Social anxiety - help me understand it

[KayPassa]

I know I’ll get piled on for this so have NC’d. Am genuinely not being critical - just curious & seeking to understand things.
So many posts recently have mentioned social anxiety. The cat who attacked the postman & its owner couldn’t go and help. The tenant who wasn’t able to let the estate agent & owner visit to name just a couple.
I can’t say I would enjoy dealing with either of those situations but I would do it. Maybe I’d need to push myself & feel a bit nervous but I would do it. How can social anxiety become so horribly crippling that the OPs couldn’t?
I read posts every week about problems caused by people not being able to deal with confrontation & ending up in a much worse situation. Don’t they just have to take a deep breath & face things? Short term pain for long term gain? What sort of life do they have if they can’t do that? Everything must be overwhelming & draining for them.
Very few of us relish confrontation or dealing with tricky situations but we can’t avoid them all the time surely? Where’s all the resilience gone?

I read posts every week about problems caused by people not being able to deal with confrontation & ending up in a much worse situation.

But when women do end up confronting situations they’re called ‘Karen’s’, women cant win in any situation that requires standing up for yourself or others. Whatever you do, it’s wrong.

As for social anxiety in general, there are many many people (especially women) who have been told all their life they’re just anxious - most of the time it’s either undiagnosed neurodivergence that gets more difficult to manage over time or the result of a lifetime of traumatic stress by overbearing parents/partners meaning losing all sense of self assertion.

You say you’re not being critical but you are.

Proper anxiety is not something you can just get over or ignore, it needs proper treatment and time to conquer, and is not always possible for everyone.

Whether people feel nervous about something, don’t want to deal with it and therefore cite ‘anxiety’ as an excuse is a totally different debate.

If you're genuinely "curious & seeking to understand," you could do some research into anxiety disorders.

https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/social-anxiety/

https://www.anxietyuk.org.uk/

https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and-mental-health-problems/shyness-and-social-phobia

If you have a social anxiety disorder, it’s not about being resilient or short term pain for long term gain. It’s an illness. You can’t just face up to it. You go into fight or flight mode and your brain tells you that you are in danger. You can’t just switch that off.

And yes, life is overwhelming and draining for us. Awfully so.

If people could just 'take a deep breath and face it' it wouldn't be a disorder.

What you're saying is a bit like saying 'I don't understand how people suffer from insomnia when they could just close their eyes and go to sleep' or 'Can someone explain to me why depressed people don't just cheer up instead of moping around?'

Am genuinely not being critical

Where’s all the resilience gone?

Can you see the contradiction in your two statements there?

OP- I suffer from depression. It can be on occasion quite crippling. My DH does not get depression at all- never has. What he has to say about it is; 'I don't get depression. Like I don't get seasickness. But I know others do and that it exists and that's all i need to know... what can I do to help?'

I have an anxiety disorder, which is mostly social in nature, but can also be for other random situations/reasons. What I feel you're confusing is anxiety, which is normal and generally something someone can overcome, and it can actually be helpful in preparing someone for a difficult situation, and an anxiety disorder, where the feelings and impact on you are disabling and either require therapy/treatment, unusual coping strategies to overcome, or can't actually be overcome, at least at times.
You can't compare times when you've felt anxious with how someone feels when they have an anxiety disorder, I've felt both, and they're very different.

I do think there is some people who have it but I think there is lots and lots of people who over use the term

I am sure that there could be proper support and treatment for social anxiety, but I doubt its accessible so people are left to deal with it alone and get given poor advice on how to help.

I do wonder if there is something society is doing as whole that is making anxiety worse though. I work in a secondary school and each year the number registered for pastoral support for anxiety goes up. From 10% around 8 years ago, to 90% this year. And the thing is, they are anxious. They arent making it up.

I think the line has become a bit blurred between genuine anxiety and feeling nervous. A few people I know say they have (undiagniosed) anxiety, when what they actually mean is that they are really nervous about being outside their normal.

I also have friends who have anxiety who are completely debilitated by it and struggle constantly to have some sort of 'normal' life where they can go out and about or just get through the day/week without fear of panic attacks etc. life is so hard for them even if the episodes are sporadic.

Trouble is - who is qualified to judge whether someone genuinely has social anxiety or whether someone is misusing the term? I wouldn't want to appoint myself to make that judgement.

I always think that by their nature, forums and discussion boards such as MN and others will probably have a higher proportion of people with disorders like this because they provide a support network people otherwise wouldn't have.

I think the best placed to explain what it's like are the people who actually have it.

Fully agree. Just like some people have addictions like smoking, drinking, drugs, etc., who likewise can't just "get over it".

I've had social anxiety all my life. It's only in the latter years with more widespread information about it, that's I've realised what it is, rather than just me being inexpicably weird. That knowledge has helped me understand my actions, and I'm slowly (very) making progress.

