What It’s Like To Have Social Anxiety

Before I knew social anxiety, I was a happy little girl who wanted to be a performer one day. Before I knew the world outside my home, I was bolstered by my family’s adoration and secure in my home.

Then school started.

To be fair, I don’t think I developed social anxiety in school. School frightened me from the first second I stepped in at 5 years old, and it remained a source of anxiety for the next 12 years. It merely brought out what I already had.

Much like how some people are born with congenital heart problems, I think I was born with social anxiety.

Remark: Long post.

Early Symptoms

Persistent fear in social situations

Despite being born into a loving and stable family, an overwhelming sense of insecurity tainted my childhood. Every moment spent outside of my home was uncomfortable. I couldn’t even feel at home at my aunt’s.

In school, I was afraid all the time. Even though I had regular interactions with my parents, two siblings, and my relatives, I didn’t know how to “be” in school. I was awkward around other kids and fearful of the teachers.

Inability to talk to “figures of authority” or direct attention to myself

Talking to the teachers scared me so much I never asked for permission to go to the bathroom. Hell, I never asked the teacher anything.

I lost count of the days spent in quiet desperation holding my pee. When I got older and had longer school days (and worse anxiety), I spent many days holding bigger things too. Haha.

I’d rather suffer hours of stomach cramps than get the teacher’s attention and have to speak in front of the class. Fun times.

Painful self-consciousness

To make things worse, using the bathroom during recess was a no-go for me. I was painfully self-conscious. Standing in the queue waiting for my turn to use the bathroom made me uncomfortable. Did I belong? How should I stand? How long would I be waiting? What if I took too long? So I simply didn’t go.

Repeatedly identifying flaws in my interaction with others + Intense humiliation from perceived flaws

Buying food was terrifying too. I’d be in the queue, anxiously waiting for my turn, rehearsing my order over and over. If I messed up the order, I’d feel a huge sense of humiliation no matter how the seller reacted.

In fact, this happened with every perceived “error” that happened in my interactions with people.

The shame was intense, and the shame would wash over me repeatedly as my brain recalls the incident over and over. I’d grow up to learn that this would become a recurrent theme in my life.

Intense fear of being the center of attention

The cherry on top of the shit sundae is, naturally, worrying that the teacher would pick me to answer a question.

Avoidance of social situations due to fear

I remember wearing the same set of uniform for 6 years. My light blue blouse became so worn it was translucent. The whole world could see the hole in my training bra when the light was right.

Since no one said anything, I pretended I didn’t care. The alternative was talking to the nice lady at the shop where they sold the uniforms. That’s a social interaction I’d rather not have.

Later on, I’d look back at class photos and see the outline of my training bra through my blouse. Oh, wonderful childhood memories!

I tossed the class photo.

Back then, I didn’t know about social anxiety. So, I thought I was “too shy” and “too stupid” for social interactions.

For more signs and symptoms, check out this link.

It isn’t just shyness.

A regular person may think that these are things little kids learn to cope with over time. No biggie! I was just shy! It happens to many kids!

Yeah, I thought it was just shyness too. So I tried my best to handle everything on my own.

Now that I’m older, I realized social anxiety isn’t a learning or practice issue. It certainly isn’t “just shyness”. Social anxiety interferes and affects daily life. It limits development and caps potential.

The anxiety and shame we feel are magnified and disproportionate to the event, and we know it. We just can’t help it.

I want to make it clear that the anxiety doesn’t necessarily go away with practice. I know this for a fact because I did most of the activities I had difficulty doing. Though I managed to improve little by little, the anxiety never truly left.

In other words, it’s not because I didn’t know how to do something. It’s because my brain overdoes the fear. In the same vein, when I become more comfortable doing something that triggers my anxiety, it doesn’t mean the anxiety went away. The anxiety is managed.

At 12 years old, buying food at the school canteen finally became a little easier, and I started going to the bathroom during my lunch break too. You know, little improvements. I started gaining a little confidence. I thought the worst is over. Little did I know, the little bugger is here to stay.

Social anxiety followed me into my teenage years

In my teenage years, the physical symptoms got worse.

Previously, if I had to talk before the class, my heart would race and my voice may come out weak and small. Now my voice shook and refused to emerge from my throat, my face flushed and I’d sweat and sometimes burst into uncontrollable giggles before the entire class.

See, it didn’t matter that I’d been answering teacher’s questions for 10 years by then, I was still scared.

As it did before, my brain would keep replaying the perceived humiliation over, and over. Filling me with fresh shame each time.

I got lucky though, I was befriended by a girl who’s also an introvert, but is way more confident than I am. She introduced me to her friends, and the little group of us have remained friends since. Otherwise, I would’ve turned out a lot worse. (If you’re reading this, Jer, thank you.)

We’d go to MacDonald’s. I’d let my friends go first, trying desperately to listen to what they’re saying, and try not to freak out when it’s my turn. If I stuttered, I’d burned with shame for hours afterward, but I always got my food, so that helped me improve.

Being socially anxious is like having a psychopath in your brain that punishes you for every “wrong” move you make.

My first foray into the society

At my first part-time job at a factory, a new symptom appeared. Going into lifts with strangers sent my anxiety into overdrive. More often than not, my heart raced, my mind went blank and breathing became difficult.

