Social anxiety

[PrivateDancer]

I completed the needs assessment offered in this forum. Who doesn't love an online survey? One of the things that surfaced was 'feeling anxious in social situations' which is apparently a problem for 64% of this community and it was suggested I write a post. So, here goes.

I'm going to use the term 'social anxiety'. In spite of it meaning different things to different people, and it also being a term I am uneasy with, it is succinct and gets to the point. Nearly all my adult life, but possibly extending back into my childhood too, I have been a sufferer of social anxiety.

Imagine being around friends and family and colleagues and feeling nothing but immense self loathing, the thought "I don't know what to say" repeating itself compulsively, clumsily and erratically navigating through social situations and portraying a self that really isn't you just to get through. You crack bad or incomprehensible jokes. You retreat into yourself and are on standby to put on happy face should anyone show concern. You readily and needily accept praise from the concerned or even the disengenuous. You want to be wanted. You go home and are so thankful for the release from the pressure, but are upset at how you can't seem to fathom why or how you can't cope.

This is how it was for years. It was really distressing.

Now, I'm not from the school of thought that says this is genetics, or physiology, or that it can be shaken off by thinking positive. Nor do I feel that the answer lies in pills (although they do help and would always recommend someone speaking to a doctor if they are in a similar situation). I'm uncomfortable with the term 'social anxiety' because like all mental illnesses, society assumes that it's something that just happens to you, or it's the way you are, and can be compartmentalised in the same way as having a bad leg.

I appreciate anyone reading may think this way. I respect your opinions. I respect that perhaps I may be wrong. But I am telling my story and opening my heart and I want you to share my point of view.

Social anxiety, I vehemently believe, is a product of upbringing and social circumstances. I grew up in a small house in a crap town, I shared a bunk bed in a box room with my brother 8 years older than me, my father was overworked and had no time for me, my mother was neurotic and didn't know her arse from her tit most of the time. They grew up in similar situations. When my mum's elder sister gave birth at 17, my mum could no longer sleep in the family 2 up 2 down and had to sleep in the neighbour's bath for her mid-teenage years. As an adult, who has escaped this world, who now lives in central London and has a good job with prospects, I look back almost breathless, tears well up in my eyes, and I reflect on how immensely unfair and unfortunate this is.

Coming from poverty has many drawbacks. You have such little private space. You live in chaos. You suffer the health consequences of parenting by parents who don't have time to think. They, especially my mother, were incredibly loving and I am lucky for that. But they buried their heads in the sand and had no advice to ready their child for adult life. Just don't take risks, be a good boy, and everything will be ok.

But it never was ok. I had no friends and I stood in the corner while my peers went on long distance family holidays, wore the best clothes, and were able to afford cars and lived in the cosier parts of town. I had nothing except my studies which I buried myself in. Inspired by a sister who left home and was the first to go to university, I made it my aim to get the hell out of that town.

If you're from this type of background, studies don't come easy. You don't know how to write an essay. You don't understand buzzwords, or things you're not supposed to say, or things you're supposed to say in a different way. You are misunderstood. You lack the soft skills that come so naturally to the middle classes. You're not encouraged to think about the future, or your financial security, or the great and amazing things that having a livelihood can bring.

I went into my 20s to do a literature degree and spent the next 8 years doing unsatisfying temp job after temp job after temp job. I was so unhappy and escaping seemed an impossibility. At the end of my 20s, I buckled and went back to live in my parents' box room so that I could afford to undertake a conversion course into computing. And somehow, after juggling two jobs and working through days and nights for 4 years, and geographically separating myself from my partner of years and years, I somehow made it.

So.

Social anxiety. Where did it come from? It turns out that I was never allowed to express my feelings when I was younger. That the way I was feeling was invalid and that I was just supposed to 'get on with it'. I somehow had accrued lots of friends in adult life but I had nothing to offer them except a good heart. That gets quite difficult when you're living with others from middle class backgrounds who think living in near-squat like conditions is one big fun adventure. They also had good hearts, but they could escape that life at a drop of a hat. I had to work and work and work and I am still working to this day so that one day I can have the same level of freedom.

