathroom? (It's happened before.) What if I can't find the bathroom? Then I'll have to ask someone. That would be very embarrassing, because who uses the bathroom in the grocery store? Plus, have you ever tried tracking down a supermarket employee before to ask them where the bathroom is? It's nearly impossible. They're always busy putting together some new display of Coke cans shaped like a football player.
    A trip to the pharmacy located in my supermarket compounds my worries. The pharmacy techs are not very friendly, and they always return my "Hi! How are you's?" with blank, glassy-eyed stares. Perhaps the flourescent lights and extreme monotony of working in a pharmacy has sucked the soul out of them? I can't be sure. Despite all of my rapidly accelerating worries, I grab my car keys and head to the Place of Doom, the local Kroger.
      I arrive at the Kroger. The place is packed, extremely noisy, and there isn't an employee in sight in case I need to ask for the bathroom. I push my cart into the nearest aisle, the cereal aisle, and start loading boxes into my cart. (I am a huge cereal eater and usually buy about seven boxes.) I see Tony the Tiger's orange face grinning at me from a box of Frosted Flakes. I relax a little. Tony is smiling as if to say "It's ok. It's just the supermarket. No reason to panic." Wait. Or is Tony mocking me? Is that a sneer instead of a smile? I avoid my gaze and hurry out of the cereal aisle.
   I reach the aisle where they have the peanut butter when it happens. (I basically live of off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so a trip to this aisle is mandatory.) I'm pushing my cart, and all of a sudden, I gag. It's important for me to explain at this point something very important: my panic disorder, or social anxiety disorder, or whatever the heck it is that I've got, has some unusual and very uncomfortable symptoms: chronic, uncontrollable, unpredictable, unstoppable gagging. That's right. Gagging. Remember when you go to the dentist and they stick that mirror thing so far down your throat that you gag? It's exactly like that. But there is no dentist with a mirror thing down my throat. There's just a random grocery store aisle, and then a feeling of nervousness, and then, a gag. I realize this may gross and/or weird some of the Normal People out, but this blog is titled "Outrageous Confessions", not "Tepid Confessions" or "Happy, Normal, Smiley Confessions".
    No, I don't understand the gagging, or what causes it. Basically I believe the extreme fear of having a gagging attack causes a gagging attack. It's a horrible chain reaction. It's actually quite awful having to live in fear that you'll start gagging like a bullfrog wherever you go. It's caused me to miss out on too many parties, dates, outings with friends, concerts, and simple trips to the grocery store to even remember. And yes, I've tried all the deep breathing and "think happy thoughts" crap they tell you to do on the internet when you're having a severe panic attack. Hint: it doesn't work. At least not for me.
    Back to the peanut butter aisle. I push my cart along slowly, trying to think calmly. "There's no reason to panic, nothing's wrong, everything is perfectly FINE." I realize they don't have my brand of peanut butter, just the weird kind with Peter Pan on the jar. Ok, now I do have a legitimate reason to panic. Then, all of a sudden, another gag. Yikes! It's happening! I'm turning into my bullfrog alter ego! (I haven't given her a name yet, but maybe I should. Maybe Gag-Girl? Hmm.) I slap my hand over my mouth literally trying to stop the gagging, but that only makes it worse. It's like some sort of drug, my mind says "no" but my body is saying it needs one last gag.
   By now I've become terrified that the ordinary lady next to me with her cute fat baby will notice my beyond-weird gagging. I take a deep breath, making one more pathetic attempt to calm myself down. Here it comes, up the throat...gag! Oh no. I can no longer casually stand in the peanut butter aisle. It's time. Time to make the race to the bathroom. Time to find an employee to ask them where the bathroom even is in this huge store. But where the heck is an employee? I look left, right, all around. Gag. Better hurry! Then, I see it. A large display of Red Bull cans shaped like a giant cowboy boot. Behind it, a sweaty bald head is bobbing up and down, laboriously adding more cans to the mammoth Red Bull boot. I abandon my cart and head for the ridiculously unnecessary boot. Let's just hope I can ask the employee where the bathroom is without Gag-Girl scaring him off.

101 Excuses

Dear fellow Princesses of Panic and Social Anxiety Studs:
       Hey there! I'm the ultimate Princess of Panic and this is our little corner of the universe where we can all...PANIC! Shh, don't tell anyone! We don't want all those Normal People who have it all together budging in on our space and telling us their old "Get a grip" and "Take deep breaths" chestnuts. We've heard it all way too many times before, haven't we? So, one, two, three...everybody...let go! Panic! Hide in your closet because you're too afraid to answer the door or the phone! Refuse to get out of bed because the thought of eating breakfast, getting dressed, and facing snooty co-workers terrifies you! (Of course, facing snooty co-workers most likely terrifies the Normal People as well.) Pace outside of a restaurant for three hours (or more), clutching an application in your sweaty hand while pondering all the horrible possibilities of actually going inside to turn it in to a manager. (Helpful hint to the Normal People: Us panic princesses and social anxiety studs never end up turning our application in. We convince ourselves that tomorrow will be the Big Day when we'll finally pluck up the courage to charge into that restaurant and thrust our application confidently into the manager's hands. Another helpful hint: It never happens.)
  For those Normal People out there who are scratching their perfectly normal heads in utter confusion, let me, the reigning Princess of Panic, define some terms for you:

Social Anxiety Disorder: also called social phobia, is an anxiety disorder in which a person has an excessive and unreasonable fear of social situations. A person with social anxiety disorder is afraid that he or she will make mistakes and be embarrassed or humiliated in front of others.
 
Symptoms: Intense anxiety in social situations, avoidance of social situations, physical symptoms of anxiety including pounding heart, shaking, muscle tension, diarrhea, gagging, and about a million other things my fellow panic princesses and social anxiety studs are all too horribly familiar with.

Panic Disorder: Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder and is characterized by unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms that may include chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, gagging/dry heaving, dizziness, and about a hundred other things I seem to discover every day.

This blog is dedicated to the other 12 million Americans out there (and yes, we know you're out there, stop trying to chalk it up to "stress") who are experiencing in some way what I, the reigning Princess of Panic, am experiencing: a panic disorder and social phobia so great it's invaded my everyday life and is making simple things like a trip to the grocery store virtually impossible.  I want help, I want to conquer this darn thing, and I want all my other panic princesses and socially phobic studs to come along for the ride. I'm going to try whatever I can, be it medication, exercise, meditation, eating healthy, random advice I got off of Google, and probably some questionable remedies I'll make up, to get over the seemingly insurmountable hump that is my panic disorder. I'm going to stop making up 101 excuses why I can't go to this party or that job interview because I'm "busy" or "sick". Us panic sufferers are brilliant, and I mean brilliant, at crafting 101 excuses or more to get out of doing stuff we're afraid of. No more. I'm going to pick up the phone right now and call the guy who invited me to his party next week and I'm going to tell him "Sure, I'll come, but I might have to leave early because I don't feel comfortable around lots of people I don't know because I have panic disorder." He'll probably think I'm weird. But hey, you can't please all the Normal People.  Yours truly, Princess of Panic