Just when you think all your troubles have flown away, the summer ends and school’s social atmosphere hits you like a freight train.
Social anxiety was something I went through when I was a kid. Fear of making new friends, check. Therapy that didn’t really help, check. A brain that overthought and emitted only awkward phrases that got stuck in my increasingly drying throat, check.
In high school, I knew I would succumb to the same fate if I didn’t push myself out of my comfort zone. While this strategy doesn’t work for everybody, forcing myself to talk to people despite feeling extremely uncomfortable was exactly what I needed at the time.
Because of this determination to conquer my fears, I hadn’t felt consistently anxious for years…until now. Sure, I’ve had some typical ups and downs as anyone might, but this past month has been unexpectedly difficult.
It’s natural to feel a bit awkward on your first day back at school, but instead of simply awkwardness, I was greeted with litres of anxiety sweat dripping down my body on that Monday morning.
The next several days weren’t as bad, but nonetheless, I don’t remember ever feeling that nervous about being in a classroom, not since I was in my first years of high school.
This anxiety has stuck around in many social situations I’ve encountered, from being among the masses of students travelling up and down the sidewalks to meeting groups of strangers at homecoming parties.
I’ve honestly been baffled by where my anxiety could possibly be coming from at this point in my life. I thought I’d solved my problem years ago, but evidently, dealing with deep-rooted issues isn’t a one-time thing. It seems to be a constant trial in my life now. Even last year as a newcomer to Laurier, I dealt with much smaller (and briefer) amounts of social anxiety.
I might trace it all back to the pandemic and my months of time away from new social interactions, certainly not an uncommon human experience at this point. Although I’ve mostly re-adjusted, my tolerance for social situations may not ever be the same.
Just being at university, away from home, has provided some tough new experiences I’ve had to slowly get used to. For many, anxiety gets especially bad when we don’t have friends or family with us. Although familiar faces can be immensely helpful in these situations, we may still find ourselves too far down our spirals of negative, anxious thinking.
Ultimately, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that my anxiety will never entirely go away, and the only way I’ll be able to find peace is if I can accept it. Instead of beating myself up for not being perfectly “normal”, I can let myself just be.
Anxiety comes and goes depending on our moods, and sometimes it will decide to stick around for longer than we would like. But we’re not doing ourselves any good by desperately wishing it away.
In the end, who cares if I sweat in class? Who cares if I need to awkwardly creep away from crowded places? When we back up our focus to see the bigger picture, we realize our anxiety is just a small part of us and not the end of the world. We can function with it, not despite it.