Revelations of Social Anxiety

[Urakro]

I have social anxiety, and it's gotten to a bad peak. I have a counsellor, family, and some friends to talk about it with, but I find I often get unhelpful advice.

I noticed it's an instinctual reaction for people to help someone with social anxiety with optimistic thoughts. Some of them can be helpful. But for the most part, they are beliefs that include a certain level of denial.

The most unhelpful is when they say I'm a great and wonderful person. That nobody is thinking ill of me, if their even paying any attention at all. That I'll do great at that party, or that job interview. You get the idea.

I set out for some self-help. With some research and inner reflection, I have made some revelations. These might be ideas that come naturally for some of you. Also, the following isn't exhaustive or all-encompassing to the problems people with social awkwardness have to deal with. If you have others, please share.

- Everybody is opinionated, some people are jerks about it, but nobody is an expert. I came to realize that I often do take people's judgements to heart, as if their personal opinion is objective fact. The world of interacting with people contains messages from every direction, many of which can be very toxic if unfiltered. For instance, overhearing someone say that all people who play computer games are losers who live with their parents and are virgins. Or anyone who enjoys watching that certain movie is a retard. Only fags don't like sports. And so on.

The advice people often give is to not give even a shit what anyone thinks. I'd say that can be irresponsible and misplaced though. There are many reasons why it would be a good idea to take care of what anyone thinks. It's a job of filtering out the meaningless crap from the productive ones.

- My second revelation is that, no matter what, I am going to fuck up. There is no denying it or trying to get out of it. I often try hard to fight this fact because I'm a perfectionist. I set out for perfect results, and try hard to make everyone like me. It's futile. More realistically, I'll upset some people, I'll face some rejection. The idea isn't to prepare strategies for perfect results, it's to plan on taking fuck-ups with grace.

- And lastly, I can't change who I am. I'm still going to be nervous, awkward, and not very talkative. Ironically, I have to get comfortable with that to be able to open up to change. And that's going to include utilising the first two steps to accomplish this.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

- My second revelation is that, no matter what, I am going to fuck up. There is no denying it or trying to get out of it. I often try hard to fight this fact because I'm a perfectionist. I set out for perfect results, and try hard to make everyone like me. It's futile. More realistically, I'll upset some people, I'll face some rejection. The idea isn't to prepare strategies for perfect results, it's to plan on taking fuck-ups with grace.

You have highlighted the core of your issue.

---

I had crippling anxiety at the start of the year. To the point where I would be almost regurgitating at the though of interacting with people I did not know in environments I could not control. My mindset of being a perfectionist and a high achiever compounded my persistent failings in an interpersonal relationship. I did make it my mission to rid myself of most of the anxiety. I had to put myself in situations where it provoke high degrees of anxiety to train my brain that there was no threat. Through sheer willpower my strategy worked.

 

[Jennywocky]

You have highlighted the core of your issue.

What? You're capable of making everyone like you and respond to you just the way you'd like, all the time?

Please, let us all know your secret. We sit at your feet and await your pearls of wisdom.

EDIT: Sneaky guy, editing your post while I was responding...

I had crippling anxiety at the start of the year. To the point where I would be almost regurgitating at the though of interacting with people I did not know in environments I could not control. My mindset of being a perfectionist and a high achiever compounded my persistent failings in an interpersonal relationship. I did make it my mission to rid myself of most of the anxiety. Through sheer willpower my strategy worked.

And what did you tell yourself to get rid of the anxiety?

That everyone's human?
That you'd make mistakes and not to let others guilt you?
That it's impossible to make everyone like you, and besides they wouldn't be judging you as much as you felt they were? So much of it was in your head?
That your feelings were just feelings, so you could set them aside?
And so forth?

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

What? You're capable of making everyone like you and respond to you just the way you'd like, all the time?

Please, let us all know your secret. We sit at your feet and await your pearls of wisdom.

Please read my post again. ^_^

That everyone's human?

Yes. Everyone is uniquely flawed and they deserve a degree of unconditional respect.

That you'd make mistakes and not to let others guilt you?

Yes. A better discernment of the truth of the mistakes people were accusing me of was beneficial. Identifying guilt trips and not responding to them also helped.

That it's impossible to make everyone like you, and besides they wouldn't be judging you as much as you felt they were? So much of it was in your head?

Learning to being ok with upsetting people was absolutely necessary. Being ok with people not liking me was also necessary.

That your feelings were just feelings, so you could set them aside?
And so forth?

Well, training my brain to not perceive threats when there are not threats was the strategy I employed.

Fixing or removing unhealthy relationships is also important.

---

Interestingly I never had anxiety problems before last year. It gradually developed over time. I realized I had an issue when I had a series of anxiety attacks.

