When Other People Are Scary - Social Anxiety

I remember so many times in high school, that I would get to school in the morning and I would feel just awful. My stomach would be in knots and I would feel nauseous, and on the really bad mornings I would get terrible cramps. On those bad mornings, I would go to the nurse saying that I felt sick. The nurse would ask me, “Why did you come to school if you were feeling sick?” And I would just shrug and not answer. But the truth was that I felt like this almost every day. If I listened to my stomach, I’d never go to school. I always felt nauseous. I just thought that something was wrong with my stomach. That I ate something that didn’t sit well with me.

It wasn’t until years later that I started to understand what I was experiencing. I was in the throes of some serious social anxiety. And for me, a notable symptom was my gut. The nausea and diarrhea that plagued me for years in school was not just from my eating habits (though they certainly didn’t help). My body was reacting strongly to the environment that I was having to return to every day. An environment that I perceived as unsafe.

What is Social Anxiety?

Anxiety is an extension of one of our primary emotions, fear. When we experience events that are very fearful, our subconscious will suppress the excess fear that we are not able to process in the moment. Our subconscious then associates that fear to the situation that caused it and creates an aversion towards the action, place or people that were involved. Our mind is working as it is designed to work, to keep us alive. So, when we experience heightened fear, our minds interpret that as being in life threatening danger.

Social anxiety is fear that is connected to people or situations that involve other people. For me, I was bullied a lot in high school. I was teased and threatened by several classmates. Called awful names like nerd, gay or faggot (It was the late 90s/early 00s, gay and nerd culture was still considered fringe and unacceptable). I was even physically assaulted and nearly robbed in school over my Pokémon deck that I had. The irony being that the cards I had were worthless.

The experiences left a huge amount of unresolved fear within myself that morphed into a constant state of anxiety. My mind felt that I was entering into a truly dangerous place, and was trying to keep me alert to future risk. I never knew who would be the next person to taunt or attack me.

Symptoms of Social Anxiety

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

• Fear of situations in which you may be judged negatively

• Worry about embarrassing or humiliating yourself

• Intense fear of interacting or talking with strangers

• Fear that others will notice that you look anxious

• Fear of physical symptoms that may cause you embarrassment, such as blushing, sweating, trembling or having a shaky voice

• Avoidance of doing things or speaking to people out of fear of embarrassment

• Avoidance of situations where you might be the center of attention

• Anxiety in anticipation of a feared activity or event

• Intense fear or anxiety during social situations

• Analysis of your performance and identification of flaws in your interactions after a social situation

• Expectation of the worst possible consequences from a negative experience during a social situation

Physical Symptoms

• Blushing

• Fast heartbeat

• Trembling

• Sweating

• Upset stomach or nausea

• Trouble catching your breath

• Dizziness or lightheadedness

• Feeling that your mind has gone blank

• Muscle tension

Common Social Situations You May Avoid

• Interacting with unfamiliar people or strangers

• Attending parties or social gatherings

• Going to work or school

• Starting conversations

• Making eye contact

• Dating

• Entering a room in which people are already seated

• Returning items to a store

• Eating in front of others

• Using a public restroom

Overcoming Social Anxiety

I continued to struggle with social anxiety for years. I pushed myself into taking a public speaking class in order to try to get more confident in my social skills. And that helped to a point, but the underlying fear and anxiety remained. As did the frequent digestive upset.

What ended up working for me was the Emotional Freedom Technique. EFT, also known as tapping, involves tapping on acupressure points on your own body in order to calm the amygdala, the fear center of the brain. The tapping allows for the Chi (emotional energy) to move more freely and bring a sense of relief and calm to the mind and body.

This technique helped me let go of the fear I had about the people around me. It helped me process the traumatic experiences I had in school and to dissolve the association my mind had between people and danger. Now I can socialize and connect with friends and strangers with so much more ease and freedom than I have ever had before. And I want to give that same benefit to you as a gift.

You just have to choose to take those first steps toward taking responsibility for your healing and to work towards being the person you are meant to be. To feel safe and worthy of being yourself in the world and being seen by others. Are you ready?