Social Anxiety

As someone who really has social anxiety, this is not it. I have absolutely no issues understanding non-verbal communication. I'm simply scared of certain social situations, for no rational reason. There are relatively mundane group scenarios that will leave my heart pounding and my hands almost shaking, though I do my best to hide it, and over the years I have become pretty adept at just dealing with it.

With that said, I do not mean to diminish the difficulties the author here has experienced. I just think that anxiety is not the most descriptive label for them.

Hmmm. Much of what is described here is not social anxiety. He is really describing what seems to be Asperger's. The two are very often co-morbid and can be confused as being the same but they are not. While they often occur together, they do not always occur together. You can have one and not the other.

I have social anxiety but not Aspergers but I have spent time with others who have Aspergers. The thing about staring into someone's eye and not understanding social cues/norms is a trait of Aspergers and not social anxiety.

In my twenties, I discovered that a large part of getting over this stuff was learning to completely dismiss yourself as an actor while talking to other people. Forget you exist. Focus your thoughts entirely outwards. Don't worry about playing "hot potato" with the conversation; let yourself become a black box with no inputs back into that anxious, tumultous part of your brain that has to analyze every little detail of every social encounter. Allow the conversation to happen outside your head.

For me, once I figured this out, all that stuff about body language, social time, and not feeling "weird" just naturally fell into place. These behaviors were mostly functions of a mind trying to micromanage every single little thing. I'm still very bad at actually getting into social situations, but when I somehow end up in one, it's almost always OK.

I think this is why alcohol helps. When you're inebriated, you simply don't have the concentration to reflect every thought back inwards.

A line that struck me as familiar: "I should add that my hearing’s getting worse. Which doesn’t help at all."

I wonder if the author is sure his hearing is actually getting worse or his perception is getting worse?

I once thought the same thing. tldr: Nope. My hearing is fine. Anxiety causes my brain, afaict, to always be on the lookout for threats. No sound was being filtered from my conscious. The perception was that I "couldn't hear". I could hear fine, but I couldn't filter out unimportant from important. The result is something that seems like bad hearing.

Taking anti-anxiety drugs solved the problem for me. Like magic I could hear fine. Conversations, even in noisy situations, became easy to perceive and follow.

I couldn't find any documentation on this at the time. The doctor didn't think much about the idea. I wonder if anybody else had the same experience?

I was like this, to an extent, as well in my early twenties. What I realized was that I _didn't_ want to be like this, and like anything - it takes practice.

I consider myself smarter than the average Joe off the street, and you do too. Otherwise you wouldn't be reading HN :) So social cues, reading a crowd, and being engaging, it all takes practice. Yes, some people develop this naturally and don't need to consciously practice, but others don't. So just like programming, stop saying "No, I just don't get it", and instead reason why you don't and next time nail it.

I'm self-diagnosed only, but have believed for a while that I may have a form of Aspergers. Pretty much ever since I knew what it was. And certainly have, since early 20's, had a mild form of social anxiety.

These days I'm several years removed from the peer pressures of having a robust social life, though I can't complain about those years. I did have a great core group of friends throughout college.

The "condition" certainly in many ways has been a curse over the years, but at the same time, now that I think I understand it, I feel it's a blessing. I have many things I want to accomplish in life. The blessing is, given that these days I'm highly focused and motivated with my projects, it would almost be impossible (and imagine I likely would have abandoned them) had I felt those efforts were in any way infringing on the social needs (status?) a typical person seems to seek out.

But I can see how, without those same motivations / aspirations I have, it could easily be considered a disease and something a person would have a hard time coping with.

It makes me happy that the author is better understanding himself and not hiding behind blanket terms like "social anxiety" as if he were forever prisoner to the label.

> I think probably because I stop caring about being weird or not — and there’s a big, obvious lesson right there for me.

I think this is the key for most people.

Everybody is different. I started dating this girl who's a real sweetheart, but called herself awkward and weird. I said, "But that's not what I think. And so if that's what you think and that's what I think, then isn't it arbitrary?"

Labels are incredibly arbitrary and I wish people would treat them with more care. Hey, person reading this, you're an asshole! It's ok -- it's a meaningless label and bears no consequence on reality.. unless you let it.

The more you tell yourself you're "this" or "that", you're simultaneously blocking yourself from who you really are. If the canvas (mind) is blank and you're filling it with negativity, what do you expect to happen? Your expressions only follow what's felt within.

