Afraid of Being Myself – The Lonely World of Social Anxiety

Social Anxiety in a Nutshell

We all know what it’s like to give a presentation stood in front of a room full of people. All eyes on you – watching, judging. To return their gaze makes your skin crawl. To serve them a smile is almost impossible, lifting your lips is as heavy and difficult as pulling an elephant from a bog.  

Suddenly, the room feels much too hot. Beads of sweat trickle down your forehead. Your heart thumps like the beating of a drum. Your throat dries up. Your temples pulsate. You start to speak but the words won’t come out right. You stutter and skip over sentences you’d pre-planned the night before. Inside, you cringe. Your mind begins to race. What must they think of me? I’m a loser. A weirdo. A freak.  

You manage to get through the presentation physically unscathed, but you’re mentally tortured for the rest of the day. The embarrassment repeatedly runs around your head like a caged mouse. Eventually, you get over it, but you pray you never have to undertake a similar scenario ever again. 

This is what it feels like to have social anxiety. But whereas for most people, those nerves only arise in an unlikely situation such as that, for those with social anxiety, they suffer with them every single day.  

To the socially anxious individual, most human interactions resemble presenting in front of a room full of people. Any social encounter takes a huge toll on their joy. Especially when they enter an unfamiliar environment (such as a new job), the torture they endure can be unbearable. Daily life is insufferable, to the point where they dread ever stepping foot outside their home.  

Social anxiety is the fear of social situations. It isn’t known exactly why people develop this mental health condition, although, a combination of biological and environmental factors can put somebody at risk. Genetic inheritance, abnormal brain function, and negative experiences such as bullying or trauma are all potential catalysts. 12% of the population suffers with it, myself included.

My Experiences with Social Anxiety

Not many people know this about me, it isn’t something I tend to talk about. Social anxiety isn’t as widely accepted as depression – which is often a byproduct of social anxiety – and so I keep it to myself. But unlike some sufferers, who have had it since they were teenagers, I’ve only been aware of my social anxiety for about eight years. 

I cannot pinpoint exactly when or why my social anxiety erupted. Nevertheless, I remember a time when it wasn’t there, because I used to be very sociable. I could go out and talk to anyone. I would regularly go to parties and meet new people. I had lots of friends and met up with them every day. Now though, I am a shell of my former self. Deep down, I am still that sociable, happy man – but I struggle to manifest him, he hides from me when I need him most.  

When I leave my house to enter the frightening world, I feel like all eyes are on me. Every conversation shared with someone unfamiliar I re-enact for hours afterwards. Why did I say that? What did they think? Did I come across as strange?  

I curse myself for my lack of social skills. Yet, to most people, I probably come across as affable. My own mind deceives me. It makes me overthink. I’m not quite right. Something is missing that people won’t like. Better to avoid them rather than try to fit in.  

For years I gradually isolated myself more and more. I stopped speaking to people or cancelled plans so frequently they would stop speaking to me. Now, I hardly see anybody. I can count the friends I occasionally meet on just a few fingers. Naturally, as we mature, our friendship circle dwindles – we have different schedules and responsibilities. But for me, ultimately, my social anxiety and the negative influence it holds caused my loss of friendships.

Because of it, I self-medicated with alcohol and drugs for many years. Those things I started doing for fun, to party and meet new people – became quite the opposite. They dragged me further away from others, thrust me inwardly, inside a little black box, where my confidence was broken, and I no longer resembled the man I once was.  

I pretended not to care. That it was me against the world. Fuck you. Fuck everyone.  
I was angry and resentful. The more I abused myself, the less people wanted to be around me. I spent extensive periods inside my room alone, my single solace being a bag of powder that only aggravated my anxiety. 

First, it was stimulants – substances that make us lose our inhibitions and appear more outwardly confident. But upon finding the wonders of ketamine was when I really fell from grace. There is no better drug to hook the socially anxious. It transported me to unique realms. Where I wasn’t myself. Where I met aliens, defied the laws of gravity, and watched the creation of the universe. Some of my most profound experiences happened whilst fucked on a horse tranquiliser. But the more I used it to escape reality, the worse my sober reality became.  

