Growing up, I've always been labelled as and told I am shy. Shy in the extreme, by shy, nonetheless. I was never comfortable with this labelling, but I accepted it as true because I didn't know any different or that it could be anything else. It was also one of those things that I was told it so many times and from such a young age that I believed it must be true, even though it didn't feel right. There were just always instances of my "shyness" that seemed to go beyond just being shy, even before I knew there was something else it could be.
I think I came across SAD when I was actually searching another of my disorders and as SAD as something that kind of goes along with it. I was curious when I first read the words "Social Anxiety Disorder" and so instantly clicked the link and was led to the standard list of things that people with SAD deal with and I was floored. It pointed out things that I thought were just oddities about myself, things that I irrationally thought only I dealt with, but which actually corresponded with SAD.
The one aspect of SAD that always sticks out to me is coming across the line that indicated issues making phone calls. In my mind, I can rationalize that making a phone call is something so simple, so easy, so painless, but then when it comes time to actually make the phone call, I just can't. I feel nauseated, in some cases extremely light headed, I feel cold, I start shaking...and it goes on. All of these are things I also associate with my anxieties in general, but are never something that I connected to the shyness because shyness seems an entity all in itself for me. Those things I feel during phone calls vary from person to person. There are some people who I'll call on the phone without any issue at all, for example my mother. Why? Because I know what to expect from the phone call. I know that I can call her, say what I have to say and that she doesn't expect any more from me than that. The more comfortable I am with the person and the more I'm familiar with how the phone call will go, the more readily I will receive and make the call myself. If there is any amount of unpredictability, I just don't even want to answer the damned thing. It takes a lot to work up me being comfortable talking on the phone with a person. I know there is at least one person who can attest to how difficult it was to get me to even answer the phone when he'd call. Haha.
I laugh at it, but at the same time, it can be deblitating. It can be embarassing. Mostly because people don't understand how someone can be afraid of something as simple as answering a telephone. I don't blame them. When people are afraid of common things, it's often hard to understand. What upsets me is when people don't even make the effort to understand, as if I should just be able to fix it because they say so and move on. It's never that easy.
I find that over time and with the help of others, I'm getting a bit better because I'm learning to trust more (although to me, it's always something just beyond trust), but I still get that nauseating feeling quite a bit of the time. For instance, where I work, there is customer service for hours on end, almost non-stop. My first day of training, I remember being so incredibly nervous that I could barely function. My first night on the floor, I remember being told over and over again to just breathe. I'm certain I was on the verge of passing out. I remember sitting in the break room before my shift, in one of the plush chairs in a corner, feeling completely cold and numb and sick. I imagine that I looked as bad as I felt, which is why people would tell me to breathe, but to be honest, I hate being told to breathe. I am breathing, even if it is irregular. That's not the point. The point is, that although it's been two years since my first shift, I still feel anxious a lot of the time because I have this extreme fear of screwing up and making a fool of myself.
This applies to situations with those closest to me as well, perhaps especially with them. It's a complicated matter of trust. I feel like if I say that I get anxious hanging out or spending time with them that I'm saying I don't trust them. That's not true, or at least I don't feel like that's true. Like I said, it's always something just beyond trust. I feel like perhaps it's myself that I don't trust. Like I don't trust that I can handle whatever is being thrown at me.
You may be thinking, so what? Most people get nervous at work, especially on the first day. There are probably even a few people that just don't like making phone calls. You may even be questioning how someone with SAD can have a blog like this, that talks about personal problems and experiences.
The thing I've found quite often with the interenet and writing in general is that it allows me some distance between those who read it and myself. I posted my writing on the interent long before I was comfortable showing my short stories and poems to other people. Essentially, if I can keep a sort of wall between myself and the reader, I'm more comfortable. If I don't have to face the judgement dead on, I feel more comfortable. In posting this blog, part of my mind realizes that I may have to face the people that read this, since I link it on facebook, where those of you that I know in person have easy access to it. But another part of my mind thinks that maybe they won't read it, or that if they do, they will make no comment about it. There is a certain amount of anxiety for me in posting these things, especially when I talk about things that I've never mentioned to anyone. I think it would be easier if I was just posting this and no one I knew in person knew about it because then there would be a definite distance between myself and the reader.
