Everyone has social anxiety to some degree...right?

[AHardDaysNight]

I think this is very true. It just affects us all in different ways.

 

Thoughts?

[AHardDaysNight]

Great! A positive thread that I create, and nobody except spammers find it!

[Feelin Frisky]

No one can say really, Hard Days Night. I think it's critical to understand first and foremost that human beings are animals--territorial mammals--all of who are unique in their chemistry, genetic make-up and their personal experience and work from there. Is everyone insecure? It's hard to say. Does everyone experience social threat? Yes. Some learn to minimize it naturally, others must work hard to subdue that sense. But perhaps a billion others can't sort out reality from religious faith-lore colored perception and go through life with some derivation of territorialism, over-compensation, sometimes even a face of cruelty to prop themselves up by pushing others down. We just need to figure out what our own experience and capacity is and find the ways to rise above or distinguish ourselves from the craziness of social defaults in an animal world where denial is believed a route to heaven.

[AHardDaysNight]

No one can say really, Hard Days Night. I think it's critical to understand first and foremost that human beings are animals--territorial mammals--all of who are unique in their chemistry, genetic make-up and their personal experience and work from there. Is everyone insecure? It's hard to say. Does everyone experience social threat? Yes. Some learn to minimize it naturally, others must work hard to subdue that sense. But perhaps a billion others can't sort out reality from religious faith-lore colored perception and go through life with some derivation of territorialism, over-compensation, sometimes even a face of cruelty to prop themselves up by pushing others down. We just need to figure out what our own experience and capacity is and find the ways to rise above or distinguish ourselves from the craziness of social defaults in an animal world where denial is believed a route to heaven.

 

This is well said and well reasoned.

 

I think everyone experiences insecurity, to some extent. Some express it in a musical form (I believe the word is EMO), some express it through more unhealthy forms.

 

I am striving to become a more social and better person. I know I can't build Rome in a day, but I'm working on trying to make friendships at college, and not freak out over little things.

 

One day at a time...

[Cee]

I was social, but awkward about it in college. I could hold a conversation, but not capable of sustaining a real friendship. Twenty years later no one believes how painfully shy and dorky I was. Like Frisky said, we are driven to be social. And practice makes perfect.

 

Today I have my moments of isolation in social situations. I tend to have feelings of antagonism and hostility when I enter a circle for the first time. I stifle the urge to run and keep returning to the social group. And, eventually I feel welcome and part of the crowd.

 

I imagine everyone is different, but I suspect there is more social anxiety out there than what shows on the surface.

[Feelin Frisky]

This is well said and well reasoned.

 

I think everyone experiences insecurity, to some extent. Some express it in a musical form (I believe the word is EMO), some express it through more unhealthy forms.

 

I am striving to become a more social and better person. I know I can't build Rome in a day, but I'm working on trying to make friendships at college, and not freak out over little things.

 

One day at a time...

 

If you want an old dude's opinion who's gone though it, it sounds like you're very capable and on a good track. I often advise people to remedy some behavioral and emotional extremes with emerging medicines but there is no medicine nor should there be for simply making it from teen to adult. It's a fantastic and mysterious road and one has to live it to have a handle on how to feel and what to think. Good luck with your growth.

[AHardDaysNight]

Thanks.

 

I am on medication for it, and it is helping. Plus, I'm trying gradual exposure - I've already talked to some cute girls on campus, and I'm this close to making two new friends in my class.

 

My teacher is a bit out there, and this tends to make me uncomfortable. However, the reaction of the students to my questions is overall positive (I can even laugh at my dorky self sometimes!)

[denise_xo]

I think the question is not so much 'does everyone have' anxiety at some point, but the degree to which it effects our lives. I've gone through phases where it's been really debilitating and I'm pretty sure not everyone goes through that to the same extent.

 

Well done for tackling it head on, OP. I wish you luck

[Feelin Frisky]

I think the question is not so much 'does everyone have' anxiety at some point, but the degree to which it effects our lives. I've gone through phases where it's been really debilitating and I'm pretty sure not everyone goes through that to the same extent.

