Today, I’m going to write about social anxiety for both the socially anxious, and those whose loved ones may have social anxiety.
Prelude
When I first started this Keeping Ahead of the Shadows blog series, I had several areas in mind to write about, each tackling a different major aspect of life that is both difficult and that I have found ways to improve as a person with chronic depression and anxiety.
Unfortunately, the series rapidly became rather more preachy than my initial vision. It mostly consists of blog posts on things I do to combat depression. On one occasion, I’ve used it to complain about the way people define me. I’d only been doing it for a month or two before a friend of mine first called it my “self-help blog.”
But I never set out to create a self-help blog. I’m not here to tell anyone what to do. Yes, I’m a cognitive scientist—I understand neuroscience and basic heuristics. I probably have a slightly better understanding than the average person about how our minds work on a day-to-day basis. I am not a psychologist, or a psychiatrist. I’m just a person with depression and a slightly-above-average understanding of the human mind, trying to feel my way into a life that I can handle.
When I first conceived of this blog series, I had numerous subsections that I even outlined in the introductory post. In the year and few months that this blog series has existed, I’ve never addressed one of those categories at all.
So, let’s do that now. This is what I called it:
“A Social Life That Helps”
What does that even mean?
I could tell you what I meant at the time, and outline the things I planned to write about and never did.
I could—and yet I don’t see the point. Because there’s a reason I never talked about this.
Instead, I now articulate the undercurrent that made me want to talk about this in some way, shape or form: Social life is my heaven, and it is my hell.
Interactions with others is where I feel the effects of my broken, tired mind most acutely. It is where I feel the greatest despair, sorrow and hopelessness.
Yet interactions with others is also where I find my strength, and can see the beauty all around even in the darkest, coldest tunnel. It is where I can feel the greatest joy and happiness.
I can’t tell you if this is correlative rather than causal: if socialization is simply the medium through which I can feel what my mind currently holds, rather than the cause of these emotional ups and downs.
What I can tell you is that within the confines of my mind, the negative usually outweighs the positives.
From an objective standpoint, I’m pretty sure that most of the time, I enjoy people’s company, and enjoy talking and getting to know people in the moment. Yet that isn’t generally how it feels after it’s over. The moment a social interaction is over, I almost invariably sigh in relief and relax. The moment that I am in my own little world, my mind gets on its hamster wheel and clatters away. Sometimes, I focus on all the worst case scenarios and all the moments when I said the wrong things—until I’m convinced that I’m disliked, or that it may be fine for now, but everything is bound to go south eventually. Other times, I can distract myself, and prevent myself from dwelling on anything in particular…but it’s no use. Still I am left with a vague sense of doom at having to interact with these people again—I simply can no longer articulate why.
But that mostly applies to acquaintances. Interactions with close friends are a different beastie, with different hurdles and different ups and downs. These tend to be easier starting out, and are less likely to directly result in a roller coaster—but when the roller coasters hit, they can be far, far worse. Though the things I focus on may differ and the patterns may be less predictable, there is still a pattern of ups and downs. The highs from these interactions are more likely to last. Sometimes, there’s no noticeable drop from these interactions at all.
The intensity of these roller coasters varies. Sometimes, it can be subtle, a feeling so vague and undefined that I only see it upon reflection in hindsight. Other times, it can be intense, leaving me literally trembling and nauseous with terror at the notion of having to interact with people.
I have ways to mitigate these roller coasters in the interest of keeping up appearances, not going insane and just generally being able to function in society. And that was going to be the subject of this section.
Discussing a Discussion of Social Anxiety
Because social interactions seem to carry the greatest probability of destabilizing my mental state, it also feels the most frightening to talk about.
Certainly, as I mentioned earlier, there’s a discussion to be had about the cause and effect here. Is it really the social interaction that destabilizes me, or is the social interaction simply where I first become aware of the symptoms of my already destabilized mental state? If I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably a bit of both.
However, I’m not here to diagnose, or analyze cause and effect. I’m here to talk about my experiences.
Which brings me to the core of the difficulty of discussing this here. How do I discuss social anxiety, a subject that can so deeply affect me, in a way that will not lead to more difficult and anxiety-inducing social interactions? How do I discuss something that feels so inherently self-destructive in a way that is somehow constructive?
The answer to the first question, it would appear, is “carefully, and wordily.” The answer to the second is harder. My answer at this point is to ask myself another question: Whom am I looking to address with this section? The fellow socially anxious, members of the general public looking to learn more about social anxiety, or the loved ones of the socially anxious looking for a map?
I find that I’m only interested in deliberately attempting the first and the third. If there are people who fall into the second category who end up reading this and find it helpful or informative or interesting…well, of course, that would be a pleasant surprise. Emphasis on the surprise. Not because I don’t want to engage those who have no experience with this subject, but because I feel I’m too close to it to be able to give an explanation that would be truly meaningful to those who have no experience with the subject themselves.
However, let that be your judgement to make.
A Brief Overview of How I Deal With Social Anxiety
Social anxiety, to me, is a matter of mindset. I don’t mean it’s easy, or that it’s under my control. I can’t control it, and I don’t try to—much as I have discussed previously with regards to depression, trying to wrestle these tendencies and bend them to my will can only make them worse. Instead, I accept them—but try to keep them from completely taking over.
I liken it to there being two components of thought in my head: the cool-headed and rational part, and the emotional part that can get overwhelmed by anything intense—self-consciousness, guilt, fear and even love. Both of these components are necessary for me to lead a healthy life. This isn’t about cutting out the emotional part, but rather about balancing it with the rational part.
