Social Anxiety!

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

The past few days have led me to deduce that I might have social anxiety: if I don't leave the house for a day, I get incredibly nervous when I have to go through the High Street(my house is perpendicular to it) to get somewhere.

I noticed that this sense of anxiety gets worse the more time I have spent not going outside(leaving makes me more and more nervous), and its only there when I am around large groups of people. I am not sure if its a "everyone is judging me" scenario or if its fallout from some of my experiences in secondary school/things that happened during adolescence.

Either way, its there, and its not as bad when I am going to school: the effect disappears, ergo: social anxiety.

Now, what I need advice with is how to counter it. I am 17 and like I said, I live next to the High Street, so jobs in the service industry(barman etc.) are either sparse, or in the more dangerous areas in my neighbourhood: places I don't want to be after hours.

I'd like some advice with a more practical method: any thought techniques or reasoning, etc. would be useful, as I classify my condition as maladaptive. I'd like to get rid of it, because I will soon be going off to University, where I am sure that I will have even less privacy than I have now: being anxious of the people around me because they are around me would be quite problematic.

 

[Kuilui]

Get a job with the public. It'll help. Work as a cashier or just anything that involves people. Talk to a psychologist see what they think maybe they'll give you something to help. Join clubs at university, make friends. As someone who has had social anxiety for a long time that's really the best advice I can give you. You just have to force yourself out there. Don't just hide, trust me it does way more harm than good.

 

[FootloosePhoenix]

I was diagnosed with social anxiety a couple years back. It was especially bad for me during my high school years and being homeschooled by my parents all my life sure didn't help out. But as the other posters have already said, the solution is pretty simple in theory; you just have to put yourself out there more. It sounds like this may not be an option for you currently, but I know things have been better for me since I got a job. Working in customer service especially shows you just how doofy the other human beings can be; you're not abnormal for the small mistakes that make you feel inferior. No one goes around passing immediate scathing judgment on every other person they see. And even if they did, they'd be massive assholes not worth your time, so why should you care what they think anyway?

I've also been lucky enough to have a super friendly co-worker who's always nice to me and shares a few of my interests, so talking to him feels natural. Hopefully you'll be able to meet someone like that. Social anxiety or no, it's a good confidence booster just to have a friend who seems to enjoy your company and who you can say what's on your mind to. I even asked him to see a movie with me awhile ago, something I'd never done before, and the world did not in fact end in chaos and flames as my brain would previously lead me to believe. So yay!

My advice is limited and probably not the best, as I'm still far from overcoming this myself, but hang in there.

 

[geeky_demon]

I can relay what a therapist told me. The first thing to do is don't worry about worrying, if that makes sense. Don't put yourself down because you feel anxious - don't beat yourself up over it. Everybody feels anxiety now and again, it's natural and human. When you do feel anxious don't "fight" against it that's like sailing against the wind and not with it. Let it wash over you and pass like how you would let a wave break over you in the sea.

Hope that helps. I know it reads like gibberish.