294- Daily Impacts- Social phobia

This is the third entry in my series of daily impacts of mental illnesses. The first was for emeto & 3 other phobias. This series is inspired by Jodie's "what it feels like series" on her blog.

I explained several causes and types of anxiety that I experience in situations in my bucket-list, 
and my general anxieties here ; which I'll let you read before you come back here.


Now, from my social phobia and my CBT or exposures entries (some of which overlap), you already know that I have been followed by a therapist to help reduce my overall anxiety in social situations, which used to be overwhelming and that for most of my life, I'd avoided so many situations, invitations, and opportunities, that I was missed gatherings with friends, concerts, movies, trips, and so on. 

I made a lot of progress in the past 17 or so months of CBT. My overall experiences are wider than ever, and yet, there are many situations that I'm still not ready to try. For instance, concerts, travels are seldom, marching in a protest and other big events have been even more rarer, or non-existant for me. 

I want to point out that despite the long road still ahead of me, I am proud of my achievements thus far and that my 24 CBT sessions have helped me tremendously and that I can now continue working mostly on my own towards further improvement. All this shall be addressed in the conclusion entry about my CBT for social phobia, so I'll divert your attention to the general daily impacts I've had thus far from my this phobia, and note that some of them won't be as prevalent or noticeable anymore, but that I'll list here to show "past" and present impacts. 

Random thoughts and emotions in social situations... or in their preparation

The line in the supermarket/mall will probably be long and I'll probably forget something despite having a shopping list. I'm sure that I'll be tired from that exposure and am sure that someone will further delay me. With CBT's help, I'm more able to go to these shops, even on busy rush weekend hours, and feel less or no or anxiety. It just tires me a LOT. 

Before CBT, I avoided parties and other invitations to go to friends' homes, even with few people, as I felt the weight of anxiety warning me that something will go wrong. Thoughts that I wouldn't know enough people and I couldn't be able to talk. Oh,  I will stammer, I will blush, and everyone will find my silly, lacking social graces, and they will surely know that I'm avoiding eye contact and believe that I'm rude in doing so. They will find me un-interesting and move on, and they won't ever invite me again. All these thoughts are somewhat weaker now that I had CBT and went to friends' homes and even to a few parties, with varying degrees of success in interactions, but they still do preoccupy my brain.

Though I embrace my uniqueness, I also feel somewhat disconnected and misunderstood by many people. The bonus of being special is that I don't conform to societal norms, but the downfall is that I don't easily blend and belong to groups. I know for a fact that I pass for a weirdo either because I'm vegan, and/or atheist, nonbinary dude who haven't cut his hair n 3 years and gets it dyed pink or purple in a society that finds these to be feminine (whole other topic!). 

I fear that some people don't keep in touch past 1-2 meetings where they see all these differences, but as long as I do find people to connect with, the ones who don't keep up are balanced with those who do and I'm mostly okay with that - unless I experience a relapse in CPTSD of abandonnement / separation anxiety / low self-esteem ; instances where I feel the weight of those who cut ties for whatever reason and blame it on myself instead of the rational acceptance of "no one is loved by 100% of the people, and that's okay". 

Some people were incapable of dealing/ accepting my mental illnesses have also cost me some friendships. I'll keep that to another post.

Travel preparations take me days, weeks, as I plan routes, check maps and street views, local transportation services and schedules, points of interest to view, places to avoid. Right from the first stages of an idea of a trip, and well into the actual visit, I experience anxiety. 

In the first stages, it's the expectations of things to go wrong, fears of getting lost and delayed, missing correspondances and the overall costs all contribute, alongside the numerous people I will run into, be seen and judged by, into a state of perpetual anxiety about the trip, which tends to outlast, generally until days AFTER I return home. This is off course exhausting, and mos common daily impact of this ordeal is that I avoid travelling too often to place I don't know. I am stifled and stiff in expression of emotional hope for a nice trip ; any excitement and spontaneity that those who don't suffer from anxiety are foreign to me, and I over-think the entire situation. I prefer short-term travels to comfort zones, on my terms ; I prefer smaller cities or hike in my local mountains instead of big cities, despite moderate success in Paris in summers 2016 and 2006 ; and a few other, smaller trips between those extremes. 

