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I created this site to document the (ultimately successful) efforts I undertook in order to escape from my social anxiety, in the hope that it will help others overcome the painful condition.
During my search for a cure, I came across too many articles that stated that social anxiety disorder is for life, and can't be completely cured. I want to reassure any readers that this is most definitely not the case.
A bit about me
My name is Phil and I am in my early twenties and have suffered from social phobia since I was around 14 years old. For a while I worked part-time in a supermarket checkout and, as you can probably imagine, such a place wasn’t particularly conducive to the alleviation of my symptoms.
As well as constantly sweating so profusely that I was limited in the colour and material of the clothes I wore despite the application of copious amounts of anti-perspirant, my anxiety most obviously manifested itself in attacks in the form of blushing (erythrophobia), which was coupled with 'mind blanking'. This would occur in a great number of situations, the following is a list of some triggers and reasons for each occurrence:
- When confronted with members of the opposite sex – they think I am hitting on them, they will humiliate me by rejecting me even though no advance is made
- When making presentations in front of any number of people – I will blush, or they will see my sweat patches, and subsequently I will be ridiculed
- When being criticised in any way – I will blush and people will use this as another way to criticise/ridicule/humiliate me
- When making/receiving phone calls – I don’t know why this was such a fear for me
- When alone in a public place e.g. walking along a street – People will see there is no one with me and think I am a loner/loser
- Eating in public – People will ridicule me for eating strangely/noisily/messily
- Alone in a shop – I think I’ll be taking too long and be obliged to buy something – will think I’m weird if I take too long to find something I want
As you can see from the above, incomprehensive, list, there were many triggers for my anxiety attacks.
I tried to not let my anxiety get in the way of my life, and carried on my normal routine as if there was nothing wrong with me, but after prolonged and repeated exposure to phobia induced irrational fear, I started to get depressed. There’s only so much times you can tell yourself that you’re pathetic before it effects you.
This depression in turn led me to withdraw even further.
Finally I realised that constantly feeling humiliated wasn’t much fun, and set about trying to find a way out of my negativity.
After a lot of trial and error, I finally managed to escape from my phobia and it no longer dominates my social life.