Mental Health Catch-up
Dec. 17th, 2020 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI dreamed I was in a large crowd of people somewhere outside when we were all rounded up by authorities and made to get in line to talk to people at booths. My Dad was there, and though we tried to stay together, we got put in different parallel lines that moved at different speeds and I lost track of him.
When I got to one of the booths, they gave me a form to fill out. I knew something terrible was going to happen to people who got the form wrong. The oppressive government was looking for excuses to put people in jail or disappear them. But the form was in Dutch and I couldn't figure out what most of it meant.
I explained that I didn't speak very much Dutch. The woman staffing the booth was nice and tried to help me it, but one of the questions wanted all sorts of details about where and when I was born and how much I weighed and more, and I didn't know. My dad had finished and saw me, so he came to help. I was crying, and saying that in the US, we mostly just need to remember our social security number and that I didn't know the answers to these questions. The woman left to find a supervisor and I was sure that was a very bad thing. I cried harder.
I woke up. I'm still breathing a little raggedly.
I've been having issues with social anxiety lately that have been strong enough to manifest as agoraphobia. There are a bunch of garbage bags in the apartment that I keep meaning to take out, but I haven't. It's been hard to consciously put a finger on why, but in retrospect, at least some of it is fear. The idea of going outside causes low-level fear. I wonder if having been out on a walk yesterday brought some of it to the fore in my dreams.
Being in a country where I don't speak the dominant language is hard. I have a really hard time taking up metaphorical social space. Whenever I have a verbal interaction with someone, I feel like I'm a burden to them, and that I'm being disrespectful and self-centered by not knowing Dutch. It instills fear. Going out to a grocery store causes me fear because I know I'll have to interact with the cashier. Usually I can get by with a couple of phrases I know, but sometimes they say something I don't understand and I'm in the situation I'm so scared of.
I've been thinking more lately about how social anxiety has shaped my whole life as much as being faceblind. They are intertwined, but I've typically thought about it from a neurology perspective instead of a social perspective. A different point of view offers different conclusions. But more on that in another post.
Rationally I know that lots of people live in large Dutch cities for years without ever learning Dutch. Literally every person I have ever had to ask "Spreek je engels?" has, in fact, spoken English. But rationality does not help in this situation. I'm terrified at having to ask them to. I'm terrified of being a nuisance, or of being an exemplar of self-centered Americanism. I physically jump in fear at the sound of our door buzzer because it means I'll need to say something to the delivery person.
When I was planning my move here, I was very much excited at the thought of learning another language and experiencing a new place with new things to see and photograph. I'm not quite sure how I got from there to here, nor how to get from here to there.
When I got to one of the booths, they gave me a form to fill out. I knew something terrible was going to happen to people who got the form wrong. The oppressive government was looking for excuses to put people in jail or disappear them. But the form was in Dutch and I couldn't figure out what most of it meant.
I explained that I didn't speak very much Dutch. The woman staffing the booth was nice and tried to help me it, but one of the questions wanted all sorts of details about where and when I was born and how much I weighed and more, and I didn't know. My dad had finished and saw me, so he came to help. I was crying, and saying that in the US, we mostly just need to remember our social security number and that I didn't know the answers to these questions. The woman left to find a supervisor and I was sure that was a very bad thing. I cried harder.
I woke up. I'm still breathing a little raggedly.
I've been having issues with social anxiety lately that have been strong enough to manifest as agoraphobia. There are a bunch of garbage bags in the apartment that I keep meaning to take out, but I haven't. It's been hard to consciously put a finger on why, but in retrospect, at least some of it is fear. The idea of going outside causes low-level fear. I wonder if having been out on a walk yesterday brought some of it to the fore in my dreams.
Being in a country where I don't speak the dominant language is hard. I have a really hard time taking up metaphorical social space. Whenever I have a verbal interaction with someone, I feel like I'm a burden to them, and that I'm being disrespectful and self-centered by not knowing Dutch. It instills fear. Going out to a grocery store causes me fear because I know I'll have to interact with the cashier. Usually I can get by with a couple of phrases I know, but sometimes they say something I don't understand and I'm in the situation I'm so scared of.
I've been thinking more lately about how social anxiety has shaped my whole life as much as being faceblind. They are intertwined, but I've typically thought about it from a neurology perspective instead of a social perspective. A different point of view offers different conclusions. But more on that in another post.
Rationally I know that lots of people live in large Dutch cities for years without ever learning Dutch. Literally every person I have ever had to ask "Spreek je engels?" has, in fact, spoken English. But rationality does not help in this situation. I'm terrified at having to ask them to. I'm terrified of being a nuisance, or of being an exemplar of self-centered Americanism. I physically jump in fear at the sound of our door buzzer because it means I'll need to say something to the delivery person.
When I was planning my move here, I was very much excited at the thought of learning another language and experiencing a new place with new things to see and photograph. I'm not quite sure how I got from there to here, nor how to get from here to there.
