Some Changes to my Social Anxiety Blog

Hey, I did some changes to my social anxiety blog. I'm still looking for a job, so I have some free time and thought of doing some changes, which I enjoyed very much. Let me know what you think. I changed mainly the header and some border colors.

Changing from Social to a Generalized Anxiety?

The problem within the Problem

After a few days away from my Social Anxiety Blog I felt the need to come back and write about what’s going on in my life. I believe is a way of compiling my thoughts, writing is a technique that allows me to take a look at my life with a different perspective.

I have noticed lately how my anxiety has transform from social anxiety to a more generalized anxiety. Let me explain you; social situations have become less threatening and I just experience sometimes a feeling of anxiety that can’t be specifically related to any external situation causing it.

I often discover myself thinking about negative stuff like:
- The possibility of loosing my job
- A friend betraying me
- The responsibility of my family for what I’m suffering now with anxiety
- The risk of having a serious illness or dying

Those types of thoughts are the ones provoking the anxiety feeling. Sometimes when I discover I’m having those types of irrational thoughts I just say to myself: “Ok, enough, stop thinking that, you have no reason to be thinking like that, everything is fine, stop making up things that aren’t real or don’t have a solid base”. This is what is causing anxiety on me now, those negative thoughts. I have to work on those thoughts with my therapist.

I have got to a point of my life where I feel it’s functional: I have a good job, have a love in my life, I study, I have a quite good relationship with my family, have a few friends, I have a healthy lifestyle, etc. So I congratulate myself for achieving all that, I have to remember myself that I’m a good human being, with great potential and limitations of course.

This is my message for you out there dealing with social anxiety: “Keep trying, never give up, it’s possible to have a better lifestyle, we just have to be persistent and work hard on it, it’s really worth it.

Have you found yourself having negative thoughts that provoke your anxiety? At what moment of the day? Do you do anything about it?

Over Medicated Social Anxiety?

Social Phobia From a Harmful Dysfunction Perspective

With the series of articles I’m writing about social phobia not being a mental disorder but just a temperament condition, I want to show a different perspective on the matter and trying to explain my position towards it. I believe our society is over medicating certain conditions because of the need of pharmaceutical companies to create illnesses to make profit and our need of “fast solutions” to our problems.

I acknowledge there are different levels of social phobias of course and some can be really devastating but to call social anxiety a “mental disorder” implies an incapacitating condition in the mind of the person that is being diagnosed as such.

I think social anxiety should be approached in terms of functionality of the person with such condition, I mean how much is this condition an impediment to live a “normal life”: Establish relationships (family, friends, couple), to work, study, have kids, etc. Here is a part of a document I found, it’s really worth reading:

“Whether it is disordered depends on whether a dysfunction exists; that is, whether mechanisms that generate and regulate social anxiety fail to perform their function of minimizing risk while allowing social interaction. Such dysfunction involves greatly disproportionate anxiety intensity relative to the triggering situation: anxiety reaches debilitating levels in species-expectable tasks or remains intense when biologically plausible triggers are absent or minimal, for example, during interaction with family members or other nonthreatening familiars; or when engaging in basic functions, such as eating away from home; or in situations where there is no real social scrutiny or chance of losing status, such as sitting anonymously in a lecture hall. Anxiety must not just occur in culturally desirable but species-unexpectable tasks, such as speaking before audiences.”

Another interesting document from the review of the book of Allan V. Horwitz: "Creating Mental Illness":

"Allan V. Horwitz examines current conceptions of mental illness as a disease. He argues that this notion fits only a small number of serious psychological conditions, and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior. According to Horwitz, the formulation of mental illness as disease benefits various interest groups, including mental health researchers and clinicians, prescriptive drug manufacturers, and mental health advocacy groups, all of whom promote disease-based models. Presenting case studies in maladies such as hysteria, multiple personality disorder, and depression, he examines the major causes and treatments of mental illness, paying special attention to the use of pharmaceuticals. While biologically based causes and treatments fit some of the entities formulated, Horwitz finds that more often than not, social responses offer far more suitable remedies."

Interesting theory worth taking a look at. I just want to show a broaden social anxiety perspective, other than the regular Psychiatric one.

Here is question I would like to ask in terms of functionality of your own life: Do you feel your social anxiety is:

- Extremely disabling
- Mildly disabling
- Doesn’t interferes with your life
- Other

Go on to read the whole document if you are interested, I recommend it:

Are We Overpathologizing the Socially Anxious?

