Social Anxiety

in #psychology7 years ago

Hello, my name is Nikolina and I have a Social anxiety problem.

As far as I can remember, I was always shy and quiet. I was afraid of communication and conversation, I would get terrified of any kind of public speech/events and any kind of situation where the attention was on me. As a kid and a teenager, I had absolutely no idea was social anxiety was. Looking at other people being confident and communicative, a lot of times I felt like something was wrong with me, like I was dumb and awkward.

NAGC0365.png

I would get so nervous when I had to speak in front of my class, not to mention how I felt when I meet someone, I didn't know what to talk about and the more I got aware of my awkwardness, the more I thought about it and the worse I felt.
Sometimes I would pay attention at other's people behaviors, I wanted to copy them but when the moment comes, I would just block. Even a simple phone call would make me panic.

WDYC4320.png

Thanks to the internet, I found out about the term Social anxiety. Finally I felt like I wasn't alone.
Reading other stories I could relate to, gave me a little bit of piece and confidence. Over the years, some of the problems I was dealing with got smaller and some completely disappeared. When I was a teenager, I could not imagine going shopping alone, I always had to bring a friend or my mom with me. Now I always go shopping by myself. Most of the phone calls nowadays doesn't give me any anxiety. I still struggle with public speech and communication with people I meet.
This is one of the reasons why I like blogging. I feel like I can be myself and feel comfortable with it (same reason I cannot vlog). So if I ever meet some of you guys, I would probably be weird, at least until I relax. :)


Image Source

I don't know if I will ever be able to beat Social anxiety completely but I feel like the more I get to know and accept myself, the more I work on myself and my confidence, the easier is for me to deal with it. The biggest change was when I knew what I'm dealing with, before that I was completely lost. And unfortunately in my surroundings any type of anxiety is still a taboo topic.
That's why I wrote this post, hoping that it can help some of you who are dealing with it or you know someone who is going through this.

This is one of my most personal posts I wrote so far. If you like it, please give it an upvote/resteem and feel free to leave a comment.

5DC63AAE55BDDF99D1A8631351B024172.gif

Sort:  

You are definitely not alone. I suffer from Agoraphobia and social anxiety. But I forced myself to go out take job and also learning to socialize now.

Thank you for your comment, I'm so glad to hear you're doing better and I'm sending a lot of support your way!

Im happy you found answers to your anxiety.

Thank you so much!

this is very sweet, I relate to it bc I was the same, and it's nice you shared it, it's actually very common :)!

Thank you girl!
I never really talk about it in person in so much details but I see that a lot of people are dealing with some sort of anxiety. It was so much easier to write about it! :)