Social Anxiety.....woop

Hey!

My hands are really oily, I've over moisturized (is that a thing?)...yeah I found Cocoa Butter cream and moisturizing my hands so typing...is going to be a slight struggle.....

Anyway...on with the post.

SOCIAL ANXIETY
It's one of those annoyingly weird and stupid things that happens to people. I am one of its many victims and it's so frustrating because I'd probably get up and do a whole lot more if I wasn't so socially anxious which leads to awkwardness which makes the anxiety all the worse.

Social anxiety is basically when you feel anxious in big or small groups of people (especially - for me anyway - in a group of people where I only know one person). I get that a lot. I can't stand situations where someone I might have spoken to like, a year ago bumps into me in the hallway and then starts up a conversation. It kind of goes like this ;

Them ; HEY!
Me ; Hey...
Them ; Oh my god it's been so long!
Me ; Yeah...um how are you?
Them ; Good! (starts talking about what they've been doing for about 10 minuets with me throwing in yeahs, uh huhs and really's? where and when necessary)
Me ; Really?
Them ; Yeah! So how have you been?
Me ; Good...yeah...good...yep...errrrrr
Them ; O......k.....that's good....
Cue the awkward silence and me fiddling with either my empty pocket or the edge of my blazer while they start racking their brain for an excuse to leave
Them ; Well...nice...erm...you know...catching up and stuff...talk to you later...
Me ; Yeah (nodding head even though I know that I will do all I can to avoid them for as long as possible)

Yeah...that's pretty much my experience on a weekly basis. I hate seeing someone who I haven't spoken to for ages and they have an interesting life and try to avoid meeting them as much as possible. But sometimes it's even worse if they don't because I feel even more pressure on me to make the conversation interesting but because of my social anxiety I end up mixing up my words, getting a stutter and start fiddling with my blazer or something I start to look like a complete looney who's lost all control over my mouth, words and body as a whole...

And then there are the big groups, where I feel like if I stay silent then I'll just fade into the background, but then when I'm quiet I can hear all my thoughts louder, and for some reason I think that everyone in the group can hear my thoughts and then I think that they're staring at me, which makes me even more anxious and I feel like I don't fit in enough, then I look at everyone and think do I even want to fit in? And then it's like, well it's better than standing out in this situation where everyone is looking at me (even though they're not) and everyone thinks I'm weird (even though they probably don't) and they're all laughing at me together but in their heads (even though they most definitely not all telepathically laughing at me) and that if I go to the toilet, they'll talk about me and laugh about me because I'm this loser, so I hold in a wee that I really need to go for and have to sit or stand awkwardly to hold in a pee, so that probably brings a lot more attention to me than I already had on me, which turns the day out, into a nightmare for me because of my own stupid thoughts.

And talking of weeing, I hate using public toilets because I don't know if I'm a loud wee-er or not but in my head, once I've locked the bathroom door, everyone outside listens to me as I pee and they're all saying things to each other - telepathically like - God can she pee? Or, bloody hell she sounds like Niagara Falls...even though, they are all mostly strangers in a public toilet so they wouldn't be discussing my pee telepathically. So then, to avoid sounding like Niagara Falls, I try and pee more 'quietly' which takes longer, so it's just like I'm having a poo even though I'm just trying to pee silently...

But the most annoying thing about social anxiety is the fact that, I never used to be this socially anxious. It was the end of primary I started having minor panic attacks, and the first week of school I had a panic attack on the bus and went straight home. I think it also had something to do with the bullying in year 7 by this group of boys, funny enough I actually get on with some of them now.

But I love to perform and stuff like that and because of that, people expect me to just get up and say stuff, or get up and talk to groups of people, but performing isn't like that, I don't know most of these people and I don't have to hold up a conversation with them - I know it might not make sense but it's kind of like the focus isn't on me, even though it is. And I don't usually have to be up there for a long time, I just go up, sing and get down. It's not like I have to stay in a group of strangers and actually socialize with them.

It's even more frustrating, because my social anxiety is really ruining any chance that I may or may not have even had with the guy that I like, because the people that I know are just like, "just talk to him" JUST TALK TO HIM? Well sorry, I'd never thought of that before! (I'm being sarcastic of course). But seriously, if I could just go up and talk to him, we could be friends right now, but I'm not, because I have social anxiety. People have even offered to talk to him for me, but I'm also terrified of confrontation, so if they did talk to him he'd probably come up to me, and the version of me in my head would know exactly what to say, but I wouldn't because I'm terrified of confrontation, especially with a boy that I like.

This blog post was longer than I'd expected it to be, I just wanted to share my social anxiety with you because I would really like to get over this social anxiety because it's seriously holding me back from everything that I would do if I didn't have it.

That's it
Kalli xxx