There is a meet and greet here that goes to a few restaurants / bars and I’m too scared to go. Im so tired of this happening but i don’t want to have a wallflower panic attack. Im damn near fucking 30 and i still cant fucking meet people or go out.
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I have heard of this kind of thing before. There are quite a few people who have social anxiety.
I know a lady that knows a man that hasn’t left his house in 10 years because of social anxiety.
What do you think triggers it for you? have you had bad experiences in social groups before and now fear of it happening again set in? Or do you think you might have a disorder? There are people with a disorder related to this. Maybe you should see a Psych doctor and talk to him about this. There maybe treatment or meds you could get on to help you with this.
I hope you are able to overcome this.
Yeah, anxiety can be crippling.
Funnily enough, isolation can feed into anxiety as it doesn’t address cause and maladaptive responses. One way to attempt to counter negative responses is by exposure therapy, which in this case would be attending. If we can link positive outcomes to triggers it’s possible to form a new and less detrimental pathway.
Attending such an event would definitely constitute being thrown in the deep end…I wonder if it’s better to start small in an environment that we have some control over.
Anyway, if you do attend I hope that you enjoy your time there.
@ Riff Raff I know I have social anxiety disorder its been diagnosed over a decade ago and I’ve had it my whole life and I also see a counselor. @both I have had so many negative experiences in social settings some have been due to the anxiety I don’t know what to do. I have tried a bunch of times before and it never works.
Which came first, the anxiety, or the negative experiences? For me, a lot of times anxiety makes me act awkward, which makes me anxious, which makes me more awkward, which leads to a feeling of doom that sticks around for days after the fact. I don’t werk well with ze hoomans, ’cause I used to be one. Best guess at a fix for it? Drink a couple beers, get a little buzz (not drunk, just enough to get the tinglies), and embrace the awkwardness – make it humor. Focus on the other people and not how you think they might be seeing you. Self-consciousness never helped anyone avoid anxiety.
I’ve always been anxious my entire life. And i dont drink lol
The chicken?
Yeah, regarless of underlying factors we can definitely influence association. Similar to overcoming the fear of heights through controlled exposure, or at least reducing the unnecessary fight or flight responses from it.
My problem is exposure only make is it worse. Its like falling off a building each time you try to conquer your fear of heights with out the benefit of dying
I can relate. I have social anxiety, and when trying “exposure”, often feel off-beat, like I can’t get into the rhythm of the interaction. So yes, I can relate to your experience that even when you push yourself, you fail.
What I have learned over the past year of working in a store is that you have to push yourself a lot more than you think. A whole year of practically daily exposure for hours on end, and although I am much less anxious, it is still crippling at times. A year!
But that might not be 100% representative, because what goes on in a store is very short interactions with many different people, some of whom you have never seen before and/or will never see again.
I forget where, but I once read a casual quote on some blog or something that really stuck with me. The question was: Why do some smart people have terrible social skills? And the answer: Because they study social skills to get better at them, i.e. they read about social skills.
BUT THEY DON’T PRACTISE!
It was so simple, yet so profound to me. All this time I have been reading and thinking and getting my head shrunk by various shrinks to deal with this issue, basically done everything EXCEPT practise the skill to get better. It is like reading the rules of football to become a better football player. It only takes you so far.
Getting better is HARD WORK. But it needn’t be as hard as you think, or as my experience at the store.
First off, you can set small goals. E.g. just “smile at one person every day”. Or whatever.
But much better, in my personal experience, is immersion. Decide that you will live a social life.
If you live alone, move in with other people. Think of all the things you need to do and want to do in life, and find ways of doing them with other people.
Once socializing becomes your default mode of being, how could you be anxious? You will have so much practise you are bound to get more confident.
I would also like to recommend the website Joyable, and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic’s book Confidence.
Here is the article I referred to:
shynesssocialanxiety.com/socially-inept/