Social anxiety and working through it

When you have panic disorder, generalized anxiety and especially social anxiety it can feel overwhelming just to think of all the people you may encounter outside of your  house. It can make you feel stuck. The thing about anxiety is once you are having an anxious day everything starts to build up---noises start to bother you, people around you bother you. Walking through a crowded grocery store? The anxiety starts to turn into a general bitterness about all the people all around you and WHY can't they all just go somewhere else where you are not???

Making small talk with people you kind of know can be difficult. Especially when you have memory difficulties. You want to have a successful conversation but it feels like you are just flipping through a rolodex coming up with all the accepted questions and answers.

No matter how I feel, no matter what kind of day I am having when asked how i am i will answer FINE. The reason I do this is because i don't have the conversational fortitude to go into anything with anyone.

That doesn't mean I am not interested. I truly AM interested in what people are doing, what my friends are doing, how they are doing and what's going on with the kids, baby, new job. It's just difficult sometimes to come up with right words when your brain is going all different directions.

This tends to keep you inside where you can have control over the people who come in; the atmosphere around you; the noise and lack of noise. I think social anxiety is about fear of a lack of control of your environment. Because when you are out among everyone you cannot control what others are doing you can only control how you react.


I have become a lot better. But still sometimes........

Internet forever!!!!


(pictures from the book Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh which is the awesomnest book and everyone should read it more than once )