 

[Jennywocky]

Anxiety attacks suck. I've had just the ponderous weight of broad anxiety isolate me, and I've had a few panic attacks in my life as well. I still go through all that crap where I feel like I've made a mistake talking to someone because they seem to respond negatively or suddenly disappear, and then I crawl in a hole / pull way back because I feel stupid and like I ruined something. I usually just analyze it at that point, decide that I need to engage anyway, and do so... but the stupid feelings just linger.

Interestingly I never had anxiety problems before last year. It gradually developed over time. I realized I had an issue when I had a series of anxiety attacks.

That is interesting. So were you in a different environment that contributed interactions leading to anxiety, or what? Were you able to figure that out? Why it started then, after your not experiencing it?

 

[Sir Eus Lee]

- Everybody is opinionated, some people are jerks about it, but nobody is an expert. I came to realize that I often do take people's judgements to heart, as if their personal opinion is objective fact.

I often do this too, but a little differently. I just fail to evaluate what people say and assume I can trust them, but I fail to remember that people are even less careful and more inaccurate about their conclusions and results than I am. It's still hard to remember that though.

I often try hard to fight this fact because I'm a perfectionist. I set out for perfect results, and try hard to make everyone like me. It's futile. More realistically, I'll upset some people, I'll face some rejection. The idea isn't to prepare strategies for perfect results.

I have found this too: the outside world in no way matches the perfectionist inside world we can have in our head. So, by judging the outside world by internal standards, there is naturally a huge gap about what we expect and what we want. Sometimes you just gotta role with it and keep ml oving forward, but its not as easy as it sounds- it takes practice and a new mindset.

If anything, it sounds like you sort of want to improve, so that's a step in the right direction.

 

[Sinny91]

I suffer social anxiety, but mine sounds markedly different from the aforementioned. I don't feel anxious about failure or rejection (well, no more than any other INTP).. but apparently my deamonor and resting bitch face are easily picked up on by those around me... Not a day goes by without a number of people asking me if I'm OK, because "you dont seem ok".

It's so irritating, and inevitable. When conversations are opened by relative strangers, they find me closed , formal and awkward - and then they attempt to psycho analyse me.
Like.. really.

Of course when I'm in a happy go lucky sort of mood, my demeanor and attitude are totally different and these problems don't exist.

But the fact is, I'm indifferent far more than I am happy.
I thought that it was just the sensors and the feelers that made me feel uncomfortable, but my new boss appears to be an INTP and he's recently been psycho analysing me.

He said to me last night, unprovoked; "May I ask you a personal question?... Why are you so stressed".

I'm not that stressed, and have had a rather positive attitude at this new job. I am stressed at some level, I have some underlying causes of stress which aren't going to disappear anytime soon. But I haven't brought any of that into the work place - apparently it's just permanently etched on my face for those *who like looking at people to much* to see.

My boss is a nice guy, hopefully we become friends so that his subtle and prevalent observations of me don't bother me so much. I know how scrutinising and astute INTP's can be.. The last thing I want is a boss all up in my inner workings.

A number of people tried to get me to open up to mentors and councillors at a young age.. I hated the idea, and when I did go, like they suggested, I wanted to avoid talking about my problems. I remember talking about anything and everything with my mentor, apart from my problems. In the end they gave up, they realised I wasn't going to give them the responses they wanted.

I'm typically resent people trying to get emotional information out of me, I become quite dismissive and defensive.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Anxiety attacks suck. I've had just the ponderous weight of broad anxiety isolate me, and I've had a few panic attacks in my life as well. I still go through all that crap where I feel like I've made a mistake talking to someone because they seem to respond negatively or suddenly disappear, and then I crawl in a hole / pull way back because I feel stupid and like I ruined something. I usually just analyze it at that point, decide that I need to engage anyway, and do so... but the stupid feelings just linger.

I am sorry to hear that you live with this burden. It is not a life sentence. From my experience, you can learn to overcome. Mainly through persistence and learning that it is ok to upset people. You can not control other people's actions so there is no point in tailoring your actions to try and do this. Furthermore, some people act irrationally and you will definitely not be able manage their responses to you.

That is interesting. So were you in a different environment that contributed interactions leading to anxiety, or what? Were you able to figure that out? Why it started then, after your not experiencing it?

For the years prior I simply did not have anxiety issues. I did have a few years of depression in my late teens. I feel like I can say depression is not nearly as bad as anxiety. Anxiety has the physical symptoms: nausea, vomiting, constant pain in stomach, headaches, sleepless nights, twitching of limbs and face, panic attacks etc.

