I literally just made my account so apologies if I'm writing/doing something outside of the norm here! (Is this my social anxiety speaking? Probably.)

I've been having a really tough time at work recently because of emails. I'm fine with emails inside the company –– it's when I have to email strangers, especially to ask them for things, that I get really anxious. I worry that I'm going to offend them or ask the wrong question, and then they'll refuse to help and it will be a disaster for the project that I'm working on. Intellectually, I know that the likelihood of this happening is very low, and everyone I've emailed with has been really helpful and lovely. And even if someone were to be nasty and refuse to help, the project would be fine. 

But I still get extremely anxious each time I'm asked to send out an email (or even worse, call someone). My heart starts beating loudly and my chest feels tight for days, and I always feel like crying, and it feels too overwhelming that I  put off the emails for days, sometimes weeks. It's gotten so bad that I've thought several times about quitting, though I do feel like I need to see the project that I'm on through.

I'm going through one of these episodes of extreme anxiety right now because of an important email I should have sent last week and was called out about it by my boss today. I just needed to get this off my chest and maybe find a few people who can relate to this. And maybe this is another way of me avoiding working on the emails....

Thanks for reading. Take care &lt;3