Alongside the USC Ice Bucket Challenge going around and the start of Mental Health Awareness Month in May, I’d like to “dump” my story with mental health to increase awareness.
For many people, but especially those of us labeled as quiet in high school, the most exciting part about starting college is the “fresh start” — that opportunity to reinvent yourself and finally be free from the mental weight of both real and imaginary labels attached to your name.
I didn’t talk to anybody except my childhood friends in high school. I didn’t know how to start conversations or form new relationships, and I passed by my first three years of high school glued to my phone, stuck in my head, and clinging to people who had outgrown me. In my senior year, I finally started to emerge from my shell, gain confidence, and make new friends, but those years of reclusiveness had really done their damage.
When starting college last semester, I was determined to break free from this corner I had backed myself into and thought I was going to change into this super outgoing person that everyone wanted to be around. To an extent, I did change! I certainly pushed myself a lot farther than I did in high school and made a couple of great friends from my efforts, which I’m so proud of myself for. However, I think the expectation that I was going to be some completely transformed person set my standards a little too high, and it made the aftermath of my letdowns significantly worse.
Social anxiety can manifest differently in everybody, but for me, this is how it goes when it’s at its worst:
I start by questioning others’ facial expressions and words, and get worried if they stare too long or don’t look at all. I have a terrible habit of waiting until I’m specifically addressed to insert myself in a conversation, and the longer I go without being addressed, the longer I won’t speak a word out of fear that I’m unwelcome.
Once I’m worried, I don’t know what to say to people. My mind will go blank, and I physically can’t say anything to others because nothing’s in my head but anxiety, as crude as it sounds. Then, I get anxiety about the fact that I’m not saying anything to people, and what they must think about that. Then I get so anxious about how I need to speak that when I do, my quiet words often spring from fear and lack a genuine quality. Then, of course, I get anxious about how disconnected or boring it can come across, but my struggle with normal conversations makes it harder to have a difficult one about the intricacies of my mental illness and its effects. Usually, I’ll have physical symptoms too: trembling hands and legs, sweating, a rush of heat in the face, increased heart rate, and a loss of appetite due to the pit of anxiety in my stomach that stems from feeling like I’ve messed up an interaction. Ridiculous as it sounds, I even avoid caffeinated drinks before or after an intimidating situation because I have this secret fear that the combo will one day put me into cardiac arrest from how high my blood pressure spikes.
It’s one really long and exhausting cycle.
My counselor explained to me that it’s a fight-or-flight response. As if a bucket of icy water is being dumped on my head, my brain starts releasing stress hormones which can physically impair my pre-frontal cortex, and with it, my ability to maintain social situations or make judgements. Even with an explanation for my mind going blank, it’s not any less frustrating. I hate when I find myself shutting down in a social situation and am unable to just “open my mouth”, because I want to connect with other people so badly and I know I’m capable of doing it at work or around my friends, but in that moment, my brain acts like it’s never had a conversation in its life.
It also affects my speech. I can have a hard time beginning a sentence without tripping over my words, so I usually lack the confidence to make a joke or contribute to a conversation because I know I’ll fumble the delivery and embarrass myself. This problem is the most annoying because it’s made its way out of anxious situations and into my daily life.
It also causes me to avoid social situations. I once skipped a class so I wouldn’t have to pick groupmates for a project. I skipped a class I was late to so everyone wouldn’t watch me walk in late. And I skipped half of the first day of senior year because they gave us a free period in the auditorium and I didn’t want to sit alone (the attendance ladies were pissed about that one and made sure to tell me). I didn’t use Instagram until junior year of high school. I never went to homecoming. I hid in the bathrooms at lunch if my friends were gone. And I even hid in the less-than-clean bathrooms at Lakeview so I wouldn’t have to socialize in the Fish Camp mixers.
It’s really affected my life, but on a positive note, I started getting professional help for it recently, and it’s been a game-changer. Getting a new (and importantly, professional) perspective about my struggles outside the entrapment of my mind has been so helpful, and I cannot recommend it enough. I want to share a few things I’ve recently learned while working through it.
The best thing I’ve learned, as corny and cliché as it sounds, is to be yourself, or start spending time to figure it out.
While living with social anxiety, I often spend so much of my time worried about people’s perceptions of me that I rarely take moments to live with myself. I’ve found that the more I dress up for myself, the more I get new piercings, or the more I start going to the gym again, the more secure and confident I feel in myself, instead of placing my worth in others.
There is also an expectation I didn’t realize I put on myself until recently. I thought that all my conversations had to be perfect for people to like me, and I didn’t understand how everybody knew how to do it. I felt I needed to make all the right jokes and say the right things, and I essentially stressed myself into silence trying to figure out what the right thing is that I couldn’t take a step back and see the truth: there is no perfect thing to say and there is no perfect person to be.
There is only you.
So, the last reality I’ve faced because of social anxiety is that the two best helping hands, for me, have been talking and time.
It’s difficult to overcome the fear of embarrassing yourself or saying the wrong thing; those fears grip me and have prevented me from experiencing a multitude of lives. However, what I wish someone had told me sooner is that despite it all, it’s okay to take up space, it’s okay to be embarrassing, and it’s okay to not be confident, because it’s the effort to be kind that matters most in conversations. Most people are kind and will take the time to get to know you if you let them; they’re not there to criticize you or hate you, despite what anxiety says.
Of course, despite my attempts to move forward, there are still an upsetting number of times when my words fail me, and I revert straight back to that 14-year-old girl who cut her own bangs so she could be less perceived, but it’s important to remember that progress is not linear, and that’s okay too.
It’s impossible for an anxiety that’s built over the years and fundamentally altered my ability to form interpersonal relationships to go away in one night or even one month, but I know as long as I keep moving forward, I’ll make it out okay on the other side.
My hope in sharing this is to hold myself more accountable in combating my anxiety through exposure therapy (revealing my deepest emotions that I have only shared with a therapist, publicly on the internet), but I also want anyone reading who struggles with social anxiety, especially in university, to know that there is someone out there who understands. I hope this article helps someone out there feel more understood, and I hope it provides more awareness about the silent struggles of anxiety that will continue on even when this challenge ends.