Everyone has a unique purpose, vision, and perspective here; as a result, when focused, everyone has a different way of applying themselves to the world. Years of learning X things combined with Y perception creates a unique human.

However, it's not about being unique either. That's just a label and means nothing in reality. The pursuit of specialness is properly defined and labeled as vanity. There's something better than that in all of us -- some drive to help other, to improve our own lives to improve others' lives, to guide others into doing the same, the desire to connect, the desire to love, the desire to impart wisdom onto others. There's always some good inside of us that wants to be _expressed_.

Expression is limited when a mind clouds itself with arbitrary labels that promote fear. One day, we'll all learn that all negative behavior stems from fear. One form of this fear is fear from your own labels or others' labels (also known as others' judgment). I ask you who's reading this, if you have a good heart with good intentions, who cares if I think you're an asshole? Do you really think it makes it true? Now you should be on the way to confidence and a healthy lightheartedness.

What a great read. Very relatable.

I think one of the most difficult aspects of having moderate-to-severe social anxiety is that people often misinterpret the anxious quietness as standoffishness — then of course after you've experienced that enough times you learn to compensate by being overly friendly or enthusiastic which ends up weirding people out just as much.

There are a few things that have helped me deal with social anxiety: 1. Talking more with people that work in stores when I'm paying for something - Cashiers are great people to practice talking to. You don't have to do it for very long, and if you say something stupid, you rarely see them anyway, so no harm done. 2. Noticing what socially adept people talk about - I think about the subject matter that social people bring up after I've seen them engage in conversation. I've realized that most of the time it's pretty trivial stuff, and that most people don't hold that against them. 3. Avoiding people that hold you back - people that often say that I'm shy, or coming out of my "shell", just make me more self-conscious and awkward. I'll end the conversation quickly with such people and will not pursue interaction beyond the bare-minimum pleasantries. Even if they are well-meaning, they have a negative effect on me, so I'll avoid them unless they are closely related.

I haven't tried it personally yet but I recently read an article about a startup trying to help folks with Social Anxiety. If that's something that affects you, check it out: https://joyable.com/

> "I wonder if all I’ve done here is to describe why introverts frequently describe being social as tiring. Extroverts have no problem with any of this"

This is good, but he loses me with this line at the end.

Extraversion is defined as "being predominantly concerned with obtaining gratification from what is outside the self."[1] Someone can have high social need without high social skill.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion

Stopped reading as soon as he shifted from a description of his horrific symptoms, to bragging about his intelligence and creativity. The dichotomy wasn't endearing, but I got it.

The author's initial belief that they were somehow special (even if special in a bad way), plus the author's fascination with their own nature (to the extent that they write a blog post about it and how unique their insights are) smacks not of social anxiety but of narcissism.

What is the point of posts like this? So we can all get together and say, "oh boy, I really relate to that"? There doesn't seem to be any insight or useful takeaway from this article besides being relatable for a certain class of people who feel misunderstood.

Most of the things in this article that the author describes as being harrowing cognitive loads, like how long to make eye contact for or hold a handshake, are things that I have heard very socially skilled people talk about in a humorous manner. They have those same reservations and insecurities, the difference is they don't obsess about them. Look around. There is no such thing as "a normal amount of eye contact". Everyone is just winging it.

Folks, this is why you invented texting, email, online community, almost the entire web world and mobile revolution is due to people having social anxiety like you.

Yet software eats world, digitization eats world, you conquered, and there is a purpose you're born this way, that's why you strive.

Having some arrogance will help in your situation. Take pride of what you're, change world to suit you, don't change yourself to suit the world. The funny thing is, the world is moving towards this direction already.

Screw the social norm, screw those extrovert psychopath, they're the root cause all human evil. Stop whining about who you are, you only need to prevail.

Anxiety is a complicated subject, and can be interpreted differently depending on the sufferer's knowledge of certain areas of neuroscience and psychology. I've been lucky to study anxiety deeply enough that it no longer has control over me. As a sidenote, anxiety comes from the German word for anger, and is the result of unaddressed internal dialogue within the sufferer, closely related to cognitive dissonance, or witnessing too many paradoxes throughout the day. Avoid paradoxical thinking - it gets in the way of the task at hand, which is usually something mundane like getting in a lift, or even walking the dog.

Except for the effort with non-verbal communication, I feel like I wrote this.

