Working on my Trust and Confrontation Issues

[unspeakablehorror]

I've been working on trying to repress less, which I think is an important goal for me.  It's undoubtedly been kind of stressful, and I don't think I'll ever be as open as maybe I should be, but I do express more of my thoughts than I used to.  It's also always surprising when things don't turn out as bad as I think they will?  Which is pretty common because even if something doesn't turn out ideally, it's usually still better than what my catastrophizing brain comes up with lol.  And this helps me too because seeing how people actually react to something helps me correct my misconceptions about both other people and myself.  And it helps me to see that there are good outcomes, too.  Even if something does turn out badly, it still won't necessarily be in the way I think it will, and that too can help me to have more accurate perceptions of other people. 

I may always have to contend with my very untrusting personality and my desire to avoid confrontation, but I think making the effort to bring up my concerns more often has really helped me a lot.  While I've been slowly working to get myself to do this more for years now, I feel like recently I've made much more of an effort to reach out to other people and give them the chance to assert who they really are rather than having to rely on only my own fears and very incomplete understanding of them.

It's been very illuminating.  It shouldn't be so surprising to me, but people are often a lot more thoughtful than my anxiety gives them credit for.