Social Anxiety... I get it too and I'm a Counsellor

Social anxiety… it’s a funny kind of thing because I think everyone experiences it differently and that makes it a little hard to understand sometimes.

For me it’s not so big a problem as it used to be (I’ve had the good fortune to spend a lot of time with a really good therapist) but that doesn’t mean that I get to live an anxiety-free life, it just means a lot of the time I can cope with the anxiety and I know what will set it off, giving me a good chance at sidestepping the worst of it. Someday maybe I will be free of it altogether, or at least it will just be at a level that is normal for the general population. Today, however, is not that day…

Today I had intended to go out and see people, as it happens something else came up so I didn’t go, but at the moment that I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to go out I felt an enormous sense of relief, not because I didn’t want to go, not because I didn’t want to see people, but because at that moment I didn’t have to face my anxiety. I got to sidestep it and just be disappointed that I didn’t go, but the truth is I was happy enough not to be going anywhere today. I am comfortable inside my little cave of books and learning and theory, I am comfortable meeting pretty much anyone in person one to one, I can even stand up in front of a crowd and make a speech or give a lecture… what I can’t do, or more what I really hate doing because it makes me so uncomfortable that I am literally drenched in a cold sweat is going to a social event alone, like actually arriving alone terrifies me, fills me with a kind of dread that I really do not understand. It all boils down to defence mechanisms and a level of paranoia, if I am to stand up and make a speech, I have the opportunity to prepare, to create a persona that acts as my shield. In a one-to-one meeting, I can read the person opposite me and have a good idea what is going on for them. Arriving at a social event after everyone else, however, having to actively join conversations and look for connection with the people already there… that is a nightmare.

It is a nightmare because at the end of the day I don’t know what the group dynamic is that I am entering into. I begin to ask myself if I am adding anything to the event by being there, whether the people already there would prefer if I had not arrived, this is a constant question and it is one that is a source of my own social anxiety, a question that begins to echo in my mind days or even weeks before an event… Am I good enough? I can still go to things, I can muddle my way through and be brazen about joining into conversations, it usually goes well enough, I have to psych myself up, prepare for whatever it is, get myself in a good headspace before I go, and usually that works just fine.

It works fine until there is something else that is a problem, if I am tired, if I’m in pain, if the weather is bad and I’m limping. These things on there own are minor annoyances they don’t stop me doing a whole lot, but what they can do is to make it hard to psych myself up for anything because they occupy that space in my brain that I need to get excited and that sucks because it brings the possibility of my anxiety being bad closer to the surface. That’s the moment that I know I fear the most, the moment that I need someone to stand close to me, just in case I can’t keep my shit together. Next week I start a new thing in a new place with new people… I won’t have the option of walking in with someone to stand near me, I don’t know if I will know a single person in the room… I’m really hoping the weather is good and I don’t have any twinges to contend with (although I have been told I look cool with a cane so that is always a plus).

I decided that today I’m going to write about this from my perspective, about what I experience and what I think about those experiences. I’d love to write something really inspirational here for anyone that decides to read this (if you’ve got this far well done) but I’m really not that much of an inspirational person, all I can say is that there’s no shame in experiencing difficulties in mental health and if you are suffering in some way, please go and talk to someone, there are many wonderful services available on a low cost or donation basis with many really dedicated counsellors and therapists working in them. There’s no shame in talking to someone about your mental health.