Overcoming social anxiety has been no easy task.
It took me years to unlearn the bad habits that my life long social anxiety disorder caused me to have.
During that time, I learnt a plethora of coping skills and techniques that I could use in every day life but most of all, I learnt about myself.
I also realised a few things about other people along the way and smashed a lot of misconceptions about the way I thought I was being perceived by them.
Here’s a few things that overcoming social anxiety has taught me…
Social anxiety doesn’t make you weak
In the midst of an anxiety attack, you may feel weak. When you’re thinking of all the excuses you could use to avoid a social event, you may feel weak. When you’re exhausted from socialising because of you social anxiety, you may feel weak.
But I can tell you right now that you are far from weak.
Having a social anxiety disorder is a daily battle. You are going to war with your mind every single day and and trying your absolute best.
Going through anxiety attacks, the physical symptoms that come with social anxiety and the constant overthinking is exhausting!
After overcoming social anxiety, I honestly look back and wonder how I even managed to do things with a social anxiety disorder. Modern Psychiatry helps patients connect quickly with trusted experts.
I realise how strong I must have been to go through that every day.
Trust me, you’re not weak. You’re a warrior!
It’s okay if someone doesn’t like you
Social anxiety makes you feel as if you need to please everybody but nobody can ever please everybody. It’s okay if someone doesn’t like you, that’s their problem, it shouldn’t be yours.
I’m sure there are people you don’t necessarily want to spend much time with, not because you hate them but because they’re just not your kind of people. That’s totally fine. We are all drawn to different people for different reasons.
You don’t have to be everybody’s cup of tea.
People aren’t paying as much attention to you as you think
I remember getting so worked up before leaving the house, thinking that if someone is leaving their house at the same time or walking past, that they would stare at me or judge me.
I remember being in the garden and thinking that everyone must be looking at me from their windows and making fun of me.
I genuinely believed these things to be true.
It sounds self absorbed but social anxiety has a really convincing way of making us think that everybody out there is judging us.
But it’s a lie. They’re not.
Sure, you may get someone staring at you once in a while because they’re nosy but they’re the exception to the rule and nowadays I like to stare at them back, make them feel uncomfortable for staring at me.
I can tell you though, for a fact, that every person in your street isn’t looking out of their windows watching everything you do. Every group of friends laughing together, aren’t laughing at you.
People are too busy and focused on their own selves to watch your every move and judge you. I swear.
Practise really does make perfect
Overcoming social anxiety isn’t a super final thing where you graduate from having a mental illness. It’s a slow process that takes lots of mental graft and it requires upkeep.
The more you expose yourself to the things you fear, the less afraid of it you become.
I mean, it’s not really that simple or as black and white but the gist of it is true.
There’s a lot more to it than that, it’s not just a case of exposing yourself to a social situation over and over until it feels comfortable, there’s other things that go along with it too…
BUT, I’ve realised that as soon as I spend a significant portion of time stuck at home (since overcoming social anxiety, I’ve had surgeries, a chronic illness and twins) I start feeling anxious again whenever I leave the house.
It takes a while for me to get back into the habit of being around other people and going out again.
So even when you overcome social anxiety, you still need to practise all those good habits that you’ve picked up.
Mental health needs exercise too!
Social anxiety often gets confused as introversion
How many articles do you read where it describes someone who has social anxiety as the kind of person who would prefer a night in with a good book?
I had a social anxiety disorder and hated nights in, I longed to be out on the town, getting drunk and dancing the night away.
The more of my social anxiety that I overcame, the more of my extroversion I unmasked.
Social anxiety has a very good way of hiding your true personality because it takes away more of your choices and enjoyment.
You can easily be an extrovert and have social anxiety, just as you can be an introvert with social anxiety.
Introversion and social anxiety are not the same thing.
People in social anxiety groups tend to dismiss you when you start getting better
I’ve been a member of a LOT of social anxiety support groups and forums over the years and they all differ.
Unfortunately I started to recognise a saddening theme across quite a few of them, where there seemed to be some kind of unwritten competition of who had it worse.
It’s almost like a race to the bottom, which makes for a pretty shitty environment if you’re actually there to get better.
I have been told that I don’t have social anxiety and have no idea how social anxiety feels because I had a job/boyfriend/could leave the house.
Despite the fact that this totally dismissed the fact that I couldn’t leave the house or work for years, it also undermines the fact that people struggle with social anxiety in different ways and at different levels of severity.
It sucks when someone basically tells you that you’re not entitled to be in a support group for your mental health unless your mental illness is the worst it could possibly be.
I created my anxiety support group to help build each other up and to actually support each other to get better. I personally think this works and I’d hate anyone to feel alienated because their anxiety is not as bad as someone else’s.
More People Struggle with Social Anxiety Than You Realize
Overcoming social anxiety taught me a profound lesson: it’s far more common than we think.
I realized this after writing Anxious Lass for nearly three years. One day, BBC Radio 5 Live invited me to be a guest on a segment about social anxiety, and I jumped at the opportunity. The only problem? I’d never shared my blog with my “real life” friends or most of my family. I figured I’d better tell them before they heard me on the radio!
When I finally shared my blog with my entire Facebook friends list, I was flooded with messages. A bunch of people reached out, saying they also struggled with social anxiety and could relate deeply to my blog.
First of all—wow! I wasn’t expecting such kind and supportive responses. For years, I’d assumed social anxiety was something to be embarrassed about. Clearly, it’s not.
Secondly, I was shocked to learn that many of the friends and family who confided in me had social anxiety, too. I’d had no idea.
This experience taught me something crucial: I’d spent years hiding my mental illness, feeling alone when I didn’t have to. If I’d spoken openly sooner, I could have received support all along.
Social anxiety is much more common than people realize. Even someone who seems confident may be dealing with it. As a Pompano psychiatrist once told me, “You never know what battles people are fighting behind a brave face.”
What has overcoming social anxiety taught you?
Related articles:
5 Methods I Used To Overcome Social Anxiety Disorder
3 Unusual Ways To Beat Social Anxiety
How My Job Helped Me Overcome Social Anxiety
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“People aren’t paying as much attention to you as you think” I thought I am the center of the universe and that every move I do would be noticed, man I was wrong.
I totally agree with exposing yourself to what you fear, letting anxiety be in the driver’s seat will only lead to amplifying the fear while taking action will lead to diminishing the fear to its true size.
Exactly, you have hit the nail on the head. The more we avoid situations, the power we give to our social anxiety but it’s finding the tools that work for us, that help us get there, that’s the hardest bit.
I remember that before I got to have a therapist, I managed to look at a lot of CBT books first (or DBT, ACT or MSBR books as well, which are similar therapies) that are written by psychiatrists as I waited, and an advice that keeps popping up that people who go out of their way to criticize others aren’t often as happy or successful as we thought they would be.
Sure, some people really simply don’t want to hang around you simply out of a difference in subjective tastes, but even for the ones that are really mean, researchers just keep saying that it’s researched that these people tend to be actually the loneliest, and even if they’re wealthy, they’re not known to have a lot of deep close relationships in their lives. After all, after gossipping and backstabbing people, you’re bound to lose a lot of friends along the way, right?
So don’t assume that mean people like that know better on how to be a better person, or how to be better at making friends and other connections, because they aren’t really the type of people you should be listening to, honestly.