It started to damage every aspect of my life. I lost jobs; tarnished the few relationships I had left; I would go out and drink myself silly then mix the alcohol with ketamine and stagger around unaware of who I was, leaving myself susceptible to being taken advantage of or attacked. Yet I still chased that high because of its ability to remove me from myself and my worries about being who I am.  

The Fear of Being Ourselves

You see, this is the true burden of the socially anxious. We are scared to be ourselves. Not scared, in fact – terrified. We have such low self-esteem that we believe nobody else will like us either. Realistically, we have so much to offer, but unfortunately, our self-doubt holds us back.  

We choose to work in jobs that are easy out of fear of failure. We select roles that don’t require much social interaction, because obviously, to speak to people is what we dread. Customer service? What’s that? Personally, I’ve never served a customer in my life.  

Even something as insignificant as changing your barber becomes a worrisome task. The journey towards the barber is perfused with dread, wondering how you might survive the inevitable small talk that will transpire.  

It stops us from doing what makes us human – having free will. Instead, we are trapped by it, it controls our every movement, and keeps us chained inside that little black box.  

Face Your Fear

To overcome it, we must break free of those chains and embody what scares us most – being unapologetically ourselves. Rather than avoid social situations, try to embrace them wherever possible. You can start out simple. Venture into the city to do some shopping, meet up with an old friend for coffee – small tasks which won’t seem so formidable. The more you face the small tasks, the easier it becomes to face challenges much harder.  

I am an adventurous person at heart. I always have been. I’m impulsive and seek a rush wherever I can get it (I guess that’s why I have a proclivity toward self-destruction). Therefore, even though I am riddled with social anxiety, for the past five years, I threw myself in the deep end when it came to facing my fear.  

I started to solo-travel to different corners of the earth. London, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, and Japan – since 2019 I travelled alone to each of these places. I’m not saying you should do the same, for most people with social anxiety they couldn’t think of anything worse – being alone in a foreign country and interacting in a second language – but for me, it’s been the best remedy for my phobia.  

Sure, I had those same fears whilst abroad. I felt a pinch in my gut every time I talked to a stranger. But it allowed me to recover some self-confidence, and I asked myself, If I can do that, then what can’t I do?  

Other Treatments for Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is a lonely existence if we allow it to be. Nevertheless, through various techniques, it can be treated. Speak to your GP and get professional help. To be honest though, I’m only recommending this because it is the culturally appropriate thing to do. In the UK, mental health services are terrible, there are long waiting lists to receive any concrete help. For social anxiety, your doctor will likely refer you to CBT, which stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. 

When you apply for CBT, you will be given two options – telephone appointments or online appointments. Due to COVID, therapists must now have their own overwhelming social phobias because they refuse to meet you face to face.  

If you choose telephone appointments (so you can actually hear a human voice, which should be mandatory for anybody wanting to defeat social anxiety), expect to wait at least half a year to receive your first appointment. By that time, you could be in a much darker place again and reject the help, which is exactly what happened to me. Online appointments can be accessed much faster, but in my opinion, I don’t believe speaking to somebody through a chat box will be effective in any way.  

Aside from CBT, there are other techniques we can implement ourselves. Exercise, meditation, and of course, facing your fear, have all proven successful ways to do this. In my next article, “10 Tips for Defeating Depression” I explain the benefits of exercise and meditation in much greater detail.  

Fight Back

No matter the severity of your social anxiety, please, read this and know that you are not alone. There are plenty of us out there, all with our own fears and self-loathing, but in our hearts, we also hold a candle just waiting to be lit. Don’t be afraid to be you. Strike a match and coax the flame. Realise that there are people out there who will like you for who you are.  

Take it from me, a man who began to let his own candle shine. Every day is still a struggle, but with my dedication to write and travel, my candle now burns bright and it has guided me from that little black box I was trapped inside for years.  

Finally, the world doesn’t seem so lonely anymore, and slowly but surely, I will re-immerse myself within it and reclaim the man who was lost for many years. The fear of being ourselves is what keeps us subdued, don’t let it persist, don’t allow social anxiety to kidnap your personality – fight it, because it is only you who can.