Things have got better. I have my own flat with my partner but I feel there is a bit of a distance to go yet. Especially while the NHS gets further eroded and house prices become more and more unaffordable and the certainty of our jobs and futures are in the balance due to bad politics and irresponsible economics. And this is a fight that many of us are fighting.

The best best best thing I ever did was see a counsellor who practiced a very particular type of therapy - existential phenomenology. Its hard to find a good resource on the web but its starting point is that you are a product of your lived experience --- not that you're ill, or you're depressed, or that you have something wrong with you. God, it felt so liberating to understand my story and realise how true this was. My point of view and perspective is valid and I can and will fervently express it to anyone who might dismiss it. I am this person, from that place, and I have developed and grown over the years, and this combination of history and difficult stories and overcoming that struggle is what you will see and what I will be proud of when I talk to you over the dinner table or at a party or during a meeting at work.

I thought I never would get over my social anxiety. It was so scary. And it comes back from time to time. I was lucky in that my counsellor offered an extremely generous rate and saw me once a week for 18 months. I feel and fear the NHS's focus on CBT is misguided and ineffective and sadly, damaging.

However, I will repeat, I respect your point of view. I also respect that behind all of this, perhaps I could be wrong. I know how drastically my life has changed but everyone is different to some degree.

So. Here I am. Trying to lose weight with support from others, some of whom may share these similar experiences. I hope me sharing mine has added to the community in some way

Thank you.

[IvanTheHorrible Maintainer]

What a great post - especially so because your excellent writing style is proof in itself that whereever one starts from, it's possible to transform oneself out of all recognition.

I can personally identify with quite a lot of what you wrote. I also grew up dirt poor (as in, poor enough to be almost permanently hungry because we couldn't afford enough food). I was a social klutz for much the same reasons you describe. I fervently wish more people who are in trouble - and I don't deny that LOTS of people have drawn a short straw in life through no fault of their own - would realise how much control they have over their own problems. Your salvation was finding someone who explained that an accident of birth is not destiny. Life is a journey with more or less amounts of pain and struggle, for all of us, and we can either meet the challenges, or blame someone else for the situations we find ourselves in.

You may be familiar with the term "locus of control", which describes how people apportion agency between themselves and outside factors. Some people naturally see themselves as corks bobbing along helplessly on the river of life, while others see themselves in control of everything. Both of those people are wrong; somewhere in between are people who are more-or-less able to correctly assess what they can control and what they can't. Although genetics plays a part, it's a skill that can be learned.

As for CBT, it has a certain range of applications where it works very well ... and probably a whole load of other applications where it doesn't work at all. I am not familiar with the term "existential phenomenology" - I don't remember hearing it during my studies, at any rate, although that may be because I spent quite a bit of time dozing through psychotherapy lectures. Frankly, it sounds like a complicated way of saying "common sense"

[PrivateDancer in reply to IvanTheHorrible]

Thank you Ivan. Really kind words.

[S11m]

The politicians would be delighted, and think that you prove that anyone with enough ambition can get a university education.

On the Grammar school program, one girl did not get in... and she shared a bunk with her teenage sister and her baby.

[PrivateDancer in reply to S11m]

It was desperation that drove me. Screw politicians. Well, most of them

[S11m in reply to PrivateDancer]

I think that "ambition" is a more positive word.

[Cat33 Restart Dec 2023]

Wow what a fantastic post thank you so much for sharing on here I'm sure you will have inspired a lot of people with your story

Anxiety is so common but sadly there is still that horrid stigma that makes people unwilling to talk about it

I totally agree with you about it being the result of your upbringing mine was from an abusive mother that made me feel completely worthless

I'm so happy that you found help I will google that method I've not heard of it

Wishing you happiness and peace you certainly deserve it ☺️

[PrivateDancer]

It is hard to find decent literature on existential phenomenology. If you are interested in learning more, go to the BACP website and find a counsellor who practices it. They usually give free or cheap consultations so you can see if it suits you and you suit them. My experience is that it attracts professionals who are good caring understanding unguarded souls. They work miracles.

[PrivateDancer in reply to PrivateDancer]

Cat33