I want to see people. That's the thing. I'm not someone who prefers to be alone. I make plans genuinely wanting to go, and then the day arrives and the dread builds until cancelling feels like the only option that lets me breathe.
The problem is that it has been years. I have cancelled on the same people so many times that some of them have stopped inviting me. I can't blame them. From the outside I must look unreliable or uninterested. From the inside I am someone who desperately wants to be there and can't make herself go.
I'm in therapy. My therapist and I are working on exposure — building up slowly. It helps in the long term. It doesn't help next Saturday when I have to decide whether to go to a birthday dinner or spend the evening in crushing guilt for not going.
How have people with social anxiety maintained friendships while they were still very much in the middle of working on it?