Let's Talk: Social Anxiety

Do you ever get that feeling where your stomach feels like it's tying itself in knots and that you might throw up at any given point?

Or maybe you know what it feels like to gasp for air, to feel like something has cut off your oxygen supply.

Or maybe you've felt the paralyzing awkwardness of not being able to form sentences in order to keep a conversation going.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about then you, my friend, are incredibly lucky in that respect.

Earlier, I was looking through my photo albums on trusty old Facebook and, despite the fact, the number of pictures I uploaded in first year outweighing send year snaps 50:1, in all the photos you can't tell that 9 times out of 10 I was feeling all the feelings outlined above.

There I am, left-hand side, smiling like I haven't got a care in the world. As you can probably tell from our deeply fashion-forward outfits, this was taken before our 2nd year Toga social, which was held during the month me and my best friend, Louise (sunflower headband gal), decided to do Sober October. 

Between us, we raised a great chunk of money for a really great charity, which is something we are both proud of. However, this was also the time we were trying to settle into our new roles on our University's Cheerleading team committee as Social Secs. It was our job to welcome the new freshers into the society and get everyone involved before nights out with games and initiations. 

Let me tell ya that without the comfort blanket of alcohol granting me a sense of false confidence to drown out my crippling anxiety about being social, it was damn hard. 

Now I'm not saying I have a problem with alcohol, that's so far from what I'm trying to communicate here. I don't hate alcohol, I hated depending on it to be able to talk to people and knew that wasn't healthy. But at uni people don't talk about that. 

This led to my self-confidence plummeting to new lows. The anxiety of compromising my own health just to be social was crippling. What made it worse was this crazy belief I'd manifested that if I wasn't drunk, people didn't want to talk to me and that I had nothing to say.

So what's changed?

This is going to sound so cliche but hear me out. Surrounding yourself with positive people and making plans to hang out with people who make you laugh, smile, comfortable and content with life is possibly one of the best things you can do for your social anxiety. 

Even just sitting in the living room with my flatmates makes me feel a million times better, but it's taken me 3 years to find a group of close friends who don't think it's weird that I don't talk loads and that I'm perfectly happy listening and laughing. 

I wish I could say there's a quick fix for social anxiety (apart from alcohol) but I can't. 

If you take anything away from reading this, I hope you can see that in amongst the rambling, I just wanted to tell people that it does get better. I'm doing better than I ever was. 

Check out this Ted Talk, it's kinda linked to what I was saying. Even if you don't suffer with social anxiety- watch this.

https://youtu.be/R1vskiVDwl4