and what did that feel like?

well, it’s a feeling where, you know, it keeps going and going, and it gets more and more abstract, to the point where i can’t even connect it to anything real.

what gets more abstract?

the fear. it’s like, as i move through these hypotheticals, where i keep thinking ‘what if’ this, ‘what if’ that, they eventually get far enough away from the initial thing that i was worried about that, you know, even i start to lose any sense of logic.

i noticed that you laughed, kind of like an exhaling. was it a feeling of relief?

i don’t know, not relief necessarily. just this feeling that it’s gotten so far out there that it’s become like a parody of the fear. like, i’m always afraid of what the other person is thinking, and it’s always somewhere in my thoughts that i might be mistaken. that i’m just imagining things that they’re not thinking, that i’m the only one with these thoughts and i’m just projecting them onto the other person.

yes.

but it always feels way more true that the other person is having these thoughts about me, that they do find me and my presence and whatever else about me objectionable. but in a situation like that, it spirals so far out of control, and the thoughts become so tortured and convoluted that even i start to see the thoughts as kind of insane.

insane how?

the whole logic of where the thoughts are coming from and me reading their reactions gets so complex, in my head, that it feels like that’s the only place that it can possibly be real- in my head. so it just feels like a huge joke that i play on myself.

i can tell you, from my experience of that moment, that i felt relief when you sort of stopped and exhaled or laughed there. it was relief for me, because it suggested to me that you had broken through that paralyzing fear that i can see when you talk about your fear of what i or others think of you.

yeah. i guess maybe a bit of that, but much less than you were hoping for.

lol.