I need help because I don't know how to quit pleasure or self-soothe and I am always very scared. I think stoicism could help
I'm scared, I'm always scared. I think I'm mildly good at hiding it, but many times I just feel like a cornered animal, who bites and isolates itself because of how scared everything makes him. Sometimes I feel like a great pretender, I'm able to put on a smile, repeat the same succesful jokes, people approach me because they find me funny, spontaneous, and just generally nice to be around.
Yet, every time I am with someone else, sometimes, even my closest friends, I feel the slight trace of fear that comes from my severe social anxiety.
I am afraid of trying, and it doesn't even make sense. Because my rational mind, has done a million and a half thought processes about how senseless and irrational all of my fears are, but truth be told, my body only answers to itself.
I am scared and envious of men mightier, more virtuous, and more successful than me. Inside me, there is a constant struggle between a drive for submissive surrender to the slightest oppression, against aggressive overreacting.
I am not the smallest man most of the time. I am not that much of a 'loser' or a 'bad person' as those I'm surrounded with. Yet lately, I've been driven by many factors to feel like a small, pitiable thing that should drop all hopes.
Even now, seeking help in r/stoicism, I am afraid that, even if the answers in this forum from when I sought others with my problem have aided me too, this philosophy, way of life, or whatever you may call it, might not be it. That, even if I follow it by heart, it will dull my passion for art, my capability of feeling others' emotions, hell, it might not even be what God has purposed me for.
But I think that I want to take my chances, that thanks to this forum I've learnt a lot of valuable stuff, and I'd like to know how to really learn these teachings. I know, I know a brave person is not the one who feels no fear, but the one who battles against this fear, even then, I want to know how to battle against it. I know next to nothing when it comes to battling myself, barely the few teachings I've taught my own brain.
So, what do I have to do? What are the babysteps? Who do I read?