I was recently interviewed on BBC Radio Bristol to help raise awareness of anxiety disorders and also advertise our services at Social Anxiety West. It is something that I would never have thought I would be able to do back when I was socially anxious, so it feels quite an achievement to be able to do it now. Below is an edit of my section. The discussion was an hour in total and starred some of my good friends. You can listen to the whole show for a limited time using this link, Complete radio show on BBC iPlayer. It will only be the correct show if it is dated 6th March 2010. It is the middle hour that is on anxiety.
Continuing the story of my life, in this second chapter I talk about what life was like for me in secondary school (high school) in relation to social anxiety. I talk about friends, bullying, skipping lesson, eating in the canteen and lots more. You can watch chapter one which covers the primary school years here.
In these videos I start to tell my story of my social anxiety and how it developed throughout my life. Chapter one starts with my early childhood and primary school years.
“I used to take drugs, mostly cannabis, but at around the age of 21 I started using other drugs – on the whole those other drugs were ecstasy, also known as MDMA, and like a lot of people do, I also drank alcohol. In one sense I used these because they were part of the scene I was involved in – involved is probably too strong a word there – and they were a form of enjoyment or fun, but I also used them to cope with my social anxiety.
Like so many people with social anxiety, I would sometimes have a drink or two before meeting people so I felt more confident and less anxious. And then while out with other people I would keep on drinking, partly as something to do and make myself look busy, but also to cope and try and make myself more sociable. Everyone knows that alcohol makes you feel more confident and takes away some of your inhibitions and this is why a lot of people with social anxiety self-medicate with it. By self-medicating I mean using a drug for your social anxiety without the advice or recommendation from a qualified medical professional. Because so many people use it in this way though, unfortunately lots of people do end up having to deal with alcoholism as well as social anxiety.
Luckily for me, it didn’t quite have the desired effect, in fact nothing would cut through my fear enough for me to be able to open my mouth and speak to people or dance. However drunk I got, and even when I no longer actually felt that anxious, I still couldn’t take that risk to say something and talk to people. I had a similar experience while using ecstasy. Although I felt free from fear and felt comfortable around people, I still couldn’t bring myself to socialise and talk to people. I’m not sure exactly why that was, but I believe it does go some way towards showing how drugs such as these more mask the problem than provide any kind of real solution.
Despite that, I still thought that ecstasy could be a solution to my social problems and for a short while I took ¼ of a tablet every few hours each day. I would then have the courage to go out in the world. I didn’t really have anywhere to go so I just used to go out into the city centre and be amongst people. Actually though, those times were some of my most lonely because while on the ecstasy I really felt a love and longing to be with people, and people were all around me, but I didn’t have anyone to connect with, and I still couldn’t approach people or speak to them. It was a bit like being really thirsty while stranded in an empty boat in the middle of the ocean.
Although I only made the connection in hindsight, it was at about that time in my life when I started getting strong panic attacks where my heart would beat really fast, I’d go pale, sweaty, my vision would fade out and I’d almost pass out. These anxiety symptoms didn’t happen when I was actually on the drugs, but I do believe my anxiety was worsened overall through taking them.
I stopped self-medicating and gave up all drugs including alcohol fairly soon after that. I realised that they weren’t solving anything and were just making things worse in many ways, and although it was really tough to start with; being in social situations without those things to help me cope, in terms of building solid lasting confidence, I think it was one of the best moves I ever made. Giving them up didn’t get rid of my anxiety, but it gave me the opportunities to build confidence without anything adding confusion. Being without those things really forced me to find other ways of coping in those situations, things that really did provide a solution, and if I hadn’t of given up those other unhealthy crutches I believe wouldn’t have really been able to work on those things that really do make a difference.
I’ve made a second video on this about how self-medicating can stop you making progress and how certain processes at play have a negative effect on you. So if this subject applies to you, I’d really encourage you to watch it. This video might be the one you can connect and identify with, but it’s the other video that contains the important information, so I hope you’ll join me for it.”
“Drugs did not cause my problems with social anxiety – I had social anxiety from a very early age. In fact, as far back as I can remember. But, in my mid to late teens and very early twenties I took recreational drugs. It was mostly cannabis which I smoked almost every day, but later it became ecstasy and occasionally magic mushrooms, amphetamines or cocaine.
The cannabis, I used to be really into that. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I used to think everyone should try it. I used to almost worship it because it relaxed you, was non-aggressive, it could be humorous, made you appreciate music more, maybe even made you think more deeply about things, but I didn’t realise what it was slowly doing to me over time. I didn’t realise that I was becoming more and more introverted and my paranoid thoughts were slowly getting stronger. I also didn’t realise that I’d become so passive and didn’t have any ambition or desire to better my life. And it was only when I read that it was bad for social anxiety and completely gave it up and my system cleared over a month or two that I realised just how much it had suppressed me and my life.
One day I was at someone’s house and I’d been smoking cannabis and I had all those paranoid thoughts going around my head about people hating me, not wanting me there and thinking bad things about me. On that day they go so intense that I seriously thought I was going completely crazy. I was really scared and I left and walked to somewhere safe on my own and just freaked out and cried. I had no idea what was happening to me and I was bad enough for a couple of other people to get concerned and come and find me. It was a really scary moment and not one I’d like to repeat.
