I suffer from cycles where I will feel a bit overwhelmed with social contact or perhaps overwhelmed by something that's coming up and that makes me nervous. I will then usually isolate myself at home for a few days to a week (I live alone and work from home). In the first few days I usually manage to go out for walks, groceries, etc. but after a while I become anxious about everything, even leaving the house.

I know that the more I stay home the more I feel like rubbish (especially also physically), so at some point I will start putting pressure on myself to go out for a bike ride or a run ("you should really go for a run cause you will lose your fitness/haven't done anything today"), but then the pressure creates more anxiety and feeds me depressed thoughts and feeling hopeless.

Usually the cycle will end with me meeting up with someone or cancelling the thing I was nervous about.

However, sometimes it's not easy to meet up with people since I don't have a lot of social contacts and I cannot always cancel everything.

I'm trying to find a way to get out of these cycles (or not get in them). Once I'm not in a cycle, I'm actually quite a confident, social person who does many things without fear or problems at all.