Back to Social Anxiety "Life"

After a couple of months I am back to the Social Anxiety Blog, I traveled to my country to visit family and some friends. It certainly felt good to be home for a while, I can say that the social fear left me during those days, except for one time when I had dinner with my brother and a couple of his friends. As soon as I found out that we were having dinner with his friends, my friend the Anxiety showed up.

It was amazing to have that feeling again after a couple of weeks of zero anxiety; it reminded me again how vulnerable I was. For some reason I felt that the people sitting with us at the table meant danger and a menace to my life and so the symptoms began.

One of the most common symptoms I experience is the loss of my voice, I can’t talk, yes I mean it literally, I just can’t talk, is like being paralyzed, I start panicking, my heart starts beating faster, feel like I don’t have enough air, it’s just a terrible feeling of fear, that is the correct word, the biggest fear. So any ways I finally got in control and was fairly able to control myself after a while and got to pronounce a few sentences, I stayed with them for a long half hour. After that I decided to leave, it was a great relieve to get out of there.

After leaving the restaurant, even though it was a relief, I started thinking about how people at the table saw me, how they noticed my panic and fear, and so on… So my self esteem went down and I started criticizing myself for acting in such “immature way”.

Well any ways that was the only experience of anxiety I had during my trip. The rest of the time was pleasant and full of joy and warmth and love that I received from my family.

Now I’m back to my regular life, is good go be here again, and continue visiting my friend’s blogs: Dave: Working through social anxiety, Aaron, Ryan, Shawn at Anxious Living, and Drew at Shy and Quiet. Okay, I have a lot of reading to catch up with.

Difficult Times: Rising Anxiety

Last few days have been really difficult, my anxiety has increased, it’s amazing how I find my mind going through roads of the most negative thoughts, I am always thinking the worst things that can happen to me.

If I hear somebody laughing then I think this person is laughing of me, if I hear somebody saying something to another person in a bus or at the gym, etc, I think they are talking of me, or just simply keep thinking that things are going to go wrong, that I am going to loose my job, or that I will never be able to have a relationship, or that people is trying to do something bad to me… I mean it’s crazy, and my mind just doesn’t stops.

I am into a psychological process, I attend to therapy every Saturday and it has helped me a lot, I know it is an important part of my process and that it takes time… I will probably be going to a psychologist the rest of my life and that is ok with me if I feel I need to and that it‘s doing me good.

Finally today after a few days in crisis I feel the anxiety has gone down and I feel a lot better.

I have a healthy lifestyle, I don’t take any medicines, I exercise a lot, try to eat properly, I also take vitamins, avoid any substance that I think might alter me like coffee, smoking, drugs, etc. But my social life is… complicated, I am afraid of getting close to people and talk to them, every time I do it, it is like affronting the worst of the fears, I obliged myself to do it every time, but avoid to do it if I feel it is not necessary for my life.

I get desperate many times, I don’t know what to do, I would like to be able to tell people that I have social anxiety when I meet them or when I talk to people I know, I think that will reduce my anxiety, but I don’t know how to handle that, I don’t want people to look at me like I am sick or mentally ill, not everybody is ready to handle this type of information, so I just keep it to myself. Only a few people know about it: my therapist, and a couple friends of mine. I tried to talk about it in my family, but they just didn’t give me the space, they thought I was manipulating… they just don’t think it is true or possible, they just deny it.

How do you handle this, do you tell others about what is going on in your life? Do you tell other people you have social anxiety? What has worked better for you?

Getting lost in some Social Situations

Do you feel like you loose control, like you forget who you are in some or most of your social situations?

To me it’s just like if there were two different people in me; see in some social situations I feel confident, positive, and clear of whom I am. Other times I am totally lost, I forget who I am, I am scared, frightened, and anxious.

I think it has to do with the person or the group that is in front of me, if the person or group represents a threaten to me, and I feel there is in the person or group certain characteristics that reminds me of certain difficult situations of my childhood, like if I feel the people are mocking, contemptuous, sarcastic, etc; anything that reminds me of my childhood and the complicated relationships I had with others, then I immediately start feeling the symptoms of anxiety.

I keep saying to myself that in those moments I can’t forget who I am, I have to remember I am a good person, with rights, productive, responsible, committed, sensible, that deserves respect from the others, I keep saying to myself I have to remember all these good things about myself.

I just don’t know exactly what happens during those moments in my brain, it is just that something clicks inside of my head and there it is, the little child I was, vulnerable, weak, helpless, I feel so in danger like if something really bad is going to happen to me, it is a terrible fear, that is what social anxiety is, a terrible fear to social situations.

What is your experience? How do you react in these types of situations? How do you handle them?