During one of these Parisian excursions, I had also spent time with cousin, uncle and aunt of my wife. Other times, I interacted with one of her cousins who visited us, including last month. 

I've been going to the cinemas only in the past 4 or so years, ever since Star Trek into darkness. Before that, I'd been only twice in my life as a teen, and that was many years ago. My first experiences as an adult were very difficult, feeling anxiety on the way to the cinema, and the entire waiting times in line, and first few moments sitting, seing the room getting filled (with up to... 15 people mind you!) and it was only when lights were off and ads started that my anxiety levels would become tolerable. 4 years and maybe a couple dozen movies later, I feel much less anxiety ; I didn't even feel any for the last movie in October 2017, with 80 or so people in the room! 

The only live performance I've ever attended was a tiny venue, about 2 and a half years ago. It was the boyfriend of one of our close friends, who is a musician in a band. They were giving a small live in a local café, and I had to go outside after a few moments. This is a mix of low tolerance to loud music, especially reverb and some frequencies, but also social phobia. I've never ever been to any other concert in my entire life, and now that I'm middle-aged, I feel like I've missed so many good concerts by singers and bands that I love, that it's a shame to have lost to social phobia some experiences that can never come back. Probably my biggest regret of having this phobia, as I'm a music lover, and the other regret are all those opportunities to attend friend's parties and travel spontaneously.

I'v marched in a protest only once, in March 2015, for one of the causes I feel most passionate about. 10 or so of my local friends were with me there, and there were about 1000 others who joined in the various streets we walked through for that hour & half or so. It was difficult, but I relied on my friends to help, and on my passion to fight for this cause. With Cognitive Behavioural and exposure therapy, I feel ready to tackle another social injustice and wish to join a local feminist group in view of furthering my activism, expanding it from online and offline small acts to bigger ones, including marching for this cause for which I felt so strongly in the past 3 decades but couldn't be as active as I wished. 

Social anxiety has been like a constant reminder of self-doubts. It's not the same as hallucinatory voices, but inner voices of unreasonable doubts and expectations of failure in social situations. One of the toughest has always been about work, which I barely discussed on this blog. But, suffice to say that my various impediments and mental illnesses have been barriers into constructing a viable project, which I wish to correct. This is most probably the biggest source of stress and regrets regarding my social phobia, because the everlasting daily impacts, lacking experiences and a proper carrer multiply exponentially into all other forms of anxiety I go through in friendships, travels, and financial incapacity to do exactly what I should be doing if I hadn't ever suffered from these extreme phobias in particular, and mental illnesses in general. 

Social anxiety, as part of my generalized anxiety disorder, corresponds to a series of massive worries, that put worry to shame. It's far worse than just worrying about something, it's a set of emotions and bodily reactions to something as innocuous as a small outing, to something as big as attending a protest or birthday party, or travelling, but with the same symptoms - just in different intensities.  

I'm sure that I'v left out many other thoughts and impacts, but this post is a good representation. 

I used to think it was the only mutable aspect of social phobia was worsening in condition. I was heading there. I dreaded loneliness and becoming an antisocial hermit. I feared aliening everyone by over-taxing their patience, and these fears ultimately pushed me to seek help, which took form in therapy, exposures, and support, both offline and online, in twitter chats and friendships created this past year. 

With these, I have made tremendous leaps of progress in recovery, healing and learning coping skills. The road ahead is long, but so is the one behind. I'm not blind to the possibility of relapse into avoidance, but I also know that I CAN do a lot more than before and that I could regain any lost time on path to healing.