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?

It's different for everyone who has it, but from my experiences I'll try and explain it.

So say if you're outside and someone smiles at you and you smile back, or say hello, something normal like that, man or woman for me personally, I'd have a small intrusive thought that would snowball.
So it could start with, "did they mean to smile?" "Was that at me or have I made things awkward?" "What if they think I'm trying to get off with them?" "What if they laugh at me for saying hello?"

For me it was paranoia in everything normal that I could find.
Ordering a meal, asking for my destination on the bus, even buying things in shops, I'd doubt myself so much that I'd fuck it up, it almost became like a devil on my shoulder telling me constantly that I was screwing up the most day to day things.
Then I'd worry strangers thought I was too fat to wear something or ugly etc or found me stupid.
So when it came to going outside I couldn't do it alone for months and then years at a time.
I actually left school with no GCSEs etc because I had agoraphobia from 13 onwards and just couldn't really attend school.

Basically Social anxiety ime was an overwhelming fear what ever step I took next was wrong in every situation and it made navigating life outside the house impossible.

I'm fine now with anything, just I haven't always been!

Resilience is a load of bollocks, previously it was character building and before that it was learning to toughen up. Anxiety has always been a medical condition, under various different names such as being 'hysterical' having a fit of the 'nerves' etc etc
The difference is now it's not so taboo to talk about mental health, where as up until very recently it was absolutely stigmatised.
Maybe you are a younger poster op? so wouldn't have come across whispered conversations about old mr Fitzroy succumbing to a 'nervous breakdown' or mrs Pengelly from down the road having a 'fit of the vapours' said in hushed undertones as if it might be catching or something dirty and dangerous.
Go back far enough and someone suffering with anxiety would likely have been burned at the stake for being a witch. Anxiety has always been part of the human psyche, what makes some people more susceptible? Well genetics have a lot to answer for, but so does upbringing, and life events, much of which we have limited or no control over. Hormones also play apart, in fact I think the endocrine system gets hugely over looked for all manner of physical and psychological conditions.
We still have so so so much need to understand mental health and how the psychological and physiological processes work, we really are just at the tip of the iceburg because mental health is still poorly understood and carries the hang up from 'lunatic' asylum days. I mean even the word 'lunatic' should give you some idea about how mental health was treated, and still is treated in some quarters.

Dementia is to be expected in.older age though.

Why is it to be expected? Not everyone gets it. Less than 1/10 iirc from my dementia care course.

No, it's not uncommon, but it doesn't affect the majority.

OP, like most of us you likely have a phobia of something. A fear of snakes is a common one. Reality is if you meet a snake in the wild it will avoid you. That doesn't stop you from entering (most likely) flight mode if you saw one in front of you. Running away isn't rational.

That is what it is like with social anxiety. You know it isn't rational, but your body has entered flight or fight which comes with all the physical feelings associated with it.

I disagree with some of this, sometimes anxiety can be irrational that's true, however a number of times is has its basis physical or psychological changes / events.
Worrying the sky might fall on your head is irrational, worrying about being struck by lightning if caught in a lightning storm, not so much.
Anxiety very often has a basis in the rational, the anxiety can magnify the rational so it becomes irrational.
You use fear in your example, so is it irrational to be scared of snakes? No, why because snakes can bite and some are highly venomous. Is it irrational to be fearful of a snake hiding under you bed in the Uk, yes of course, would that fear be irrational say in rural Tanzania? No of course not. But you can't just switch off millennia of instinct. If you live without fear, then you'll be at much greater risk of putting yourself in danger. Look at toddlers, most toddlers would happily wander into the road, why? Because they have no fear, no understanding it's dangerous. Many toddlers would probably be quite happy to pet a dog, because it's soft and fluffy and they wouldn't understand that it's also got sharp pointy teeth which could seriously injure them. Parents will teach their youngsters to only stroke a dog if it's safe to do so. Now supposing dad was walking with his toddler, dad was bitten by a dog when he was four and has ever since had a fear of dogs, he's very likely to pass that fear on to his toddler, not intentionally, but he's likely to react in a negative way, and his toddler will very likely pick up on that, because we're born with loads mirror neurones , which gradually die off as we grow up, but they exist to help us learn. So we copy responses from others particularly our caregivers. We learn fear as we grow, develop and mature, this is natural, this is survival at its most basic, the problem arises when the fear becomes greater than the threat and starts to cause physiological and psychological issues.
Again it's not just a learned response. For example an over active thyroid can cause anxiety. This isn't irrational it's due to an out of whack endocrine system. Some neuro divergent disorders can also cause anxiety it's not irrational it's different wiring in the brain, which we don't really understand. Peri menopause and the menopause can flick a switch which can cause anxiety, again it's those pesky hormones, which we still don't fully understand.
Brain tumours, Parkinson's disease, stroke, and pretty much most neurological disease can cause mild, moderate or severe anxiety. So to say it's irrational is too basic, yes it can be, but in many cases there is an underlying reason that might be psychological through trauma or physiological through disease or neuro divergence.