The worst is when I get the urge to giggle. For some reason, my anxiety often manifested in joyless giggles.

Imagine a person suddenly giggling so hard in the lift her body shakes and her face grows red. She’s by herself and nobody did anything.

In the best of times, I’m sensitive to attention. When that happened, I felt downright humiliated. I couldn’t control the giggles, and sometimes it doesn’t stop right away. It was painful.

To add insult to injury, my asshole brain replayed the embarrassment over, and over, and over.

Stepping into a quiet office had the same effect too. The whole thing created so much anxiety I wasn’t eating properly. I lost 10% of my body weight in the three months I was there.

That took a lot of effort to get over. A lot of pinching and biting at first, then focusing on my breaths and staring at random objects in the lift. Then self-comforting. It worked.

Social anxiety in adulthood

Amidst all the anxiety and self-inflicted feelings of intense shame, I became a young adult. I also learned about social anxiety thanks to the internet.

At 21 years old, after social anxiety prevented me from moving past matriculation at a good local university, I experienced my first major depression.

I snuck off to see a psychiatrist out of sheer desperation. Unfortunately, I didn’t stick with the appointments. I was unemployed then, as I’d often be in my adult life.

I won’t bore you with more details, just know that I became a serial job-hopper with multiple periods of unemployment in my resume. Workplaces often created an intense feeling of fear and isolation in me. Did I mention I hate talking on the phone?

Retail jobs, sales jobs, jobs that require me to talk to people, or travel, or do a lot of presentations are all out of my reach. Each time I tried, it became too much too quickly. I pretend it’s a personal preference, but the reality is my brain can’t deal with it.

At one point, I only had $30 in my bank account. I was 28 years old. You won’t be able to see social anxiety’s mark on my body, but it’s all over my self-esteem and bank account. Ha.

The only position I could decently hold dealt with ophthalmic research. A job that involved a lot of computer work and little talking. My colleagues were all friendly introverts.

It’s thanks to that job that I slowly grew stronger. I even made several good friends.

In other areas of my life, I did fine. I dated, established friendships, kept friendships, grew intellectually, traveled a fair bit with friends.

If it sounds like I wasn’t that anxious anymore, it’s because I spent years trying to manage my anxiety. And I’ll talk about that in another post. This one is getting mighty long!

Having friends and a close-knit big family really helped too. I got lucky.

I know some people with social anxiety have a lot of difficulties making friends, which definitely will impede their progress.

Am I still socially anxious?

I thought it was behind me. That’s why I thought I was ready to come to the United States.

It’s only when I looked closer that I see it. In my childhood, it was a psychopathic monster sitting on my shoulders, now it’s a ghost peeping over my shoulders.

Sure, I went to family events and interacted with people. But social anxiety is there, putting me on edge and making me cringe every time I say something remotely stupid or mishear something.

Every action I make in a social setting with people I’m not close to has probably been thought over repeatedly. There’s always a tension in my chest and my body, behind the presentable expressions I’ve learned to make.

The difference is, my coping mechanism kicks in when my brain tries to dwell on perceived flaws in my interactions and behavior.

Then I looked back at my 20 months of unemployment. Ever since I got here, I haven’t gone anywhere on my own that’s not walkable. 2 long years. Even though I’m fine being in stores alone, I face a huge resistance to leaving the house.

So, yes, I am better, but I still have social anxiety.

I see its shadow everywhere. It’s in the distance I feel with people I like but feel I have to “impress”. The reason I still find it hard to say “can you pass me the dressing” at the dinner table. At a party, it’s hard to get food without Anth by my side. I see it, I didn’t let it stop me. And yet. Here it remains.

Why doesn’t it go away?

I listened to a YouTube video on social anxiety recently. The doctor mentioned that one difference between social anxiety and normal anxiety is this.

When a normal person engages in an activity that gives them anxiety at the beginning – like talking to someone important, the anxiety slowly goes away after a while because the body learns to deal with the emotions.

For someone with social anxiety, it doesn’t let up. Sometimes, it gets worse.

That has to be why I never got used to speaking in class and never felt comfortable around my aunts despite my fondness for them.

It’s the reason I could talk to research participants back at my job and still find myself fearing work involving a lot of social interactions.

I guess I’ll have to manage social anxiety for life. If you’re a mental health practitioner, can you tell me if this is true?

I’m still struggling today, albeit in a subtler way.

In closure

I long to be carefree and fearless, to see places on my own, and be confident in my abilities, but social anxiety limits me. Much like so many other mental conditions, social anxiety puts a mental prison around the inflicted.

It has impeded my development, especially in terms of career advancement. I don’t have hopes of climbing a corporate ladder of any sort, now you know why. I mean, I don’t want to, but I can’t even if I wanted to.

Writing about it sets everything in perspective though. The pattern became clear. Social anxiety is here to stay. At least I’ve managed it once before, maybe I can manage it again. Maybe someday, I’ll get treatment for it.

If you have social anxiety, I hope this long-assed post made you feel less lonely. I’ll be publishing another about how I managed my anxiety. I hope that’ll help you. If you’d like to share your story, please feel free to write them in the comment section.

If you don’t have social anxiety, I hope you’ve learned something about it. More importantly, I hope that you’ll understand it’s not just shyness. It’s a mental health condition.