But part of the reason I started this blog was because I'm becoming more and more interested in sharing my own issues and problems, partially to vent, but also to help people, even if only inadvertently. And beyond that, you never know who your words are going to reach.
But I'm getting off task. Another thing I wanted to touch on is my view of what shyness is as opposed to SAD.
To me, shyness has the connotation of being cutesy and laughable. We tend to laugh at young kids who hide behind their parents' legs when they're meeting someone new, or kids who hide their faces because they don't want to face the world. They're just being shy and they're kids so they're oh-my-god adorable. Besides, they'll grow out of it one day. One day when they've experienced the world, they'll grow out of being shy and be the normal, outgoing little kiddies that we want them to be.
Forgive me, my sarcasm is leaking through. I just can't help but feeling contempt for this idea of shyness since I was labelled with it for so long. Probably as well because being laughed at is not something I appreciate. I don't have very many childhood memories, but one thing I remember is laughter. Whenever I would do, or say something silly in a social situation, I would be laughed at. Innocent enough reaction, I suppose, but for me it was always so damaging. I felt like a big screw up and stupid because I couldn't act how I was supposed to by everyone else's standards. I think these sorts of situations certainly fed into my social anxiety and are to this day reasons why I keep my mouth shut a lot of the time. I don't want to be laughed at.
Shyness, though, I also feel is something that isn't permanent. For all my sarcasm in that paragraph, I just can't help but think that kids do indeed grow out of being shy. There are so many people that will say how shy they were as kids, but then that they got over it. And I also don't feel like shyness is as paralyzing as anxiety is. The kid who hides behind the parent's leg will come forward eventually; the kid who's anxious will try to hide forever. At least, that's my experience with it.
Perhaps I'm not being entirely clear on how I view the difference between shyness and SAD, but for me there is a clear difference in my mind. I'm just not good at articulating.
As for posting this blog entry, or any blog entry, it's not as easy as it perhaps seems. Not for me anyway. I don't simply type up these words and then hit "publish", but rather I type up these words, I read over the entry several times, am likely to leave it sitting around for a while so that I can mull over it and think about it some more, come back and reread it again, add anything new that I think I might want to say, leave it again and then eventually come back to publish it after adding more. This entry has been especially bad for that sort of striving for perfection in my words, or whatever it is; I started it weeks ago. I feel like I'd better say whatever it is clearly and concisely or else people won't get it, belittle it and overall judge me negatively for it. Especially with anxiety, I feel like I'm going to be told to suck it up and grow up.
And really, I wish I could, not only because I hate feeling the things I do, but also because I know from repetition that the scenarios are never as bad as my anxious mind makes them out to be.
I feel compelled to attach some of my poetry to this entry, if only because I have so many that deal with my mental processes of anxiety or that I write while anxious (it's a good way to stop the thoughts from spinning in my head). I am, however, only going to include a few that I think pertain to this entry particularly. (A warning that they lead to an external website, in this case deviantART.)
This first is called Symptoms, a poem that rather simplistically indicates what I described above about reading and rereading and editting and so on. In writing that poem, I was speaking specfically about send text messages, but it does apply to much of everything I write.
The second is a poem that very quickly became my most read and most favourited, even though I never expected it to be, which I think attests to just how we can all connect to one another. It's called I DON'T BECAUSE... and basically deals with my reasoning for not doing certain things.
And finally, as a sister piece to the last is I DO BECAUSE..., which I wrote six months later and at a point in which I felt like I'd progressed a lot. I really like this poem, if only because despite any issues I have, I've learned to cope with them a little better.
In addition to this, here is a website with a page that I think goes over SAD pretty well. Social Anxiety Disorder and Social Phobia Symptoms, Self-Help, and Treatment (again, an external link, to helpguide.org).
Take care, all.
