Warhol,

There comes a point where it is liberating to accept that you are wrong about certain things. It's not the content of what might happen you're being driven by, it's the fear you might feel. Your perception driving the concerns you mention, your emotions driving the behaviour you mention. Just because they are generated within you doesn’t make them automatically credible. You need to step back and see this, it’s very liberating to know that whilst your issues may churn and grind away within you, they’re not productive. Seeing this gives you the power to start to stand up to your issues, bit by bit.

Imagine you live in a bubble. Everything within the bubble is your life as it is now, everything outside the bubble are the things that concern you. What you do is break the fear down into little bits that are not so dramatic to tackle, and slowly train your nervous system not to be afraid of them. So you do “newbie missions” like Chillem suggested. Just walk down the street with good body language, next time add a smile, next time add eye contact…etc. This is like leaning on the inside of the bubble just a little bit, the bubble grows and contains more each time. This is how you break down the fear into manageable chunks and retrain your nervous system.

As a side note, if you saw someone else punishing themselves like this and making everything hinge on a simple action that takes seconds, what would you say to them? You’d say stop punishing yourself and get into perspective! So do that!

PS