Where is the resilience?

I have a very physical reaction alongside my social anxiety, that I cannot ignore. At my worst I break out in a sweat, my heart is beating so hard it is all I can feel, I am breathless and I can not clear my mind enough to string a sentence together as all I can feel is a pounding in my chest. In my younger years I would physically hide if someone knocked on my door or even called my phone despite there being no rational logic. Even now my first form of communication is via email. If I can’t email to book something, I am probably not going to do it. Despite this I somehow have a job, I have a husband and I have kids, all of which require me to be out of my comfort zone on a daily basis and it can be hell. I have this physical response to mundane daily interactions that most people don’t give thought to. THAT is my resilience. So sometimes I take the easy route and avoid human interaction because everything else can just feel too damn hard.

It doesn't matter what those of us experience with social anxiety.
What matters is, that we do.
Why should I, as a sufferer, tell you how I feel?
Why should I give you clues and hints?
I don't do large groups of people, I'd rather be at home.
Accept that social anxiety is another mental health issue and live with it.

My 19 yo DD is housebound through anxiety, she has no life when she should be out enjoying the best years of her life. Instead she is a shell of her bubbly, happy former self who had to stop going to school, seeing her friends, going outside, getting dressed, doing anything really. In her place is a white, tiny because she hardly eats, very anxious little girl who seems younger than 19, her bed is her safe place, her family the only people she sees. It breaks my heart to see her like that everyday and I’ve sat up with her whilst she’s has sobbed as to why she can’t be normal. She has now developed depression and OCD. If you saw the sheer state she gets in if she has to go out (it took me a year to convince her to visit the GP again) she can’t just take a deep breathe and get on with it. She actually lay down in the back of the car with a blanket over her shaking in case anyone saw her. That’s the reality of living with anxiety

My snake example probably wasn't the best.

But for a large proportion, the physical causes of why a person may react in such a way to social situations are ruled out first by Dr's.
When you go beyond that and look at the psychological aspect-eg learned behaviours from a parent, learned behaviours from previous avoidance, then you are entering the irrational part, no matter the underlying reason.

This is where CBT can be so useful as a treatment. It gives you the tools to stop and tell your brain....hang on if I do stay in the situation and you don't actually die/faint/shit yourself there is no/less of a reason to be scared the next time.

It is however bloody hard work and sadly not enough support out there.

How utterly heartbreaking, your poor poor daughter. Sending you both very unmumsnetty hugs

OP

i don’t know if you’re going to come back to this thread?

the thing about anxiety - diagnosable, pathological anxiety - is that it isn’t rational. Those of who are lucky enough not to suffer from it will look at anxiety-producing situations and shrug because, to us, it looks like nothing. But if you can accept that the way you perceive things is not how other people perceive them then maybe you can accept that it’s not just a case of toughening up.

Some people cartwheel over a tiny stream, others inch across a deep crevasse - and it’s the same situation. Perception is everything.

You and her have my sympathies. If you have the finances, I do recommend a therapist specialising in CBT rather than wait on NHS help.

I do believe there is also a sense of shame attached to it. I am saying this as a guy who was fit, strong and afraid of nothing until I was around 23. Tell her you can get through it.

I think if you have moderate social anxiety then it can be kept under control by continously making yourself do the things that make you feel dread - anxiety tends to respond well to repeated exposure to the fear.

However, modern life makes it much, much easier than in the past to be avoidant which is bad for anxiety.

Since lockdown (which was pretty great for me in some ways) I've let myself get very avoidant and I'm finding it much harder to get back out there, and very easy to live a comfortable but pretty isolated life.

None of the above is really relevant to severe anxiety which isn't something you can tackle on your own.

@CallumDansTransitVan thank you I would very gladly pay for a therapist for her but she won’t go to one 😭 she’s 19 I can’t make her go, she had such bad experiences with CAMHs when she first became unwell that she lost face in therapists and says they don’t work.

You sound exactly like my DP with your description about social situations vs work. His being able to talk to tradespeople that come to the house too is completely different to social situations - he knows what to say and that they're there for a Specific reason.
We've been to a party before now for all of ten minutes - he had a complete (silent) panic attack with sweaty palms, went pale etc.

