Social Anxiety to Social Confidence

In this sixth chapter of my life and social anxiety I talk about my 21st birthday, trying to get away from my problems, my SA getting worse, supermarkets, walking, panic attacks and irrational thoughts. This is the last in this series of videos as from this point onwards I started working at overcoming my social anxiety.

If you missed out on previous chapters you can view them here…
Chapter 1: Primary School
Chapter 2: Secondary School
Chapter 3: College
Chapter 4: Work
Chapter 5: Personal Life

Exercise has a number of really important benefits for someone who is experiencing anxiety or depression. In this video I talk about what those benefits are, what you need to do to gain those benefits and also what is a good approach when introducing exercise into your life. I will be thinking of you all when I am out on my runs and hoping that somewhere out there you are joining me in improving your life.

Birthdays – are they a time for celebration for you? When a person is socially anxious, times for celebration can become associated with stress, anxiety and depression. You may dread the added attention that birthdays can bring. Things such as surprise parties, receiving gifts, birthday phone calls and singing happy birthday can turn what is supposed to be a joyous event into an endless stream of anxiety provocation. Avoiding telling people about your birthday might seem like the solution, but this can leave one feeling depressed as it can seem like no one cares.

I remember my 21st birthday. With being quite socially anxious at the time it was an achievement that I actually went out to a pub with some people I knew that night, but a celebration it certainly was not. In my usual style back then I spent most of the evening sitting quietly and not speaking to anyone. It so happened that everyone was celebrating someone else’s birthday who I did not know that night. The result was that no one gave me a card or wished me a happy birthday while I sat and watched them celebrate someone else’s.

As with many other birthdays of mine, I felt sad and hurt that no one had recognised that it was my birthday and made the effort to express their birthday wishes to me. I could blame these people for being insensitive and not caring but the truth is that it was mostly my fault. I had not invested much effort into building my relationships with those people, and in fear of too much attention being focused on myself or coming across as vain, I had also not made it clear to anyone that it was my birthday that specific night and I wanted them to celebrate it with me.

Although I was probably upset with the people at the time, I now take responsibility for what happened that night and can see that I did not put in what was necessary for me to have the experience I wanted on that night. By taking responsibility for the poor outcome I put myself in a position where there is a path for me to take to change that outcome. Although it may be hard for us to do sometimes, it is important to recognise that we need to take active steps to create the social experiences we want in our lives. We will get out what we put in and if we do not put anything into our relationships then we cannot make others solely responsible for the quality of our social experiences.

It may seem like a depressing situation where your relationships are unfulfilling because you do not put much into them while at the same time you feel unable to put much into them because of your social fears, but this view is only depressing if you believe you cannot change the situation. An alternative view is to see such situations as fuel for your motivation to change and improve your life. If social anxiety stands in your way then you must work on your social confidence until you can experience life as you want it.

A large part of becoming more socially confident is learning to accept that you are, or have the potential to be, a likable and lovable person. Social anxiety sufferers commonly find it hard to accept compliments and positive attention but it is an important to welcome it as part of making progress. You may not directly have a choice over whether you feel confident or anxious, but you do have a choice over your response to positive attention. If you choose to dismiss people’s or avoid positive attention then you may avoid feelings of embarrassment and having focus put on you, but you also harm your confidence and reject other people’s kindness. With this option no one gains. If you choose to allow yourself positive attention by not avoiding it and saying thank you to the compliments you recieve then you add value to your sense of self-worth and add to the other person’s sense of contribution without rejecting their kindness. It is important to remember that when someone gives you positive attention they want you to feel good about yourself and therefore they will not think negatively about you if you choose to accept it and enjoy it.

Birthdays are what you make of them and the meaning you give them. They can mean you are another year closer to death or they can mean you have successfully survived another year of life. They can be a trigger of negative emotions or they can be an opportunity to feel loved and positively connect with people. They can be a depressing reminder of your situation or they can be a motivator to change that situation. Choose carefully and put in the effort to make them what you want them to be, whether than means choosing to welcome positive attention or choosing to give your self the gift of time invested in building up your social confidence.

