What caused your social anxiety?

[KeeKee]

Mine was caused from developing health anxiety. Before that I wasn't bothered about being in public alone or anything now things such as the school run are a living nightmare even though I don't actually have to interact with anyone. I dread it all the time and will dread it even more once the warmer weather comes round and I can't put my hood up to hide from the world :-(
I'm scared to work and even just thinking about an interview makes me so nervous. Propranolol does help but it makes me really tired (I'm a tired person anyway) so I had to stop taking and will only use it when my anxiety is extreme and I feel like I may have a panic attack.

[Sam Winter]

i've always had issues with shyness, but my social anxiety didn't really develop until about a few years ago where i was emotionally blackmailed into a relationship and then emotionally abused, it got a little worse after that but it really started to develop after i got HA and basically every anxiety ever which caused me to be paranoid and now i think there's no nice people in the world and they all hate me, and i have to go to a group next week lol good fun xx

[KeeKee]

What an awful experience you've had Sam. I too have always been a little shy and I think with people like us maybe it just takes one major thing to break us and then we're trapped in this horrible anxiety. When we have workmen coming I always schedule them for when my partner is in now, I hate to have to associate with them. I even hate being on the phone (I'm OK with incoming calls I'm just reluctant to ring people, even my family I just text).

[Oosh]

I was always very shy. I'd go to a friends house and would always drag them away to a room away from family or friends I didn't know.
I'd only trust certain people and very strongly distrusted others.

I went through quite a bit of trauma at 15/16 and that weariness, social anxiety spread to everyone. It was just hard being around anyone after that. That's pretty hard to deal with though when you're 15/16 and haven't got a clue what's going on or how to deal with it. Work environments terrified me, socialising terrified me. I used alcohol to try to cope by 16 and by 19 I felt terrified I was no longer in control and started having panic attacks.

[jimsmrs]

Moving up to Scotland from Liverpool 8 yrs ago. It took a while to stop feeling like a tourist.

[Murphy]

I think my parents divorce when i was about nine sowed the seeds of it.

Before that i was quite an outgoing child i enjoyed hanging out with my friends and i was the class joker at school.

After things began to change although i couldn't understand it at the time.Looking back one of my greatest fears as a child was losing members of my family,and this as well as the fallout from the divorce(which was ugly and bitter)left me feeling lost and confused.

It was when i began secondary school(it seemed so large,fast moving and impersonal compared to what i was familiar with) that the anxiety,agoraphobia,depression and the sense of the unreality of everything started.I had extreme difficulty getting to school(or just getting out of bed at all),and when at school i would often just freeze up,overloading on anxiety and panic.

I had a hard time comprehending what was going and an even harder time articulating my problems to anyone else.My teachers seemed to think i was just lazy and enjoyed playing truant and i ended up being shuffled around different schools,all the while undiagnosed.This just made things worse(the stress i was under caused outbreaks of eczema and extremely painful muscle seizures)it also cost me what friends i had.

It hobbled me my entire school life and ruined my chances of academic achievement and left me a virtual recluse for a decade.I've been in therapy for the last 5 years but i still don't have a job or friends,just alot of regret.I'm not really sure what the future holds for me.

[unspoken]

Murphy, that's really sad, I'm sorry you've lost so much of your youth to anxiety. Is the therapy helping?

I moved to an all girls' school at the age of 8. I found it hard to make friends and got bullied the whole 5 years I was at that school. I went from being a reasonably outgoing child to being scared of everything. When I had some counselling a couple of years ago I managed to trace it back to a few experiences of being yelled at by teachers in primary school about really minor stuff and feeling unable to cope and crying and hyperventilating and being embarrassed of this happening in front of the other kids, who already looked for any weakness to bully me about. This left me afraid of confrontation and criticism. As a teenager I suffered further bullying, not all the time but enough to keep my self esteem really low. I always thought I was less important, less talented, less pretty and less popular than my peers. Then once I got to university, I realised the only thing I lacked at school was confidence. It's been difficult even since then though. I used to do anything to avoid phoning people, but through work I've got better at it. I find meetings and sitting through presentations really difficult though, I feel like everyone is watching me and I'll do something to embarrass myself so just sitting doing nothing in a room full of people causes me a lot of anxiety.

[Murphy]

Hey unspoken,thanks.

As far as therapy is concerned i have made progress.The last few months especially i have been more active than i have in a long time.But its been slow going and difficult getting this far.

Part of the problem has been how long i've been isolated,adjusting to these new challenges and trying to cope and deal with the depth of my depression and feelings of regret at having missed out on so much.Confronting and acknowledging these issues has been physically,mentally and emotionally exhausting.

The other part has been that,at the beginning of seeking help i had perhaps naive expectations about what therapy would and could do for me.I thought initially that by taking the medication i was given,doing various cbt courses and talking to therapists i would become "normal" again,that i could go back to how i was before all this began which,of course,was totally unrealistic.

In reality all this could do was show me how to better manage my problems,and accepting that burden(and it does feel like a burden,a heavy weight on my shoulders)hasn't been a straightforward process and that combined with other things,like having to change therapists when the one i was seeing left the service(a pain since i'd built up a level of trust with her and felt comfortable talking to her,and wasn't informed she would be leaving),going through different medications due to side effects or them not working,numerous breakdowns and generally not knowing what to do with my life now that i'm trying to get back out into the world(still always having to manage my issues and limitations)has complicated things.

It's hard to start again when you you never had the chance to get started to begin with.

[SA40S]

As a child i was very quiet and shy but not socially anxious as far as can remember. There were no problems at Primary School and i had a few friends. Things changed dramatically at High School though, i couldn't speak to anyone, selective mutism? And quickly became a target for bullies. The bullying was all verbal but did a lot of damage. So for me, it was experiences at High School that led to me developing SA.

[Anna77]

I was very quiet at school as well and got badly bullied throughout secondary school. My father was verbally abusive and violent too from when I was about 11. I think having a hard time at home and school made me excessively worry about what people think and overanalyse things, when I should just let them go. I know it's not totally my fault but I've always blamed myself to an extent, as I think that if I was different then these things wouldn't have happened. So negative childhood/teenage experiences caused my social anxiety.

[Seth86]

I've always been shy and nervous so i guess it was bound to happen lol I wasn't too bad until i left school and had to get out in the world myself! I started suffering from Agoraphobia first for some reason but then quickly started suffering with terrible anxiety. Because i wouldn't be able to act normally with constant anxiety problems i found it better to be by myself as it was less embarrassing and didn't have to explain why i was so on edge to everyone i met.

[Mistraal]

My mum was a bully. At school I was bullied. I just can't tolerate bullies. My dad was even bullied by my mum. She would beat him up sometimes right in front of me. :weep:

[Cassavetes]

Everything started when I was 16.
Since I was 14 I had noticed that I got nervous when I had to speak in public, but I wasn´t very conscious. At that time, I had some very embarrasing situation in the school that made me feel less confidence.
When I was 16 I was doing a presentation at the class, and someone said "He is shaking". Something happened at that moment in my head that changed my life for good.
Now, I´m 38 and I suffer from social anxiety. I panic to drink in front of people or to do any handly task. I panic that I´m gonna shake and they are gonna notice it. That panic makes me shake, so... Its a vicious circle.
I have the same problem if I have a job interview or I have to speak in front of a group of people if I think the are looking at me.

I´d like to find someone with the same specific anxiety.

[Catherine S]

This thread has brought me to tears tonight, sorry. I have always said we are stronger than we realise, and reading this confirms it. I think it's a good thread and long may it continue. Because it gives those of us who don't know how this feels an insight into it.

Kudos to you all.
ISB x