 

Well done for tackling it head on, OP. I wish you luck

Your post made me recall my advice to Ross about being so self-critical. It's the failure to understand that everyone else is feeling their own feelings and putting themselves under scrutiny and no one is thinking about anyone else to any such degree that they need cripple themselves with fear of social risk. It's something very freeing to get clear and keep saying if one has to that "everyone else is concerned with their own perception in the eyes of others, I'm under not scrutiny but my own".

[denise_xo]

Your post made me recall my advice to Ross about being so self-critical. It's the failure to understand that everyone else is feeling their own feelings and putting themselves under scrutiny and no one is thinking about anyone else to any such degree that they need cripple themselves with fear of social risk. It's something very freeing to get clear and keep saying if one has to that "everyone else is concerned with their own perception in the eyes of others, I'm under not scrutiny but my own".

 

Agreed. Another thing I've learned is that a lot of people will meet me on a positive note, as in they will expect me to succeed and act normally and be a relatively nice and reasonable person to be around. So the point of departure is often a whole lot better than I used to make it out to be. I only have to conform to relatively low but positive expectations. I don't have to turn around major negative expectations. Makes the job (mentally speaking) a whole lot easier.

[Feelin Frisky]

Agreed. Another thing I've learned is that a lot of people will meet me on a positive note, as in they will expect me to succeed and act normally and be a relatively nice and reasonable person to be around. So the point of departure is often a whole lot better than I used to make it out to be. I only have to conform to relatively low but positive expectations. I don't have to turn around major negative expectations. Makes the job (mentally speaking) a whole lot easier.

 

Ease breeds ease.

[Taramere]

For me, it can vary quite dramatically from occasion to occasion. In some situations I have to pull myself back from dominating, and I'll draw/be drawn towards the most extrovert individuals. Other times I'll feel fairly withdrawn and be on the lookout for others who are hanging back so that I can bond with them.

 

I was on a short course on presenting recently, where people were invited to talk about their feelings re talking to groups. Most people admitted to a certain anxiety...but one man assured the room that he never experienced social anxiety.

 

He came over to speak to me later on. He was shaky, nervous, visibly sweating and spoke extremely quickly. I felt for him, but it did make me wonder about his earlier insistence on never suffering from social anxiety. Denying that one suffers from it won't make it vanish and neither does it help people to find ways of managing it when it strikes.

 

I think it's better to acknowledge that you sometimes experience it - but that lots of people share that experience. It may well be that there are many out there who are completely free of it. Are they better off? I don't know, but I do know that without exception the best speakers I've ever heard have always admitted to having had problems with anxiety re public speaking/walking into rooms full of people they don't know.

 

The very self assured people sometimes lack that little bit of magic that makes them connect with other people. The magic that comes from being a bit nervous, but making the associated energy work for you rather than against you.

[Floridaman]

I was social, but awkward about it in college. I could hold a conversation, but not capable of sustaining a real friendship. Twenty years later no one believes how painfully shy and dorky I was. Like Frisky said, we are driven to be social. And practice makes perfect.

Was the same way. Carrying on a conversation past the introductions and pleasantries was difficult.

Dated in college (sporadically) but nothing ever came of it.

 

No one believes me when I say I was a shy guy in my 20s.. Today, I have no trouble striking up conversation, and really improved my conversational and dating skills in my late 20s...

 

Here's what a woman (not GF) from HS recently told me in a facebook PM:

 

You were a shy, quiet to yourself guy.

Bill was too to a point and everytime i said no he pursued it more. Then he hitched me and we have been married 31 years with 2 daughters....

 

PM'd to her how I wished I'd done things a lot differently...

I imagine everyone is different, but I suspect there is more social anxiety out there than what shows on the surface.

This is true.

Unless you're a politician who likes to "work the crowd" and go out and meet new people, most have some kind of nervousness.