There are worse things than cannabis you can put in your body, but is cannabis a good thing? At least in my experience, I really don’t think it is, especially if you’re experiencing some kind of mental health problem. You don’t need anything else clouding your thinking and making you think any more paranoid thoughts than you’re already thinking. And you really don’t need anything that will make you more passive and less focused on making progress.
I’ve met a lot of people now, or have read about their experiences, where they’ve told me that they’re fairly certain that cannabis played a significant role in triggering them to become socially anxious in the first place or have other mental health problems or it at least made their social anxiety get much worse.
It can be difficult to give up if you’ve developed a lifestyle around it and what social life you have revolves around it. There may even be motivations pushing against you because you’ve always been an advocate of it. But I think if you’re a sufferer of social anxiety and you really want to overcome it, I’m not sure what chance you have if you continue to smoke cannabis.”
Eating. It keeps us alive and well, but what if you get scared when you eat around other people? For lots of people with social anxiety, eating in a presence of others causes a lot of anxiety and self-consciousness. Not all fears around eating are the same and it is usually not the food people with social anxiety are scared of, but rather the actual process of eating around other people. There are then lots of different aspects of eating and it might be just one of these that causes distress or many of them.
For myself, the main fear I had around eating was noise. Could people hear me munching and crunching and was it really annoying them and even making them angry at me? I was not really clever enough to avoid noisy food and always used to end up with an apple, a bag of crisps or something else with a noisy bite or wrapper. I remember working in an office and sucking each crisp before I chewed it and trying to bite apples slowly so I did not make any noise. Another strategy I employed was to crunch quickly to get it over with. I used to imagine the people behind me getting more and more irritated by my crunching until they just wanted to explode and shout, ‘JUST SHUT UP WITH YOUR STUPID CRUNCHING YOU ****’. I did not want to draw any attention to myself, but of course I probably did through my unconventional eating habits because people tend to notice what is novel and blot out the rest. I really would have been much better off just eating normally.
As I said above, not all eating fears are the same and I have come to realise that my main eating fear was less common than the usual ones people have. Most common seems to be concerns over shaking or messing up when bringing the fork to ones mouth. People will often avoid difficult foods such as peas that might make their shaking more noticeable and stick to safe food such as mashed potato. Another common problem related to shaking is holding drinks and tea cups where the shaking might be more noticeable and there is a possibility of spilling tea everywhere. If shaking is a worry for you then you might find my ‘shaking and tension‘ post interesting.
Really anything that might cause embarrassment can be a problem, including slipping with your knife and shooting a tough bit of steak across the room, spilling soup down your front, making slurping noises, and missing your mouth with your fork. People also commonly worry about etiquette like what to wear, what knife and fork to use, and am I eating too fast or too slow?
The consequences of all this are usually that the person starts to associate a lot of stress with meal time and starts to adjust their life around their fears. This might mean skipping meals, only feeling able to choose ’safe’ foods, declining invitations to restaurants, or eating in secret. This can then be noticed by other people who might be concerned or who might find it difficult when it affects their plans. Usually people do not want to explain what is really going on and sometimes even when they do other people might not understand the severity of their fears and that they cannot simply switch them off. This can then result in further stress being associated to eating fuelling the anxiety that surrounds it.
I hope by writing this post you can at least know that you are not alone with these fears and that they are actually very common. I am planning to address how to overcome them in my audio product, but I would encourage people to start seeking help with them now rather than waiting as since eating is so fundamental to our lives, such fears can have a big impact. Also, going hungry is known to make people more susceptible to feeling emotional and anxious, so skipping meals or not eating properly can heighten anxiety overall.
I created this video to help encourage more people to come along to Social Anxiety West in Bristol, but I thought I would share it here also. I talk about what social anxiety was like for me, including feeling unable to speak and physical symptoms, and how I found a self-help group helpful.
Just a quick note to let the subscribers know that I am still here and I have not forgotten them. I have been busy developing Social Anxiety West, the Bristol social anxiety self-help group. I have just finished creating their new website (www.sawest.org) and we are starting another group in North Bristol due to increased numbers in members. Once things settle down a bit, I will be right back here!
Unfortunately, I do not have any photo's of myself from the time
The hairdressers is something I used to dread. In-fact, I just did not go at all. My long untidy hair earned me the nickname of ‘Happy Hippy Hanlon’. The happy part was a sarcastic comment about my generally miserable demeanour at the time. Eventually a friend I made in the last year of school gave me an exceptionally stylish 90s undercut. This probably only slightly improved the situation, but I was grateful at the time. A year or so later my sister had a go which had better results I seem to remember.
While many fear the dentist, hairdressers seems to be a more common fears for people with social anxiety. Having your mouth stretched open with a mirror stuck in it seems much more preferable than having to make polite small talk while someone holds sharp pointy things to your head. Today, I do not mind either and shall be off to my Italian friend for a slightly overdue trim later, but I know that for many, deciding whether or not to go to the hairdressers remains an uncomfortable dilemma.
Eating. It keeps us alive and well, but what if you get scared when you eat around other people? For lots of people with social anxiety, eating in a presence of others causes a lot of anxiety and self-consciousness. Not all fears around eating are the same and it is usually not the food people with social anxiety are scared of, but rather the actual process of eating around other people. There are then lots of different aspects of eating and it might be just one of these that causes distress or many of them.