Love and Social Anxiety

Found myself with love... Being a person with social anxiety makes love life much, much difficult. Whenever you meet a person (somebody whom you might be interested in), there is always that feeling of anxiety towards what is going to happen: How can I get closer to that person? What do I do so the other person doesn’t find about my social anxiety?

I met somebody the other day, I am really interested in this person, and I found that has the initial characteristics I look for , talking about a relationship. But f**ck, I am so scared now, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to act. It feels so bad this sensation of insecurity, every single day I keep thinking what to do, how to talk to the person, how to act, if I should say this… no that is wrong, should I say something else? That neither, this is so f***king confusing…

I write trying to find clearness in my mind, trying to let go the anxiety feeling out of me and get to the point where I can think clear and be able to get calm.

I have many expectations towards this person, even though in reality there is no hope… see this person has a relationship already. It is just good to nurture your feelings of love and hope some times, what am I going to do now.

I am just going to continue with life, what ever happens, just have to continue doing the right things for my life: work, study, exercise, healthy lifestyle, you will meet happiness at the end.

Finally I will like to evoke the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe:

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

Difficulty making friends all my life

I have been asking myself about the difficulty I have making friends, has been like that all my life? Or is it just in the last couple of years when it really has become more conscious.

I mean before I didn't really realize the complexity of it, I was just living my life, was most of the time with my family, had occasional friends (never had any lasting relationships), people came and went out of my life.

I think that one of the problems with social anxiety is that one is over conscious of things that happen around, I am always thinking too much over things like if somebody looked at me, why did this person looked? Is this person laughing about me? Is this person talking about me? And on and on and on, my mind goes into creating a whole “movie” with my thoughts, and then I start to feel really anxious.

I am always thinking people wants to hurt me, or that people is talking bad about me, or that they are planning things to upset me, that is why I am scared of getting close to people. It has been like that most of my life, just that it was not as conscious as it is now.

How to stop my exaggerated thoughts about others wanting to hurt me? Why does my mind goes into those thoughts?

Writing to Heal Social Anxiety

Do you have any techniques that you have found work for you when your are anxious? What do you do in this cases?

I write as a way of helping myself to overcome social anxiety, is a way for me to flush my mind, to be able to let my thoughts come out. Most of the time the things that come out are very painfull, but I know that if I just let them out instead of blocking them, I'm going be able to give a different order to my mind and thoughts, I compare this to draining the toilet.

In a way is letting out all kind of "dirty things" out of my mind, I call them "the garbage or cockroaches" in my mind. That is a way I have found to deal with social anxiety, when I am anxious, I write about it, I write about what I feel, what I think.

Born as a Child with Social Anxiety ?

Did you ever asked yourself what it was to be a child with SA? Can you recall it? Are we born with some type of Anxiety?

As I can recall, I was a “difficult child”, that’s what I was told, since the day of my birth, my mother had difficulties giving birth… I was too big, waited around 10 pounds; I was also a baby that had many problems adapting to eating and sleeping hours and was crying all the time.

I am not sure about my mother’s stage of mind during that time, haven’t asked her, but because of the way she treated me during my infancy (aggressiveness), I could tell she was really having lots of emotional problems, I still remember seeing her crying a lot of times at night, I didn’t know what was going on.

Anyways my point is to try to find out if we are born with some type of anxiety (genetic predisposition) or if it has to do with the upbringing and the relationship we establish with our first caretakers (parents). I believe in my case it had to do with both, but mostly because of the brutal education I received from my mother, if she would have been a calm mother, without the emotional problems she had, things would have been different.

I want to mention that I am writing this blog mostly as a healing process, I am looking for better ways to overcome my social anxiety (I refuse to call it “disorder”), it's a way for me to let things out. I have been feeling that sitting down to write about my emotions has helped me, it is relieving, it's a way to give a new order to my emotions.

Social Anxiety at 5 Years Old

I remember and associate many things from my infancy, when I was 5 years old I started to go to school, that was a very difficult time. I remember that for me to go to school was a nightmare, I used to cry every morning, I didn't want to be there.

Now I now why: first I had a teacher that used the old school methods, she was allways screaming and threatening, I used to be very scared of her, plus being surounded by all the kids with whom I didn't know how to stablish a relationship.

I grew up alone, I didn't have any friends, I didn't know how to make friends, I learned from my mother that people was dangerous... because of her agressivity towards me. Other people close to me like family where the same, I was allways beeing beat up or yelled up by others, just had an aunt that was trying to defend me from my mother.

I am just finding the reasons why I am affraid of people today? Why do I have Social Anxiety? Have you ever question yourself about it? What was it like when you were a child?

