Hello everyone!

[Silverlight]

Hello everyone, I don't think I have introduced myself here before. It's hard to keep track of that, because over the last few months I've been writing 'my story' several times here only to delete it again midway. Therefore I'm going to keep it really short, because posting a long story about it probably isn't going to happen anytime soon. So let's hope I make it past the submit button this time. :blush:

Anyway, I'm Caroline, I'm 17 years old and I'm from the Netherlands - so I'm sorry for any mistakes in English.

The thing is, I'm not sure whether I really have social anxiety or not, so I feel like I don't even have "the right" to be here and to complain about it because surely there are lots of you out there that have it way worse, but I really need someone to talk to and I have no other place to do so. I think that is one of the reasons why writing my story never ends up very well - it just looks like something a dramatic teenager would write, which is how I feel most of the time.

[Edie]

Hi Caroline, and welcome.

Your English is excellent!

Some people have very severe anxiety, and for other people it is less severe. But all people with anxiety deserve support and advice, so I hope you will share more of your story and make some new friends here.

[teej]

Hi! :welcome:

Most of what I've written on here swings from "oh my goodness this medication is terrible, it's all over" to "hurrah I feel amazing!". It's therapeutic though.

You do have a right to complain. My anxiety has been a progressive disease for me that's got worse. I wish I'd caught it earlier and done something about it. I like to think that in posting here I am even able to help others by sharing my experiences.

Your English is 100% better than my Dutch by the way. :unsure:

T

[Silverlight]

Thank you both for your replies. I really hope this site can be of help for me too, and that maybe, I can also be a help for others. Currently, I feel like the anxiety starts controlling me much more than it should and it's scary.

I should probably start with saying more about myself (I'm sorry, I can't keep this story short no matter how hard I try, so it's gonna be a long one).

I've always been shy, but in my youth it wasn't a problem. When I was among people I knew and I felt comfortable with, I had no problems with social interactions. I actually had quite a lot of friends at elementary school. When I was 10, the anxiety started kicking in though, and I became so quiet that my friends and I drifted away from each other (at least I think that's what happened). When I went to high school at the age of 12, I pretty much had no one anymore. At that point I had become so quiet, making friends was nearly impossible. I only said something when people asked me a question. It still kills me when I think about how different things could've been, because even though there were lots of people that made fun of me, there were also enough people that would've made amazing friends. They actually tried harder to become my friend than I did myself. A group of girls from my class pitied me for always being alone and they asked me every day if I wanted to sit with them, and eventually it became a habit. At first I was overjoyed - but it resulted into me sitting at their table every day listening to them being friends. The girls tried to include me, they really did - but after a while they gave up, and I can't even blame them. You can't become friends with someone that doesn't talk. I don't know why I couldn't see that back then. I can literally slap myself for it, because it has made my life unnecessary difficult.
So I spend the first two years of my high school pretty much invading their group of friends. Of course, a few girls from the group started disliking me pretty fast. "Why doesn't she go find friends of her own?" was among one of the many things they said behind my back. I truly must have been annoying - a not-speaking person following you around everywhere in school (yes, I was really that desperate...).
It's pretty ironic, since the reason I didn't speak much was because I was afraid people would dislike me. Yet, that's the reason they disliked me in the first place.
It made school a horrible place for me and I tried to escape it as much as I could. I faked illnesses a lot and "luckily", my mother wasn't hard to "fool". Unfortunately, in my second year of high school, I had missed so much of school that I couldn't pass on to the next year, so I had to redo my second year. It was terrifying, but somehow I also managed to see it as a new opportunity. This time I would do things right from the beginning, I vowed to myself. I wouldn't sit around waiting for people to come make friends with me, I would go make friends myself.
The first day of the new school year and everyone stared at me, because I was the only person they didn't know. I asked one of the girls if I could sit with them and her response was (without meaning to be harsh at all, I'm sure): "Why, don't you have your own friends from last year?"
All I could think about was: great, here we go again. Once again I'm the one without any friends, and it's only the first day.
It only went downhill from there. I managed to survive until Christmas break - and I call it surviving because that's really how it felt. I spend my entire Christmas break trying to think as less about school as possible, because only the thought of school made me sick. When it was time to go to school, I had become so anxious I couldn't go. Once again I faked an illness. After a week, my mother told me I should really go back to school - and I refused. At this point I convinced myself it was okay not to go back to school, "because why couldn't I be homeschooled?" It would've been the perfect solution - so I thought.
You guys probably need to know homeschooling in the Netherlands isn't common here at all. In fact, it's really difficult to get permission for that and there are a lot of strict rules for it.
So, my parents forced me to go to school. My dad literally had to drag me into the car at that point. He dropped me off at school, along with my bike. But I was so scared, I can't even explain how scared I was at that point. Setting a foot in that classroom wasn't even an option anymore. So I hid in the bathroom for half an hour. When I finally dared to go out, I went straight home.
I spend that entire night crying and freaking out because I knew my parents would drag me to school again. So at 6 am, I ran away from home. It only took a few hours until my mother called me and begged me to come home. I only did so after she promised I wouldn't have to go to school that day. This literally must've been one of the most horrible periods of my life and I'm still ashamed of what I did, especially towards my parents. But it worked - my parents finally took my fear seriously.
I had to talk to someone (I have no idea what it's called in English, but basically someone of the government that sees through the education law). I actually got really lucky because the woman was really nice. She said "I could force you to go to school, but that wouldn't help anyway, would it?"
She wouldn't allow me being homeschooled though, and I'm grateful for that now. I think if I had been homeschooled, I would have become so secluded that I would probably have developed agoraphobia. I already had trouble with things like walking into a store.
So basically, she called in help of a certain institution that helped me learn via my school books on my own (although I didn't really do much there I must admit) but more importantly: would help me with my social skills. From January to the end of April, I didn't go to school at all.
After that, I went to another school. The people there were really nice and helpful. I quickly found a few girls I could relate to in my class. I was still quiet, but the social training did help me. But at this point I still didn't classify myself as "their friend", just someone that happens to be there.
It was in my third year of high school (my fourth if you count the one I had to redo) that they actually became my real friends. I actually talked, made jokes and had conversations.
Now I'm in my fifth year (my sixth if you count that other one) and high school takes six years over here (well, the level I do at least). I still have the same friends as I used to when I arrived at this school. In fact, our friend group has even expanded with more additions - all of whom I like and I can talk with. I feel comfortable with them. Not for a 100%, definitely not, but enough to call them my friends.

You might wonder what's the problem then - if I have friends and everything. If only I knew. It feels like I'm going downwards again. I'm having regular panic attacks now, even over things as silly as little school assignments and I deprive myself of sleep. Nights where I have slept a few hours or even not at all have been there multiple times.
I feel like a mess and I don't know how long I can keep this up anymore.