How can I be in the mood for something coming up (fx a party, a social gathering)?

I almost always feel that way and then I almost always am glad that I went. I believe it is a form of social anxiety – at least in my case. It helps me to tell myself that I usually do enjoy it when I push myself to go out.

I struggle with that myself. I try to make myself go, because my experience tells me that if I go, I will have a good time.

In my case, I think it is a kind of performance anxiety.

I have to go to a party tonight, and I have been feeling reluctant. I’ll make a pact with you. I’ll go to mine if you go to yours. Then we can report back to each other in this thread tomorrow.

I will have to go to mine. I’ve paid for it, it has been a deal for months, it’s 24 hours. But I really don’t feel like it. it’s stupid, ‘cause the worst that can happen is a boring trip. My senses are telling me that I have nothing to lose and I know that, I just wish I could be excited.

@eiram I understand exactly what you are saying and it would be nice to be excited in anticipation but maybe you just have to accept that you can’t be but that you will enjoy it once you go.

I understand what that is like. I’ve experienced it myself. I go and participate anyway and I feel better for having done so.

I always feel like that before I go someplace, even if it is an event that I arranged, such as making a dinner date with a friend or getting a group together to attend a performance. Typically I have a thought such as “I’d pay $— if I didn’t have to get dressed up and go someplace tonight.” That could be $40 or as much as $100.

It’s my commitment to someone else that usually makes me go. Sometimes when I’m planning to go somewhere alone, I just—don’t. Even if I’m blowing away a $60 ticket.

And, as others have said above, I nearly always have a good time and feel glad that I went. Even if it doesn’t turn out to be a four-star event, it can be refreshing to the senses and the brain just to get out into another environment, take in some fresh input, stimulate idle processes, and hear some thoughts other than my own or those of my immediate family.

I’ve always thought that this experience is just the price (a price) of being an introvert by nature. We’re the people whose batteries are drained, not recharged, by social events. This is part of how we pay. And anticipating that drain can nullify excitement. It comes on before the pleasure of the occasion itself can kick in and help us through it.

I don’t know how to defeat that feeling, but I do know that it invariably wears off. It’s like traveling somewhere by air. My stomach is a knot of anxiety for days ahead (I call the sensation “airplane stomach” even when it’s not about flying) and peaks when I fasten my seat belt. But once we’ve taken off, I’m in “go” mode, and I’m okay.

Just knowing that I’ll get past it, that I always do get past it, is usually enough to help me ignore it and offset the feeling of anxious paralysis.

I just suck it up and go. I always am apprehensive before a big party or concert like meh I’d rather just stay at home but I fight through it, go to the event, and have a blast so its worth itin the end.

@eiram Are you usually pleased afterwards that you went ? If so, go even though you don’t feel like it. If not, make yourself go every third time, otherwise your friends will stop asking. When that happens, you may be on your way to hermit-dom, and that would be too bad.