I just "freeze" in social situations, I'm literally unable to speak to strangers, and even very tongue-tied with people I know well like relatives, work colleagues, etc. In work situations, I can talk the legs off a donkey, no problems at all, but the talk is all about work, not chit-chat, small talk, etc., I'm very much "all business"!

Sometimes, in social situations or even when out walking or in public places like supermarkets, I go into "flight" mode and actually intentionally ignore people by pretending not to notice people nearby, pretend not to hear them, pretend I'm engrossed in something else like reading something or looking at my phone. I know I'm doing it, but I don't know why, and I don't know how to change that behaviour. Often I actually want to talk and interact with them but just can't bring myself to do it.

It's weird.

I think there's three things going on:

1. Social anxiety is, like many mental health problems, a spectrum. There's the severe end, where lives are hugely limited, people who may not be able to work, get out the house or do the basics needed to life in a functional way. And then a whole host of middle grounds that go from that to 'normal'. Most 'normal' people experience some elements of anxiety in their lives, and people with social anxiety move along the line at varying points quite fluidly - sometimes it can just overpower you and there's really nothing that can be done, other times you do - as you say - buck up and face the world.
2. There's a lot more talk about it now so people are recognising this trait within themselves, and saying it about themselves or others. Previously we'd just say 'a bit shy' or whatever. Anonymous forums really help with people being frank about conditions they might otherwise not talk about in the same terms. To my work colleagues, I'm just 'not a party person' if I miss the Christmas do. Here, I'll say I was in huge distress and couldn't get out the house because of my social anxiety.
3. Living with the condition can be really strange - there's points where it's easier to 'allow' yourself to be less resilient than to push through, and you could have done it if you really wanted. This is the bit that's hard to admit - there are elements within your control. But there are also points where you just, really, can't. I think it's hard to know the line, even for yourself - so you've got to be kind because you just don't know from the outside what's going on.

Don’t they just have to take a deep breath & face things? Short term pain for long term gain? What sort of life do they have if they can’t do that? Everything must be overwhelming & draining for them.

Well, yes! Exactly it is overwhelming. At my worst I couldn't go outside without feeling like I was dying. My fight or flight triggers had been recalculated so my brain told my body that danger was present constantly. This isn't just "oh I need to take a deep breath". It's your bowels trying to empty, your heart racing, feeling like you're dying, being unable to breathe. I couldn't just turn it off.

The best way I can describe it is feeling pure, abject terror. Really feeling that word. That's not something our just get on with.

Sorry I really I've echoed quite a lot of other responders here - some really good points from loads of people. Thanks for sharing your thoughts everyone!

I have a theory about social anxiety, and why it’s so prevalent now.

It feels like nowadays you have to be so exacting in what you say so as not to cause offence, or have someone jump down your throat. You see it play out on here all the time, unless you word something in a watertight way, somebody will look for alternate meaning or read something else into it, then judge you on that.

For example, a poster say ‘unfortunately’ they know a young girl in Afghanistan who is now unable to go to school or be educated. Another poster foamed at the mouth to accuse her of minimising it, ‘it isn’t unfortunate, it’s heinous’.

People don’t interpret things in their ordinary meaning any more, and I think it makes people anxious to have real life conversations where you’re speaking in free time and what you’re saying can’t be thought through first, or edited. So online is easier, and an avoidant cycle begins.

In trying to police everyone’s language and perform elaborate ‘gotchas’ by looking for ulterior meanings in everything, we’ve created a social anxiety problem.

Just my thoughts anyway.

Am I alone in detesting the whole Karen thing?! I have several friends called Karen & they are all lovely.

It's a debilitating condition just like severe agoraphobia or claustrophobia. People with those conditions are not just told to 'get over it ' because they can't. That's the nature of the conditions!
I think people with social anxiety don't get as much sympathy as people with those conditions is that is had been named relatively recently. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist though or that people can just grit their teeth and get over it, they can't

No @RabbitsRock you are certainly not alone in that...

I am torn. On one hand I feel sympathy for anyone who goes through life like this, it must be awful.

OTOH, I used to be terribly shy and terrified of speaking to people/going anywhere/doing anything. I was forced to do so and make the appropriate noises/words, by my mother. I wasn't great at it but learned enough to get by relatively smoothly in society. I've now been diagnosed autistic and am fairly sure my mum was as well. If she had listened to me as a child and let me be comfortable, I am not at all sure that I'd have had any drive to learn the skills I rely on daily now (and which I have become adept in using and sometimes quite enjoy using!).

My point is this: I think we need a little challenge, every so often, just to see if we can do things, and to get practice in. It may help improve our lives forever.

I think the opposite really. I'm late 50s and felt the same since my teenage years in the 70s, long before social media.

I find that on the rare occasions I somehow switch off my social anxiety and have a nice chat with a stranger, it's a much nicer experience than I'm expecting. On social media, you have the extreme views but in real life, people seem much more relaxed, much more "normal" or average and rarely do you come across extreme/nasty views.