On occasions when I need to do something or go somewhere and social anxiety is the thing holding me back, I try to ask myself, “What am I afraid of?” Most of the time, I don’t have a clear answer. But that act of asking the question helps the rational brain gain just a little bit of foothold.
Am I afraid of people judging me and disliking me? If so, why? Usually, if there is an answer to these questions, the answer is not as damning as it initially feels, when inspected more closely (but not so closely that I overthink it and send myself down another anxiety spiral).
Am I afraid of repeating past failures? Guilt and fear combined can become a crippling force. Here, I must forgive myself—repeatedly. I try to remind myself of what I have learned through my past failures, and trust that I will not repeat them.
Isolation is very comfortable, to me—at times it can become too comfortable, so that leaving my comfortable isolation becomes an increasingly daunting prospect. As a general rule, I try to gauge my own needs against my wants. Do I need isolation, or do I just want it because I’m anxious of people?
There’s nothing wrong with isolation, but it must not become a self-imposed fear-enclosed cage. It’s a tightrope walk between the exhaustion that is socialization and the fear that comes with too much isolation.
Most crucial of all, when I feel it is necessary (or even just helpful), I ask friends to help me by telling me to go wherever or do whatever it is that I’m anxious about. I’m selective about who I ask to help with this: if a friend refuses, or takes this as an invitation to push me unprompted at other times, it can backfire and end up shoving me further into my shell instead. But with the right friend, a push where I needed it can make that crucial difference.
Crossing the Line Out of Anxiety
Walking through anxiety can be like pushing through molasses, with the thought “I could just turn back and find an excuse not to do this” never far from my mind. The physical distance that I have to push through this anxiety can be very short. At present, it’s never more than ten meters.
There’s usually an invisible line somewhere, in a physical location: a line where, if I cross it, the anxiety snaps away and leaves me clear-headed and alright. Usually, for me at present, this line is just outside my room or my front door—sometimes even just inside the front door. This hasn’t always been the case. In high school, the line was at the entrance to my classroom. My ride to school was always torturous: a solid half hour to an hour spent begging the universe and providence and any deity who might be listening to please spare me from this coming day with a riot or a strike or anything at all.
Yet regardless of how long or short the distance is, the struggle is no less difficult.
So, sometimes I focus only on that release. Sometimes I don’t think past that front door—I just tell myself that I’m moving one step at a time—and then I can do it. It’s astonishingly easy. I pass the line, and I can leave as if there was never any difficulty at all.
And then the fear is gone—for a time.
Helping a Loved One With Social Anxiety
Now, most everything I’ve talked about so far has been about how isolation must not last and how the fear of socialization should not take over—but this is how I would speak to a person who has or understands social anxiety. If you are not familiar with it, perhaps you wonder why I don’t simply keep myself around people until I am free of the fear.
This is because to me, socialization is inherently exhausting. There are too many stimuli: the noise, the people, the verbal and nonverbal cues, the expected actions and reactions…it wears me down. I feel exhausted after a few hours of dealing with people, but due to the nature of our society, I cannot simply slink back home. I must keep going, keep pushing, keep it up until whatever I am doing is done.
Personally, I have a lot of ways that I help myself deal with this. I usually carry a book on my person to be sure that I have a world to sink into, just in case I cannot leave but I need to pull my brain out of the fray for a moment. I live with a friend that I love and trust implicitly, who can understand this sort of difficulty in me and respect my boundaries as I set them, because I know that this keeps me from sinking as completely into isolation as I might if I were on my own—not a thing that I need all the time, but a thing that I believe is extremely helpful to me for the time being.
So, as you can see, for my own part, if I need something to help me, I can ask for it. I can ask a friend to argue with me to get me to go to a place where I don’t want to go. I can ask my flatmate to leave me alone for a few days. I can guiltlessly send a text to say that I will be late to a social gathering, allowing myself the time to collect my mind and pull myself together if I’m not able to do so in as timely a fashion as I would wish. At times—desperate times—I can even lock myself in a bathroom or some such thing to gain isolation if I really feel I need it.
This is why, if you have a loved one with social anxiety, the biggest piece of advice I can give you is to listen. Just because we have social anxiety, just because there are shadows and ghosts in our minds that do not exist in reality, does not mean that we don’t understand what we need.
To many who cannot see the shadows and ghosts, there appears to be a simple solution: just do it. Just go there. Just pull yourself together. But just because the shadows and ghosts are not real does not mean that we can simply act as though we do not see them. They feel real, and that’s all that matters, sometimes.
Depending on the person, depending on your relationship, perhaps there are instances where your loved one might thank you for pushing them when they didn’t ask you to, or pulling them out to do something against their protests.
All I can tell you is that for me, those measures are entirely counter productive. For me, the ghosts and shadows only are dispelled when I take that step out the door of my own volition. If I’m dragged, or feel forced or pressured into going somewhere, my shadows and ghosts come with me. I curl up tighter in my mind, hugging the ghosts ever closer. It becomes that much harder to break free.
But this was also not always the case. As a young child, I hated going out to social events; but my parents knew well that they only had to persuade me out the door, and however sullen I might start out, I would likely end up having fun. As I grew older, however, this ceased to be the case. Enjoyment was slow and rare to come to me if I felt forced to go somewhere, even if the intentions of the family member were good.
So, this is why I say—please listen to your loved one. And continue to listen. Just because you’ve found a formula that does work, that has worked for awhile, don’t stop listening when it no longer does.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to say on the topic of social anxiety—as a person with it, as a person used to talking to people with it.
This barely scratches the surface, but it touches a topic that is desperately difficult for me to discuss in a way that I hope was somewhat rounded, and hopefully helpful to someone, somewhere.
And now—I shake off my shadows and ghosts, and go out my door.