1) I was in an intimate relationship with a woman at the time. She would regularly become quite angry or upset at me and then would become further angry or upset at me because I was not able to do say or do anything to remedy her negative emotions. I became absolutely paranoid about whether or not my actions would trigger her.

2) When I realized I had a problem I immediately saw a psychologist. This psychologist was absolutely terrible for me. The main reason being is that she did not quite understand the male mind.

3) Being relatively successful person who is not a complete asshole made me a target for people to try to exploit me through guilt trips.

4) The two friends I hung out with often would regularly speak about their emotional problems. Their negativity was weighing me down.

5) I pinched a nerve in and damaged some ribs which caused me to have constant pain in chest where my heart is.

6) I was finishing my PhD and was trying to get a number of papers published in prestigious science/engineering journals.

Points two to six would not have been a trigger for me to develop anxiety to the extent at which I had it. They did compound the issue.

 

[Sabreena]

- And lastly, I can't change who I am. I'm still going to be nervous, awkward, and not very talkative. Ironically, I have to get comfortable with that to be able to open up to change. And that's going to include utilising the first two steps to accomplish this.

This last point really resonates with me. My therapist (back when I had one) kept drilling this idea into my head until it sunk it. I have social anxiety and it's gotten better over the years, but I have to accept that some things are never going to change. Once you get used to living as your actual self, not trying to please people, things are a lot easier.

It's not that simple, of course. There's always going to be some way in which you feel deficient. Right now I have a relatively low level of physical anxiety, thanks to medication, but there's always group projects to stress over, awkward moments in class where you freeze for literally no reason and feel like you're dying.

And I agree with you, it does matter what people think of you, both professionally and personally. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or ignorant. Just because it comes easy to them, they assume everybody else has that same intuition and lack of crippling perfectionism.

So yeah. It's a complicated struggle. OP, you have a sense of self-awareness, which is more than a lot of SA-ers can say.

 

[DrGregoryHouse]

You have highlighted the core of your issue.

---

I had crippling anxiety at the start of the year. To the point where I would be almost regurgitating at the though of interacting with people I did not know in environments I could not control...

Proporanolol.

Will work if your reaction in social anxiety situations are symptomatic of an out of control andrenaline reaction. That is, social anxiety as a result of the fight or flight response.

Its a really popular chemical with stage actors, presentors, etc.

I had tried a variety of psycho-pharmaceuticals but they didn't do much at all.

30 dollar copay and a 10 dollar prescription later I tried proporanolol and it seems for me my social anxiety was indeed mostly a purely physical thing in response to fear (as opposed to brain chemical problem).

I can't believe how well its worked. Maybe some folks who are being prescribed psycho-pharmeceuticals and they aren't having as great of a positive effect as they would like...should try proporanolol. It has really calmed me down in those social situations where I was panicking.

 

[DrGregoryHouse]

Anxiety attacks suck. I've had just the ponderous weight of broad anxiety isolate me, and I've had a few panic attacks in my life as well. I still go through all that crap where I feel like I've made a mistake talking to someone because they seem to respond negatively or suddenly disappear, and then I crawl in a hole / pull way back because I feel stupid and like I ruined something. I usually just analyze it at that point, decide that I need to engage anyway, and do so... but the stupid feelings just linger...

YES. I've experienced this so many times in my life.

I'm getting to the point now though where I just act anyways and those who respond favorably, I figure, are kindred spirits. Those who retreat etc are well...not worth having around in my circle of influence anyways.

apologies if this is redundant (I often am but tough shizzle for eveyone else ironically enough ) but I think "the intp experience" is applicable:

"I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours

Here you are, an INTP happily working away on your encyclopedia and figuring out the world. So, what do we ultimately want from other people?

You see it coming, right?

We want to share the experience of writing our encyclopedias. Want to share pages, compare notes, help others predict and avoid bad stuff and mistakes, and get others' insights so we can avoid some bad stuff ourselves (especially icky emotional badness). That way, we don't have learn everything the hard way. We can share the load in a grand community striving to understand the nature of the universe. We feel connected to people when they seem like they might have a similar encyclopedia. We feel love when the overlap seems especially potent. How do we know? When we want to talk with a person more, more, more. Then, it happens. Someone starts to care for us. They actually want to be around us and talk and share things. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Right??

Wrong again. (I know I’m being hard on you.)

At first, when this seeming compatibility happens, it feels AMAZING. We have finally found an encyclopedia co-author. It's so much more fun to tear into the world with a partner-in-crime. But wait a minute. Little clinkers start happening. Maybe they don't want to talk so much anymore. Maybe their eagerness wears off, and they are happy to put their encyclopedia on the shelf. You think, WTF? This person cares and wants to be with me, but why? What is still fueling the person's interest? Why can't we share encyclopedias anymore?...

