Social Anxiety, The Relationship Killer
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What is said,
‘Hey, do you want to hang out tonight?’
What I think,
‘Oh God, what if I want to leave? Where will we catch up? What will we do? I don’t know if I will be in the right mental state. There are so many things to consider and I don’t know where to start.’
What I am feeling,
Tight chest, pounding heart rate, clammy hands, sore belly and shoulders and a foggy, pained head.
Social anxiety is a relationship killer. It makes me bail on connections, say no to almost everything, and fret over small interactions. This ultimately results in people thinking I am rude, that I don’t like them, or that I don’t care.
The logical part of my mind knows that the anxious thoughts are a lie, that I am the cause of the problem, and that if I could just get out of my own way, I would likely enjoy myself.
This is proven in those times where I do say yes, and somehow manage to stick with the commitment and attend. It is never as bad as anxiety tells me it will be, and often I really enjoy myself.
Through meditation and therapy I am improving, yet there are some days (or weeks) were it is bad.
I need to get better at telling people why I am not attending. I need to say that it is due to social anxiety and that they shouldn’t take my absence personally. But the problem is that everybody seems to think that they are exempt from my anxiety. That because I am comfortable in sharing with them the fact that I have social anxiety, that they are somehow the exception to it.
They are not exempt. Almost nobody is.
It has literally been years since I have seen some of my closest friends in person. We will chat online, or on the phone, but actually catching up in the flesh requires a whole bunch of mental hurdles to be jumped.
Compounding this is the fact that I am happy to do planned things with little anxiety, for example martial arts classes and work. This is because those activities have set expectations. I roughly know who is going to be there, what will happen, and what is expected of me. I know how long it will last, and I have an exit strategy to leave. Unfortunately, typical social gatherings don’t. Thus, people will see my attendance in class or at work and assume that since I am fine to attend one, I clearly should be fine to attend the other.
Social anxiety is debilitating.
I can take actions to share why I am saying no, why I am bailing, and why I cannot do what a typical person can, but ultimately these come across as weak excuses. People have expectations of other people, and when one person has a mental illness it takes a lot of work to communicate exactly what that means for the individual and for the relationship.
I have learnt to accept that at the moment, I am unable to be ‘normal’ in the social sense, and that will result in certain consequences.
But I am also tired. I am tired of having social anxiety, and I am tired of having to explain why. Of having to repeat myself again and again that it is on me, that I am the one suffering. That yes I know it is in my head, and that you (the preverbal other person) will accept me and that you don’t care about it, and that I am okay to be myself around you.
It feels like that if you don’t have it, you can’t easily get it.
Social gatherings have an inherent cost. They are fun and enjoyable, yet they are also draining. Following an event, I need countless hours alone to settle back into myself. To let the anxiety leave, and for normality to return. This recovery time takes me away from my family and work, or alternatively compromises me for the next few days.
Yet I don’t want to be alone, and I do enjoy connections and friendships.
I have missed graduations, birthday and bucks’ parties, and many other big events out of fear. At other times attendance to these events has resulted in me being bedridden for days, costing me time at work.
Thus, I am in a constant balancing act between managing my loneliness and social anxiety.
The thing is that if I say no too often, if I reject all invites, people will come to expect me to do so, and will subsequently stop inviting me to attend. This may cause me to feel ever more like a social outcast, causing my social anxiety to rise even further.
So, I fight.
I do the work on the meditation mat and the therapist’s couch. I write down how I think an event will play out and compare the reality to my anxiety and embrace the difference.
Wherever possible I push through and say yes.
But unfortunately, the amount that I do say yes may never be enough for me to be considered ‘normal’. This is why I write. My hope is that by sharing my lived experience of mental illness, that I will be able to help normalise its reality.
If society as a whole understands it, then people like me will be able to better navigate it and thrive in our own way.