One of the things I learned as I studied my anxiety is that it has been with me for my entire remembered life. My earliest memories indicate anxiety - like, ALL of my earliest memories, in which I was the 'actor' are wrapped up in feelings of, or actions of, anxiety.

The first dollar I earned, I lost while playing with it outside. I distinctly remember thinking, when I finally had to give up the search for it, that I would never have any money in my life - I was doomed to a life of money flowing through my hands without sticking. That's the anxious person's tendency to take a single incident and extrapolate it to forever.

A later memory - in the spring of the year that I was in Grade 3, is of coming home from school with 2 of my brothers and playing in the water-filled ditches (we grew up on a farm) with our younger brother. He got in over his head and couldn't touch bottom without going under.

In the panic of the moment I ACTUALLY was more concerned with what mother would say if I filled my boots with water than with just walking in and pulling my brother out of the ditch. He made it out, but not because I got my boots full of water - somehow he managed to get close enough to us that we could pull him out. Anxiety about my mother's dire instructions about boots had radically skewed my decision-making in the panic of the moment.

I didn't talk to a girl until I was at least 14 - I was petrified of them (I had no sisters, though I did have cousines nearby). I even practiced once - this was when I was 14 - to speak to 'Brenda', who I liked (who didn't?). I'd somehow come in possession of her pencil and decided that I'd give it back to her AND actually say something at the same time. So I practiced: 'Hi Brenda, here is your pencil.' Simple, direct human contact.

I saw her at the water fountain, walked up to her and said, 'Here Brenda your pencil is....hi' or something equivilent. I remember thinking that I'd got all the words in, but not in the right order. She, of course, saw the pencil, understood that it was hers, took it and walked away. Yes, perhaps a typical awkward boy story, but also part of a much larger picture of anxiety from day one.

Well, enough embarrassing stories of my debilitating childhood anxiety. I now have to go to a fundraising meal and program for which I was supposed to have bought a ticket, but didn't because I was anxious about not having a 'date' (my wife is out of town) - I procrastinated until too late. But I have to go because I will probably ask them for funds myself at some point. So, now, I'm going to eat at home, and show up for the program and schmoozing - an even more awkward situation than eating without my wife.... Dumb anxiety....