I read non-verbal communication about as well as spoken word. I hate getting just the voice. Phone conversations are the worst.

Here's the thing... other people really do judge you. Some people make everyone else in the room feel at ease. I'm not that way. Sometimes I can fake it, but generally people don't seem to enjoy conversation with me.

It's very stressful alternating between saying nothing and too much, which unfortunately makes it harder to practice this skill of conversation that some people just find so easy.

A somewhat related article that I just happened to come across yesterday, including a novel treatment for social anxiety that is apparently helping some people by exposing them to uncomfortable situations that are much more uncomfortable than the ones they have been having trouble with.

I don't know if it would help this person, however.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/what-is-so...

Fantastic job, if only verbal communication were as easy as written. BTW I have already deleted and rewritten this comment several times.

I read the whole thing. Honestly, so what? You're beautifully awkward. You drum to your own beat. Thats actually cool. Unlike you, I consider myself very socially adjusted. Just because you're not doesn't mean I wouldn't want to chat with you, or be friends. In fact, I'd find you more interesting. Most people aren't judging. If they are, its a reflection of how critical they feel others are of themselves. Own it

I have a theory that at some point in their development everyone has this type of anxiety however most people in their early youth have selected for themselves a particular strategy to avoid being perceived as 'weird' which they adopt for life. Many people adjust this as they go throughout life, or adopt several strategies, but others simply stick with whatever worked for them at an early age.

The rationale is that it's always better to be perceived as anything but "mal-adjusted and weird". Here are some strategies which are considered considered better than "strange": "tells too many bad jokes", "too negative", "drama king", "never stops talking about his own achievements", or even "jerk".

"Oh he's just another class clown, or just another person who habitually points out flaws in others", or just another <insert stereotype here>. Basically as long as you can make yourself conform to an easy to understand conceptual framework then other people mentally model you together with an archetypal social role so to speak, and then you'll be perceived as normal.

While it's easy for me to summarize the negative sounding "non-awkward" strategies I must also point out that for every negative one there is a nice strategy available too. Choose wisely.

The nice versions require more patience, and practice to execute convincingly and there greater room for error. The primary benefits of selecting a nice strategy usually only surface over the medium to long term whereas the benefits to being a bully for example show up immediately (you're mean not weird, you're less likely to be picked on yourself, nobody thinks your shy, etc)

Any of these strategies once incorporated can make you seem well adjusted and can with time become second nature. Once you have one of these in your repertoire then you can just reach for it whenever you would have otherwise experienced anxiety over possibly being considered weird.

This whole situation presents a problem for people who feel like they might want to develop a more moderate or atypical personality. They hear the advice "just be yourself" and they think "oh, that means the world is my canvas and I can just paint whatever I feel like" but no in actuality "just be yourself" only works if you've already trained yourself to project one of these preordained social personas. In that case you can gradually begin to incorporate your own style into it but anything else going to end up being labeled as weird.

It's not a hopeless for those who want to have a distinct personality, all you have to do is FIRST learn to successfully wield at least one of these socially preordained strategies and then later layer your distinctness on top.

Of course nobody is willing to admit any of this, because generally speaking to let the cat out of the bag does two things:

1. it makes people feel silly or embarrassed, and lowers their feeling of self-worth (even though it shouldn't)

2. to speak of it makes you sound.. well 'weird'

I have a default of dreading social interaction, even doing things with people I've known for over half my life, but I have noticed that there is a pattern where I dread something before doing it, and then I enjoy it. So the dread is irrational.

You know what's worse than people thinking you're weird, or dumb, or dorky? So many things. A million things. Words only hurt if you let them. (Of course there is a limit to this idea, but not in this context really.) So whatever the dread is directed toward, it's a fake idea.

A lot of times people try to address social anxiety by giving advice like "people don't think you're weird, they don't even think about you". There is truth to that, but also, people will think you're weird if you act weird. So you have to get used to the idea that people are going to think that about you, if you're a weird person- and weird people know who they are. (Funnily enough, if you don't care whether they think you're weird, you'll start to act less weird.)

However, the downside of not caring what people think of you is that you have no interest in being the life of the party or anything like that. So you can actually travel through the other side of this situation back into not being social.

Ultimately the key is being able to control your own thoughts, to interrupt the fear thought and shut it down, recognize it for the nonce that it is. I'm not sure what the process is for getting to that point, but you need to be able to do it.

So beautifully explained. So true. For me.