I’m a 25 year old woman who has always suffered from pretty severe anxiety. For context, I live at home with my mom &amp; little brother who has severe ADHD &amp; ODD. My mom has borderline personality disorder and is getting older, and my father is incarcerated. I have not left the state in 5 years (since he was arrested) and I’ve devoted most of my time to them to helping them at home. Part of my anxiety has to do with my mom being unhappy with me leaving and I worry about my little brothers behavior as well. My sister is also in the middle of a high risk pregnancy so of course I worry about her too, but she also can’t help my fam. I definitely think Covid has contributed to my anxiety as well especially toward going out and being with strangers in new places again. A couple months ago (when I was under the influence) I said yes to a trip down south with a few of my friends. I decided since I haven’t been on a vacation or anything in this long that it would be a good thing for me to do for myself. Now that it’s happening tomorrow, I’m in full anxiety mode. I haven’t packed and I have so so much to do to prepare. I’m just thinking of all the things that could go wrong while I’m away. Last night I even caught myself thinking of excuses to not go (obviously I’m still going to go but my brain is reverting to the avoidance strategy). I’m thinking of all the money I’m going to spend and everything I’m going to miss out on here while I’m away. We have a really fun itinerary planned and there was a point where I was super excited, but now that nauseous anxiety is taking over. I know  when I get there I might calm down but I just know I’m going to be internally freaking out the whole time. I can’t really talk to my friends about it either so I can’t exactly be open about my feelings and I don’t want to be a downer.

Does anyone have any experience with this or have any advice on how to deal with it??