Social Anxiety Made Me Who I Am

My anxiety is the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been terrified of talking to strangers or groups of two or more people. When I was a young child, I would have to be pulled from my parents and forced into the schoolhouse in tears. As I got older, and started to be embarrassed by my fear, I’d go in while holding back tears the whole way to the classroom. If I got dropped off early, I’d hide in the bathroom till class. Every time someone spoke to me, my heart would start beating violently, I’d nervously shake and stammer, and fear would yell in my ear to run away.

I remember at 9 years old when I did my first creative writing assignment. The teacher told us to write a paragraph or two starting with “I found an egg in the yard…” We had 30 minutes, if I recall correctly. I wrote three pages and would’ve gladly continued writing more. Whereas my anxiety had muzzled me, the written word flowed out in a torrent. The teacher loved my writing so much she insisted on reading it aloud. Once again, I went to hide in the bathroom while she did.

As I got older, it got better, or at least I got better at hiding it. I began to act aloof and disinterested. Secretly, I desperately wanted to interact with people, but I was too prideful to admit that I was scared to. Instead, I just acted like I couldn’t be bothered. If anyone spoke to me, I’d give some terse response, heart beating in my ears, and just go back to minding my business.

I tend to hear people belittling those with social anxiety. Frankly, I get it. There’s really nothing to be afraid of. I know that, and I’ve always known that. I couldn’t care less what the hostess at the restaurant or my next door neighbor thinks about me. But there’s something malfunctioning inside of me. I’m not afraid of people, but my body is. It tightens up; I lose my ability to focus, to be still — to be me. I can’t think of anything but to get away.

They say, “Bravery is the absence of fear.” I agree, theoretically, that it’s not really bravery unless you’re experiencing fear. But intense anxiety attacks your body and mind in a way you can’t defend against. It’s not that you can’t force your way to do things despite it; it’s that you just can’t stop it from affecting you. It’s a dry mouth; trembling arms and legs; the deafening feeling of your heart throbbing in your ears; thoughts racing through your head, incapable of being grabbed hold of; and a physical weakness that makes your body feel like it’s collapsing underneath you.

It’s not that I lose my wherewithal, succumb to the fear, and run away while crying. It’s just really hard to keep track of a train of thought when a fire alarm is going off inside your head. If my mind is normally a calm, dark, quiet cavern, with thoughts being projected onto the wall, this fear would be a frightened bat screeching loudly and zooming about erratically from one end to the other. It’s not me, and I know it’s not me, but it’s damn hard to ignore.

People think of those with social anxiety as shy and timid. I’m assertive, ambitious, and not one to shrink away from a warranted confrontation. I’ve gotten in front of groups of people that I didn’t have to get in front of, and spoken with sweat rolling down my temples and my throat dry as a desert. Even as a kid, I never once let someone bully me and always told off whomever thought I looked like an easy target — awkwardly and nervously, but I told them off nonetheless. Social anxiety isn’t who I am, but it did make me who I am.

When I was a young kid, I felt like I was choking on my words whenever I went to speak them to someone, so I’d write them down instead. I’d sit and write for hours. When I was 12, I had already written the first 40 pages of a book. It was called “The Happening,” and it was about a soul that was so big it had to be split between four people, and if those four people ever came into proximity with one another, they’d gain supernatural powers. It ended up getting lost when the laptop I was writing it on went kaput. But the book I finished writing when I was 25 didn’t get lost; it’s available for purchase.

When I was in my teens, and playing the part of aloof loner, I became best friends with an author buried in Lützen, Germany: Friedrich Nietzsche. If I could have been out and about with people, as people do, I might’ve never made his acquaintance. But since that day, at 16 years old, when I first started reading the words in Book One of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, I was forever transformed. It was these words that began the process which lifted a veil that had been over my eyes — no, over everyone’s eyes — and gave me a lifelong passion for philosophy: “Whether I contemplate men with benevolence or with an evil eye, I always find them concerned with a single task, all of them and every one of them in particular: to do what is good for the preservation of the human race.” My social anxiety gave me that. I doubt I would’ve heard such profound insights from any of the people at the parties I wanted to go to but could never.

My social anxiety made me who I am. It made me ambitious; you have to make something of yourself when you feel like all eyes are constantly on you. It made me careful, detail-oriented, and hardworking; it would be more strain than I could handle to have my work product be seen as shoddy. It made me considerate; you can’t help but think about and be attentive to the people around you if they’re what sets your body shaking. Social anxiety made me kind and empathic; there’s no better listener than someone who can’t talk. There’s no one more polite than someone who is constantly worrying about how they’re being perceived. There is no one who better understands what it’s like to be afraid than someone who has spent some portion of every day terrified. I never felt like I could get out of my head and just act naturally, so I had to approach socialization as a strategy, and that sparked a lifelong interest in psychology. Now, each day people applaud my insights into the human condition, and I can find an endless stream of observations to write about. Social anxiety gave me the joys of writing, reading, psychology, and philosophy.

After school, as I got older, things really started to improve. With age, practice, and increased confidence, it gets better. If I spend a lot of time interacting with people — like I did at my old retail job — I’d almost even feel normal after a time. I did, however, find that a defined role was essential to quelling my anxiety; something about knowing exactly what you have to do and how you’re supposed to act really lets you work through the uneasiness. I might never be great at small talk, but at least I know that in time I can do whatever I have to career-wise.

Still, it never really goes away. If I spend too much time at home reading, when I next go out for a walk, I find myself wanting to cross the street just to avoid saying “hello” to a passing neighbor. And when I go to the grocery store, the time spent at the cashier feels like an eternity. I find the key, other than just consistent interaction and getting used to it, is to grow my power. The more I develop myself and accomplish, the surer I feel about myself. It doesn’t do away with it altogether, but it certainly helps.

My social anxiety is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with, despite a childhood marred by traumatic experiences. It covered my mouth when I’ve wanted to communicate my love for someone. It hampered my mind when I strove to express myself or to perform well at something that was both important to me and, unfortunately, public. It kept me from making friends, and many times it made me embarrassed to be me. But it has given me more than I can ever list or describe, and, now, I wouldn’t change a thing about myself — not even that.

There’s another thing I have to be grateful to my anxiety for: It allowed me to appreciate a truly beautiful song by the band Arcade Fire called “My Body is a Cage.” I’ll leave you with some of the lyrics:

My body is a cage

That keeps me from dancing with the one I love

But my mind holds the key

I’m standing on a stage

Of fear and self-doubt

It’s a hollow play

But they’ll clap anyway

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