Imagine… walking into a room of strangers and being told that you’ve got to give a big speech. You’d probably be terrified, right? That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, the way your heart starts to beat faster, and your thoughts run quicker than you can process. Suddenly, everyone seems intimidating and you feel that intense need to act right, to not be judged.
You have that mix of wanting the ground to swallow you up and wanting this situation to be over with.
Well, the best way I can describe my social anxiety is that feeling, but instead of it being contained to one room or one specific situation, it’s there almost every time I leave the house.
For me, it’s not just the big things that cause anxiety. Sometimes, it’s the smallest and most ordinary things, things like going to the shops, getting on public transport, or even worrying about how I’m walking or standing. Things that most people probably do without giving them a second thought can suddenly feel like something I need to fixate on.
And when it comes to speaking to someone I don’t know, answering a question, or being left alone somewhere, that anxiety can feel like it doubles. Suddenly, something as simple as talking to someone or being in a place on my own can feel like a situation I needed to mentally prepare myself for.
Now, I don’t know exactly where this social anxiety came from. Maybe I took one of my mum’s stranger danger talks a little too seriously, because this has been a part of me for as long as I can remember.
I remember always clinging to whoever was out with me, like every kid does at that age. But I don’t think every kid feels like everyone around them is terrifying. At the time, I don’t think I would have called it anxiety. I probably just thought I was shy, awkward, quiet, or that I was someone who didn’t like being around lots of people. It was only as I got older, and the anxiety became more noticeable, that I started to realise these feelings had probably been there for much longer than I thought.
In my opinion, one of the most frustrating things about living with social anxiety has always been that other voice in my head, the one that occasionally manages to break through all the noise of the anxiety and tell me, “You know this is all normal, right? Nobody else here is thinking like you. Nobody is looking at you.”
And as much as this voice is probably right, I think it actually sums up how social anxiety can mess with your brain. Suddenly, the dialogue in your head becomes a battle between the voice of reason and the voice of anxiety. One is telling you that everything is fine, while the other is convincing you that something is wrong.
And, annoyingly for me, my anxiety can sometimes shout louder than my rational thinking.
What do you think you would do in that situation? Would it become easier to not leave the house, to overanalyse every plan you make based on what might happen? Because for me, it was, and in fact even now sometimes it still does feel easier. At the peak of my social anxiety, I was caught in a constant cycle of avoidance, overthinking, cancelling plans and staying quiet. I’ve lost friends because of how inconsistent I was, and in all but one instance, I was left upset about that. The friends I did have (and luckily still do!) I sometimes felt like they had what I saw as a burden that came with keeping me as a friend. I was needing what felt like constant reassurance. They’d sit with me when I was overthinking before having to go out, and then when I was replaying conversations afterwards.
Even after some of the most amazing days with these people, I’d still have that little voice at the back of my mind. The one reminding me that eventually I’d have to walk or get the bus home. Something as simple as getting home could bring the anxiety back, keeping that cycle of reason versus anxiety going.
But the thing about that voice in your head is that, as a part of your brain, it grew up with me. And, like I mentioned earlier, the more I let myself back out of things, the more I listened to it telling me that the only place I was safe was at home, the more it learned that it was right. The relief that came with cancelling plans or not showing up to classes was almost like affirming my anxiety. That little voice was going, “Good thing we didn’t go. That must have been dangerous.” And as much as that felt comforting in the moment, it also made my world slowly start to shrink around me. Everything I was, essentially became tied up in one room, only spilling out as far as the front doorstep.
So where do you go once you’re trapped in a house by a monster that nobody can see? Did I even want to go out? Truth be told, I wasn’t sure. But what I did know was that I wanted more options and less fear every time I did. I started small. I began going out more often with my family, especially my older sister. Having someone I trusted with me made those first steps outside feel a little less intimidating. I slowly started spending more time out of the house, getting used to being around people again and, eventually, learning how to navigate my town on my own. Although that might sound like a tiny step, it made a world of difference to me. My world expanded from my front doorstep to a couple of steps outside it. Then a little further. Slowly but surely, the boundaries I’d built around myself started to move, and my world began to expand again.
Still, every time I went out, I was forcing myself to. I’d spend my nights dreading wherever I had to go the next day, imagining all the things that could go wrong before I’d even left the house. But I kept going. I forced myself to go places even when I was anxious, and slowly, I started challenging that voice in my head a little more often. I began to learn that just because I felt anxious didn’t mean that something was actually wrong. That anxious feeling in my stomach wasn’t always right. Sometimes it was just anxiety trying to convince me that I was in danger when I wasn’t. And slowly but surely, it got easier. Much easier, in fact.
Even as my world kept expanding, I made the biggest leap in my life, one I wouldn’t have even considered a few years earlier. I went to university in a completely new city, somewhere that felt like it was miles from home. For someone who had once struggled to get past their own front doorstep, moving away to a new city was massive. Now, I won’t pretend that my social anxiety disappeared when I went to university. In fact, after a major event in my first year, I almost felt like I’d gone backwards. It felt like I’d become the person I was a couple of years before, and for a while, it was difficult not to see that as a reason to stop trying. But with everything that was going on, I remembered that the path to recovery isn’t always linear, and it definitely couldn’t be measured academically for me. Progress wasn’t going to be a straight line, and it wasn’t going to be reflected in grades or how well I was doing at university. As I went on, I started making sure I prioritised the little things I could do for myself. Going out with friends. Getting out of the house. And, when things were at their worst, making sure I could at least make it to one day of university a week. It wasn’t always perfect, and sometimes I couldn’t do even those things. But I didn’t give up on myself.
And guess what? Now I’m graduating this November. And honestly, I have a grade that doesn’t matter to me half as much as the fact that I managed to do it, even after everything I went through in my own head.
And that’s the thing about anxiety, whatever form it is in. It’s not necessarily a journey to cure yourself of it, even when I desperately wished it was. For me, it was always about making sure I lived my life the way I wanted to, as best as I could each day, rather than living it the way the voice in my head wanted me to.
Recovery wasn’t about making the monster disappear. It was about making my world large enough that I could live with it.