there is only fear in here, where I live
Today we’re going to play Let’s Pretend.
Imagine that some years ago, when you were in a bad relationship, lonely, and trying to build a life, you reached out to someone you slightly knew in the hope that you could make a new friend. Imagine that you behaved like yourself around this person, said normal things, treated her the same way you’d treat anybody. That you laughed and talked with her, that you made her dinner, that you finally drove her home in the wee hours because things went so well between you.
Imagine that a week later she emailed you with a laundry list of all the things you’d said that offended her, all the ways that you were a bad person, and that she told you that you should probably just keep your mouth shut if you didn’t want people to think you were stupid and bigoted. That she refused even to see you so you could return a DVD she’d lent you, and you had to mail it back to her.
Imagine that for the next two years you constantly heard her words ringing in your head. You watched every word that came out of your mouth, petrified that one of those words would be the wrong one, and you’d offend someone, or someone (everyone?) would find you silly or detestable.
Imagine that now, as a rule, you fear people. Not just strangers, who might want to hurt you, but all people. People who like or love you, people who are friendly with you, people who are family. What if you say the wrong thing and these people decide they don’t like or love you anymore? You thought you could trust her, and she ruined your perception of yourself; who can you trust now?
Imagine that the idea of holding a ten-minute conversation with someone makes your heart drop into your stomach. Imagine that “casual party” means the same thing to you as “giving a speech on supercomputers to the Senate”. You don’t know anything about what you should say to them, you don’t know what they’re going to think of you, and the whole notion is terrifying.
Imagine that you are afraid all the time. Afraid that you’ll have to talk to the cashier at the supermarket. Afraid that someone will walk into your office at work, or call you on the phone, and you’ll have to talk to them – talking to others involves risk and fear, every time. Afraid that you’ll be asked to go out with friends, again, and you know that you can’t explain why you don’t want to. The only safe place is at home, with the one person who understands you. Everywhere else in the entire world is somewhere in a range of hostility, from bearable to unbearable.
Read those last two paragraphs again. Don’t just skim over them, and think that I’m writing this with the “imagine” framing device to be cute and creative; close your eyes and really consider it. Afraid all the time. Nowhere is safe.
Everywhere there are people, and you are afraid of people. Every time you open your mouth, all you can hear in your words is ways that you could be sounding insulting, or stupid.
Anything with people is not fun, it is frightening. You are sad and indignant at the rise of “networking”, and don’t understand why your success at doing a plain old job should hinge on your ability to mingle at cocktail functions. You can do one easily; the other is a minefield.
Even the familiar places – your gym, your workplace, your favorite restaurant – have only a bearable hostility level. But it is all hostile.
Imagine that this is how you live your life. Every hour. Every day. Every sentence; every glance.
This is how social anxiety feels.
Like this:
This entry was posted on May 31, 2009 at 8:41 am and is filed under Self-Analysis at $20 Per Hour with tags social anxiety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 31, 2009 at 10:52 am
You probably should’ve explained this a little before you wrote about the party and had everyone believing you just didn’t want it because you didn’t feel it was necessary. Obviously this is a much bigger issue than you’d previously shared. But I also think this problem is more common than people realize; I don’t know one person, including myself, that doesn’t suffer at least a little of this. You obviously suffer more than is typical, but the fact that you’re able to function at a job, at school and at yoga classes, two out of three of those voluntary activities, tells me you have been able to overcome the problem at least a little and I’m very glad for that. I’m not a therapy pusher, but this is certainly something you might want to consider getting looked at.
And poop on the girl who did that to you.
I tried therapy last year, when my symptoms were way out of control. The guy told me that it was understandable for an unmarried woman to be intimidated by the outside world (I think he was building to asking me if I had considered taking Jesus into my heart). He also told me that there was no possible way the whole thing stemmed from the incident I explained above, and I needed to work harder to find the root cause. I stopped going to see him around the same time I started yoga and this blog, and called it a day on therapy, which I’d been in and out of since before college.
May 31, 2009 at 1:36 pm
here’s the thing; I don’t think most people take the time to help others understand – really understand – how something like this really feels.
I think it matters that people take the time and effort to try to get others to understand, even if only a little bit, what their lives are really like. I often feel that the anger that gets directed at people because “they just don’t understand” is often misdirected. OF COURSE they don’t understand – how can they, unless someone bothers to explain it to them?
What you’ve done here is huge. Thank you.
You have a very good point. I just assumed that because, as Kim says, so many people have some experience with it, if I said “pretty substantial social anxiety”, people could extrapolate. I know it’s hard to understand that party = scary instead of party = fun, but also, there are plenty of people in my life who haven’t listened to even a message that loud and clear. Which makes me assume that no one will ever understand.
To hear you say that this post makes a difference in that cycle is really significant to me.
June 1, 2009 at 7:33 am
God. If I’d talked to that therapist, I would’ve run away screaming. Sorry you had to experience that. That is frustrating.
June 1, 2009 at 1:09 pm
This was a moving post and made my stomach ache to read it.
This is the bigger shell that I have been trying to climb out of…people that have been around me for 10 to 14 years have just gotten to know me in the last year and a half. It wasn’t them…it was me.
I do not think that any person that hasn’t been through anything like this…not just for a month or two could understand. It isn’t something temporary and medication, in my opinion, is not the answer…just a mask (very, very very personal view)…
It started for me in the seventh grade and I am just breaking out…I would pretend, and I could pretend well, but it would tear me up inside. I would almost develop characters for situations and I would just put on a mask for each situation.
I can’t stand the idea of masks because of my mother’s destructive mask-based personality. It’s a lot easier, but ultimately not an answer.
There were was a four year stretch that I was isolated, at time for 10-14 days in a row and there was no one to speak to. I don’t think that helped…except I did gain a deeper understanding of myself.
The initial incident you decsribe…were there some other similar situations that happened?
No, this was the only one. But it was more awful than I can describe here.
Even recently I have left stored that had closed their self-check out lines and now avoid Wal-Mart because they don’t use them anymore. There seems to be a point for me that i “warm up to people. If I need an auto part, there is a guy that works the afternoon shift at the local Pep Boys and people all over town that have made it in my little world.
So for me there is a point where I feel more comfortable and less scared around an individual person. It doesn’t sound to me, like you have reached this point.
No, I get this. There’s a pharmacist at Target that I like, and the UPS guy who comes in at work.
It was worse for me and I think that I am getting better week by week. This blog-world was the perfect for me. This was my therapy…and it was cheaper.
Oh yes. But I constantly worry that it’s making me worse, more introverted, rather than better.
Like I said…I would find it very hard for someone to understand that hasn’t lived through it….unless it was BF for you. I think it took my wife about 7 years before it clicked for her…and the changes I am going through now may be directly realted to this very thing.
BF is shy. I don’t think he’s paralyzed like I am, but he doesn’t like interacting either.
Sorry for blog hogging…
Nonsense. Thank you for sharing.
June 4, 2009 at 8:24 pm
OK, let’s pretend some more.
Let’s pretend you can go back in time and tell that stupid cow to fuck herself. How DARE she judge you like that? Who the hell is she to say that about you?
I am sorry, but I am mad about what that woman said to you. You know what? What she said to you is OFFENSIVE and STUPID and IGNORANT and BIGOTED. SHE was projecting. YOU are none of those things.
Tell me where she is and I will go break her nose. I am MAD!
I didn’t mean to make you mad, but I’m really really grateful for your support. I don’t know where she is, but I have often wondered if maybe after she got a dose of the world outside our college campus, she thought back a little regretfully on what she said, realizing I really wasn’t so bad. Maybe not, but it’s a notion I entertain sometimes.