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.