A couple of months ago, my friend and I decided to go on a Korea trip together during our winter break. I was excited for the trip until the past couple weeks, when the stress started to hit.
For some reason, I have these “periods” where I just can not stand my friends’ presence (regardless of who, but typically people I am more familiar with). Anytime it happens, everything they do and say gets me irrationally stressed and annoyed, even when it’s not their fault. During these periods, I tend to latch onto and overreact to specific things that they did/said in my head. I feel like such a bitch every time, especially since I know that it’s a me problem. I still love them and I realize that I’m the one at fault and being unfair. Every time it happens, I try to quietly distance myself to prevent lashing out at them, and when I see them I always make sure to keep it to myself. Eventually, it usually goes away.
I unfortunately began experiencing this with my friend (who I am going on the trip with) just a couple of days before the trip. Every text I get from her, especially when it’s about the trip stresses me out (which seems to be the small thing I am latching on to). Her spontaneously bombarding me with tiktoks on tourist attractions but never fleshing out a plan (or making me have to change our current schedule), is just adding onto the stress.
Usually, what she’s doing wouldn’t bother me at all and I’d probably just end up doing all the planning without minding. If anything, my normal self would probably be excited rather than stressed (aside from going through TSA and meeting my judgemental Korean ajummas) and also probably be scrolling through tiktoks. However, the me during these “episodes” is getting anxious every time her name pops up on imessage notifications.
For the people who experience anything similar, what would you guys suggest doing to make this stress and anxiety go away? I don’t want to ruin our trip because of my irrational stressing, and I would hate myself if I started undeservingly bitching towards my friend. I want this episode to hurry up and pass so I can go back to my normal self. However, the 22 hour plane ride and a 2 week trip coming up in just a couple of days prevents me from much distance.