Social anxiety disorder wins again
Although the exposures were minimal (making eye contact and saying hi to strangers), the anxiety was just as bad - and what’s more, I didn’t feel any different afterwards. I was back to square one – I hadn’t changed a thing.
Sure, I forced myself to speak to people, and tried to maintain some sort of normality, but it felt awkward, forced, and entirely fake. It simply wasn’t me – plain and simple. I felt that this just wasn’t my personality, and thought that others would be able to tell as well.
“I was making a fool out of myself and the whole town knew it. Small towns are notorious for gossip and I had just supplied them with a years worth.” Of course, this was all in my head. The reality was that they probably regarded me with a slight curiosity and nothing more. After all, they had better things to do than worry about what I was doing. Who was I to think that I was important enough to gain the attention of an entire community?
It was at that point that I realized social anxiety disorder had an iron grip on my life and everything in it. I had created this custom-made environment with very little chance of failure and I still could not make any headway. The same old me always appeared and dealt with things just as they had been dealt with for the past 33 years. The same fear, anxiety, and negativity flooded my mind. I felt embarrassed for attempting to mingle with society – I wasn’t meant to act in this manner.
How could anyone gain the motivation to carry through, when feeling like this?
I knew that my problem was bad, but I had still underestimated the extent to which it affected my entire life. Now that I had the blinders off and was aware of how my mind and body reacted to social exposures, I knew I had a major problem on my hands.
It was like waking up out of a dream. My auto-responses had been “looking after me” for 33 years – protecting me from harm and turning me into a social misfit, all in one swell foop . I suppose the intentions were good though.
Initially, I thought that the incubation stage had to be simplified even further, but that wasn’t the answer either. I still got only mediocre responses and curious looks from people. Now, I wasn’t expecting to be an instant hit, but some positive feedback would have been great. I wanted to engage people in conversations, but instead, got polite, emotionless one and two word responses. Was I really that unapproachable?
I was stumped. I wanted to give up, but I had nothing to turn to if this failed. I knew I could make it work, but I didn’t know what was missing in my plan.
I reverted to the most simple of tasks in my incubation stage: I sat on the front steps of my parents’ house watching people go by. I didn’t know what I would accomplish by sitting there, but at least I was out of the house.
I used this time to think about where I went wrong and what was missing…
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