...The Final Solution

Once an INTP discovers the shocking truth that other people think very differently than we do and are driven by very different motivations, the INTP then turns the overall desire to analyze and understand the world onto to the inner workings of people themselves. However, people are irrational, chaotic, and unpredictable, right? Not logical at all! Every theory we make about them seems to fall apart. Every safe path we chart through them leads to swamps and disasters. The traumas mount. And the failures. You might even decide to take your ball and go home. But it's just against human nature to enjoy isolation. You keep limping back and trying to connect again.

If you're stuck in this cycle, then I have an important insight for you.

Ready for it?

People, in fact, are entirely logical, rational, and predictable.

No, no, I'm not smoking something. The human condition is indeed extraordinarily complex and challenging to tackle, but as you well know, hard doesn't mean impossible. Hard just means hard, and what makes it the toughest for us is the element of emotion.

Here are the unnatural things that we INTPs have to learn to do in order to better understand people: (1) give adequate weight to the motivating power of emotion in other people (and ourselves) and (2) understand the roots of that emotion. We stomp down emotion and will always choose a logical answer over an emotional one. Most of the other personality types are not that way, however. Until we successfully deconstruct the power of emotion (including how it still affects us despite our efforts to kill it), we have little hope of successfully navigating emotions in others. We will not be able to understand what the actions of other people mean and how to predict them.

But that process, my friends, will need to be a topic for another day."

http://www.intpexperience.com/Isolation.php

Somewhere on that website it explains that our central challenge in life (or at least one of the primary ones) as an INTP is to learn to KEEP TRYING to reach out and connect with people and DON'T GIVE UP.

I agree. Or at least I've been trying to act that way.

Like when in that other thread I gave the update of that attractive woman's negative response to my expression of undying love. I've truly been (after about an hour or two of mourning) like: oh well: plenty of fish in the sea: eventually I'll find one who appreciates me and my expressions: her loss: time to keep on trying: keep going: don't shut down: don't retreat: don't isolate: keep getting out there and reaching out for external friends and family: keep trying to discover additional kindred spirits etc etc etc. Positive self talk and all that positive self affirmation thing. I've experienced a lot of success the last few weeks actually: another very attractive woman has asked me to ask her out for a date as a matter of fact.

 

[Urakro]

It's rather odd for me to watch people these days and observe their behaviour and my reactions. To me, I see people with vitality, a good healthy ego, making the most out of their situation by creating a bit of fun. Some strive for competitiveness and partake the thrill of the game to assert who they are and make most of their strengths.

It's hard to explain, but I do get it because I remember being that way. There were days where I eagerly woke up in the morning to head to college or other facilities to spend good connections with what felt like a big second family. I had a rally of allies, and enemies. I remember joking and teasing, and being teased back. Sometimes it was embarrassing, and I would be slightly quiet for a few minutes, then laugh it all off and have it forgotten. I recall getting in arguments and fights, and keeping my ground. None of which would destroy my well-being during that day.

I haven't always been this way, but now lately it just feels like a big act. I try to smile, but I can't make it convincing. I may pretend to laugh, but I can hardly grasp the humour. I'm courteous but only because I ought to. I make jokes, but my god, they are bad.

Underneath it all is even more bleak. A monotonous sound of buzzing that continues through apprehension of the unexpected. Parsing through all the impressions of verbal and non-verbal is impossibly complicated to understand and it grinds against my cognition and before long I'm drained. Their eyes seem sharp and piercing, and the games that I once enjoyed seem terrifyingly dangerous. More than anything, I desire to be just left alone. As it progresses, I may start building up suspicions. Then my act starts falling apart and I either throw one more flailing attempt to show composure, or give up entirely and unmask the deflated oddity now beginning to untangle contempt.

And yet, I still realize how utterly absurd it all is and there is no reason for my reactions. But by then, the symptoms have taken hold, and I notice I'm profusely sweating, heart banging hard on my chest, dizzy and off-kilter. The piston had already gained it's momentum for the next rotation, and one spark ignites the fuel into a perpetual disaster.

 

[Nebulous]

No one has been on this thread for a few months..
But here are just some little things I do to deal with my anxiety:

1.) I think of my anxiety as the flight-or-fight response kicking in. Then I choose either fight or flight. That way I'm not sitting there frozen. But do note that while choosing the flight response is sometimes smart, depending on the situation, constantly fleeing from the things that make you anxious will create a bad habit that'll be difficult to break.

2.) You can't wait to act until you've stopped feeling anxious. Your anxiety is a feeling, and even if it's telling you to avoid a situation, that doesn't mean you have to act on that feeling. That's your emotional mind speaking.

I might add more later