soulseek Posted March 24, 2017 Share Posted March 24, 2017 I have always been a shy person. I am not loud nor am I super outgoing. However, I've never had a problem striking up conversations etc. For that matter, I am actually a teacher. I teach, present, collaborate and meet with parents and colleagues regularly. I have always felt a bit inside myself, and internalize a lot of my emotions. My boyfriend gets upset because I never play games with him and his friends. I feel like it's because I am worried about being put on the spot in front of people I don't know.. making mistakes etc.. Today was an interesting experience that took me back to my elementary days. Teachers attended professional development on oral language. The activity was to practice repeating what our partner said. So I was paired with a teacher who was new to our school. Ill admit, i am a bit intimidated by her background. However, The math question was 16= apples + oranges. She said "9 apples plus 7 oranges equals 16. I was suppose to repeat what she said back to her. I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed by the various sentence starters that we could use to work with this problem. I honestly couldn't even remember what numbers she used because my focus was worrying and recalling my math fears (of making a basic fact error). Before I said anything, I remembering thinking "Yeah I have no idea what she said". So I threw random numbers out that were close. I have no idea. She kind of gave me a look and responded "no that is not what I said" and busted out laughing. For all I know I messed the order up. Perhaps I even used two numbers that didn't even add up to 18. It got me thinking about anxiety.. and overloading working memory.. which lead me to think about social anxiety and perhaps the fear of playing games with my boyfriend. Does anyone have any experience with social anxiety? Today I felt like my brain couldn't think. I couldn't remember or even focus on the task at hand with me overloading my brain with new sentence starters and math (which in itself was never a strength -- as I struggled with math as a kid). I don't know... Link to post Share on other sites
DumpedGuy9617 Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 I have terrible social anxiety and your story makes complete sense to me. You kind of "zone out" things people are saying. The anxiety distracts you from what is going on around you. It's not fun. Can't say I have any advice. I've had the problem for a long time and it has ruined many things for me. In my case, I even know how it started. I'm sure it can be overcome.... Link to post Share on other sites
Author soulseek Posted March 27, 2017 Author Share Posted March 27, 2017 How does one even begin to deal with social anxiety...how does one even develop social anxiety. I don't even know what to do.. Link to post Share on other sites
truthtripper Posted March 29, 2017 Share Posted March 29, 2017 It seems like this situation was triggering for you. Playing games can be stressful if you were as a child, punished/ridiculed for getting the answer wrong/not giving an answer. You have a negative association with playing games. I'm the same, I just cannot play games. I was constantly tormented and punished by my mother and by certain school teachers for the above reasons. I also used to suffer from extreme social anxiety/agoraphobia. I feel it's caused by a lack of ownership of one's self and one's own body, an unworthiness of owning oneself. In effect, one's self-identity suffers , resulting in panic/anxiety. I used to feel like a 'blur' in the presence of others. But now that I am aware of the reason why, there's no reason to be anxious anymore. It took me a lot of self reflection and time to get to this point, including bodywork as well as talk therapy. Hope this helps. Link to post Share on other sites
gaius Posted March 29, 2017 Share Posted March 29, 2017 When I was younger I hated going out in public or meeting new people. Hated getting into conversations. Just didn't come naturally to me. But it's really a skill you need to go anywhere in life so I worked at it. Took walks and forced myself to engage people. Every time I came away from an encounter unsatisfied I figured out what went wrong, came up with what I should have said and worked on it not happening the next time. Eventually developing to a point where I can actually somewhat small talk with people and it's not uncomfortable anymore. As long as you don't force yourself out of your shell and work on it too you'll probably never get over that anxiety. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
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