And this makes sense to me... Simple, I learned that the others were agressive and dangerous, unfortunatelly.

Will continue next time.

Made New Discoveries about my own Social Anxiety (Childhood)

I have found some things that I think are important about the origins of my social anxiety. I discovered that when I get the *symptoms, is the little child I used to be that is present, that is what I used to feel when I was a kid, I was so scared in the presence of people, I just couldn't handle it.

I remember that when I started going to school, I was 4 years old, it was a difficult time for me, beeing in the presence of all this kids and teachers must of been really hard, so much that I used to pee and shit on my pants several times a week, and my teacher would have to call home so they would come to pick me up, I remember that the answer from my mother and others in my family was physical punishment and humiliations.

They didn't understand that I was horrified by the presence of all these people. See I develop social anxiety as far as I know because of that strange relationship with my mother, she was very agressive with me, she used to beat me up until she couldn't do it any more and then she would start crying in front of me telling me that I was guilty, my God, I was just 4 or 5 years old..., this happened for many years, several times a week, during my infancy.

So I found (in my therapy process) a connection between my social anxiety now and my childhood, now I know that all these feelings of anxiety are the ones I used to feel when I was a kid, and they came back hunting me 3 years ago, when I started to get the social anxiety sympthoms. The kid that didn't resolved the situation back then, came back to me. this is what I am struggling with right now.

Do you follow my story, is it confusing? Let me know.

Next post I will tell you what happend next, when I was 6 years old and after, so you kind of start having a better picture of my situation. Excuse my english again, hope is not to difficult for you to read it.

*Fear to people, some times I feel like my heart is beating too fast, sweaty hands, difficulty to talk, I even sometimes feel like I can't breath, I can't hold still my jaw, the general feeling is of a great fear, like when something bad is going to happen to you, that is what I feel when I am next to certain people.

The Beginning of Social Anxiety - Part II

As I mentioned in my last post: Can you start to imagine the roots of my social anxiety?

I believe social anxiety has a genetic component too, I mean the fact that I had a difficult temper as a baby didn't help much (this is something I don’t know for a fact, maybe there is some investigation already about this subject, but I don’t know for sure, I am supposing it. So I have considered a couple facts to have in account in order to establish the origins of it:

- Temper (behavior) as a baby
- The social environment I was brought up (the relationship with my mother)

The begining of Social Anxiety - Personal Experience

I am not a native english speaker as you will see, but I write for two reasons: As a therapy to help me dealing with Social Anxiety and to force myself to practice the language, so if you find any errors please excuse my writing.

I have been really anxious this month, specially this last week, the feeling is bad, it is something like you don't have peace, f*%& anxiety...

If I go back to my childhood to try to find the origins of it, I can recall several situations:

- Beeing born in a home with an anxious mother
- I was born as a "hiperactive", kind of smart kid

I think those are the inicial facts that got me into this. My temper and growing with a mother with emotional problems.

I was told I used to be one of those unbearable babies, very active all the time, didn't have regular hours for sleeping, a lot of crying, difficult to get into eating schedules, etc... Plus a very anxious working mother who didn't know how to take care of me, I was left alone with a depress aunt or with a babysitter.

I was the only chlid for about 5 years, before my second brother was born, so my mother had all the time to experiment raising me during these years.

For what I can recall from my infancy (5, 6, 7 years old), my mother was many times depress at night, when she was alone with me and my brothers, she would take us all to her bed and started to tell us scary stories to make us affraid and then she would start crying, we didn't know the reason why, but it certainly made us feel guilty for what was going on with her. So I guess she must of been the same way when I was a baby.

So this is the inicial story with my Social Anxiety, growing with an anxious agressive mother, as you can see, that was my inicial contact with people in the world, through my mother. Can you see the picture? I was starting lo learn that the world was full of anxious agressive people, I learned that from that inicial relationship with my mother.

My father was kind of absent, he was always working and studying at night, so he was never around to regulate such agressive relation with my mother.

Well I am kind of tired now, I will continue with the story next time...

Dealing with Social Anxiety

Personal Experience

The idea of this blog is to share some of my own experiences dealing with social anxiety, being aware of how emotionally devastated it can be sometimes but also realizing that there is options to help us improve our quality life style.

I have been trying to look for ways to cope with social anxienty, among them: Therapy, exercise, nutrition, getting information on the subject on different websites, avoiding caffeine, alcohol, etc. I have also consider the idea of participating in social anxiety forums.

Hope to continue posting and make a journal of my experiences with social anxiety.