If you are a sufferer of social anxiety then you may find that you get tired a lot. This is because our bodies use up much more energy when we are feeling anxious than when we are calmer. When in a state of anxiety we may feel the opposite from tired, such as feeling hyperactive, alert and tense, but once the anxiety passes and we are able to relax more we may feel exhausted. Increased heart rate, racing thoughts, adrenaline release, increased muscle tension, shaking and general nervous energy all draw from our reserves and can leave us feeling totally drained.

It is good to be aware of this for a number of reasons. Firstly, it might help to know you are not suffering from some mysterious tiredness disease, although if your tiredness is having a significant impact of your daily life then it would be a good idea to discus this with your doctor. Secondly, it might help to know that your anxiety related tiredness is not just laziness and therefore your lack of energy is not something to beat yourself up over. Finally, it is good to know that once you have managed to feel more confident and less anxious, your energy levels will increase and you will feel able to do much more.

In addition to anxiety related tiredness, you may be experiencing depression related tiredness. It is common for people with social anxiety to also experience depression. This is because the fundamental thinking that is at the root of social anxiety is also at the root of depression and therefore it is possible for people to develop both social anxiety and depression separately, but also it is common for people to start to feel hopeless and depressed about not being able to fulfil their social needs as a consequence of social anxiety.

Depression related tiredness is a very different sort of tiredness to that resulting from anxiety. This kind of tiredness, very convincingly so, makes us feel like we have no energy and cannot do anything, but it is a block to accessing our energy rather than an actual lack of it that we are experiencing. When we are depressed we are generally feeling hopeless and because we think there is no point in trying to do anything our brains shut us down and produce feelings of low motivation to help us conserve energy for the times when there is hope and something worth engaging in.

When we are feeling depressed every fibre in our body might be telling us we are too tired to do anything, but this is not necessarily true, and if you get yourself to start engaging in an activity that brings you pleasure and a sense of achievement then your mood and energy levels are very likely to lift. Unfortunately, there is not time in this short blog entry to address the issue of feeling like nothing will bring you pleasure or a sense of achievement, but just remember that such feelings are always a lie that feels true.

For the social anxiety sufferer, the main issue with anxiety or depression related tiredness is that it can make it harder to feel motivated to work on improving one’s confidence. As already discussed, depressed feelings lie, so stay focused on encouraging (not forcing) yourself to take a first step. Once this step has been made, the subsequent steps will most likely be easier. With anxiety related tiredness, the best advice is to make sure you look after yourself well with regular exercise and a healthy diet to help the stress have less of an impact on your body. This may also take effort, but the rewards are worth it.

Overall, remember that you are feeling tired because of your social anxiety or depression and through working at overcoming it you will start to feel better and more energised about life. The more time and effort you invest in feeling more confident, the better you will feel and the easier things will get. So even when your energy is low, stretch to put in the work to improve your well-being and your life. We always have a little energy left, so keep going and invest it well

I remember, years ago, accompanying my sister when she went to reunite with some old friends. At the time she told me she felt a bit anxious about it and although I had experienced anxiety for many years myself, I actually had no idea what she was talking about. I didn’t really know what the word anxiety meant and I probably replied with something like a slightly bemused, ‘oh right’.

It seems I’m not alone with this experience and have spoken to other social anxiety suffers who have also never really known what the word anxiety meant. For me at least, the reason for my ignorance was that my anxiety had been so frequent that it felt like a normal part of my life and that made it hard for me to comprehend what this thing that occasional cropped up for other people was. Of course, at the time, I had no idea that I knew very well what anxiety was.

It wasn’t until someone I knew who was a sufferer of panic attacks noticed my over-adrenalised composure one day and suggested to me that I was anxious. It took a while for it to sink in, possibly several months, but it was the key to me discovering definitions of social anxiety and therefore recognising that I might be able to change.

As many of you will know, many sufferers of social anxiety get depressed about their situation or experience depression for separate reasons along side of social anxiety. I tended to fall into the former category, but it wasn’t until quite recently that I came to recognise quite how depressed I was when I was younger. This I’ve concluded is for similar reasons as those described above. My sadness about my social difficulties had been fairly constant and without any kind of contrasting experiences to that sadness, or people explaining to me about sadness and depression, I just didn’t know that I was feeling depressed. Of course, not knowing didn’t make life any easier, but at least now I can explain why I didn’t ever try to do anything with my life back then.