My theory is that this may be an unintended consequence of more awareness and understanding of social anxiety. On the one hand it’s a good thing, people understand how debilitating it can be and therefore don’t put people suffering with it in situations they find uncomfortable. On the other hand, behaving in this way reinforces the idea that the social activity is something to be fearful of and may make the person even more anxious about doing anything outside their comfort zone

I understand it completely. When I lived and worked in London I developed a phobia about the tube. It was fine when it was running ok but when there were delays and we sat (or stood) in the dark not knowing when we were going to move that's when the feeling of panic overwhelmed and took over all rational thought, your heart pounds, you're sweating because it's hot and all you want to do is get out. I imagine social anxiety is pretty similar.

"How can social anxiety become so horribly crippling that the OPs couldn’t? "

So you don't understand that mental health issues affect people in different ways? Some are more mildly affected and some are "crippling" affected, and everything in between. That's not that difficult to understand really.

You also have to remember that on a forum such as MN you are going to get a higher proportion of people who are introverts or struggle with socialising or with social anxiety.

People who are really sociable and outgoing aren't sitting on MN for hours. They are socialising irl.

For those saying I was being critical - truly I wasn't

Yes you were.

Where’s all the resilience gone

Like here...

Short term pain for long term gain

And here.

Maybe I’d need to push myself & feel a bit nervous but I would do it

Aren't you GREAT!

The face that you NC’d speaks volumes, haven't the balls to ask using your own name BECAUSE you know you were being critical.

Well I hope that people explaining how hard they find things here on the thread have cleared up your goady curiosity.

Threads like these really piss me off...but I just want to UNDERSTAAAAND...... No you are being critical, judgmental and smug.

Do better.

Well my social anxiety is weird because I could be in a room with a thousand strangers and talk to a random person in a queue, but a room full of family and old friends or bumping into a family member or friends is something I can't do at all these days.
I think for me, it's a privacy thing. I know strangers don't care about me, aren't going to pry etc but family and friends will ask all sorts of questions and really want to be up in my face and ugh I just hate it.
Wish I could shake off the anxiety around that but I've been damaged somewhere along the line and I can't help it.

You say 'where's the resilience' but you don't know how much resilience people are putting up, you don't know if they care for a disabled relative, walk 10 miles to work everyday to put beans on the table. You don't know what they're going through. Perhaps they've been TOO resilient and their brains can't take anymore.

For me I have a disabled child who also has epilepsy, my uncle hung himself last year and nephew died of cot death, every night my daughter has a seizure that could kill her.
I haven't eaten all day and it's gone midnight yet I've changed 3 bedrooms around, walked the dogs, made lunch and dinner and studied for my law degree.

So whilst you think I'm not 'resilient' enough I think I'm probably one of the most resilient people I know.

My DP does this infuriating thing of telling me that I said something really weird after almost every social interaction of mine he witnesses. It'll be a normal conversation and he'll say "you said such and such, that was really awkward, they must have thought you hated their party" or "I can't believe you said ABC, how insensitive, I bet that reminded them of the fact they can't (tenuously related thing) anymore". I have no idea why he does this, i hate it. It's gotten into my head and I hate talking to other people in front of him. Even when he'd not there I sometimes have these thoughts, and I'm just talking normally.

Anyway, I think social anxiety is like that, but about yourself rather than someone else. You constantly scan what you're saying and doing to the point where it's unbearable and excruciating for you.

Say every social event is like a work interview.

Like that.

I have it. I didn’t believe in anxiety for years. Until an event pulled the rug out from under me and I was drowning in it. I have a background of severe child abuse, rape, many other kinds of abuse, but they were all locked up tight in a box I'd put heavy duty walls up against, never to be thought of. Which worked fine for a long time. Then one day I was on the school run and found an 18 year old girl trying to jump over the flyover onto a motorway to kill herself. My anxiety went out of the window. I knew exactly what to do, exactly what to say. I got her down, I took her home and just mothered her until she felt safe. Her boyfriend came to get her, we're still in touch. Sometimes anxiety can just go out of the window in a second, even though it plagues you every day. I somehow knew I was in control and that I would do anything to stop her from jumping, and that she wouldn’t jump if I took very careful care of her.
She went home safe, moved a bit further away and we're still in touch from time to time.
But the toll it took on me was pretty bad, I couldn't have predicted it, just didn't expect it. Laid me low for a very long time afterwards, because of the what ifs and understanding that the level of abuse she endured was very like mine. Social anxiety is the worst now, I pour with sweat if someone speaks to me.
I would do it again. I will never walk past, no matter how it affects me.