Social Phobe
17-07-07, 17:48
Hello everyone,
As you can probably tell from my username and the fact that I'm posting this message here that I have Social Anxiety.
I would say that my anxiety levels are mild. I can still go out and talk to people etc, although I sometimes find this hard to do and beat myself up about messing things up afterwards.
For about a year I've been unemployed. I finished university and never got a job. Partly due to the fact of being too scared of something new. However, I have been applying for jobs lately without much luck. Until last week I received a letter inviting me to an interview. For this interview I would have to sit infront of a panel of 4 people, plus participate in a group discussion and also be observed doing something else. Of course I was filled with dread when I got this letter. I quickly decided I wasn't going to go. I convinced myself I'd mess everything up and that I wouldn't be able to do the job anyway because of my anxiety (the job was for a care assistant in a psychiatric ward). I thought how can I help someone else if I cannot help myself? Anyway, I didn't even have the curtesy to phone up and say I wasn't going. But then I received a phonecall from them saying the day had been cancelled anyway. When I spoke to the guy he sounded nice and kind of made me wonder why I was so scared in the first place, and made me feel bad for not phoning him sooner and saying I wasn't going to go.
A couple of days after, I was beating myself up about letting the anxiety win again and for running away from something. Then today I receive an email from another job I had applied for - inviting me to an interview next week! I got the same feelings of dread, however this one seems to be a bit easier in the sense that there's only a 3 panel interview and no other tasks to do. This is for a Support Worker post in a hospital. I've been trying to convince myself that I can do this job and that it will actually help my anxiety because I will be interacting with loads of different people - so I should be helping myself as well as the service users.
Now my main question for you all is do you have any advice for job interviews? Talking about myself is the one thing I have trouble doing. When people ask me things about myself I usually give short answers and try to change the topic of conversation around onto them - but I know I cannot do that in an interview. I hate having attention placed on me, especially as I will be the sole focus of it all, and from three complete strangers who will be judging me on my responses. I also can suffer from blushing when I'm in that sort of situation. What can I do? I must also mention that I haven't had a proper interview before as I've never worked so I don't know what to expect. My friend is going to give me a mock interview I think, so hopefully that will help. But I would really appreciate any suggestions if you have them. I know even if I'm not successful that this will be a learning experience, but I still don't want to make a fool of myself as I will have a hard time trying to forget it.
I did search this section for other topics but didn't find anything useful.
Thank you all in advance, and I'm sorry for such a long post.
As you can probably tell from my username and the fact that I'm posting this message here that I have Social Anxiety.
I would say that my anxiety levels are mild. I can still go out and talk to people etc, although I sometimes find this hard to do and beat myself up about messing things up afterwards.
For about a year I've been unemployed. I finished university and never got a job. Partly due to the fact of being too scared of something new. However, I have been applying for jobs lately without much luck. Until last week I received a letter inviting me to an interview. For this interview I would have to sit infront of a panel of 4 people, plus participate in a group discussion and also be observed doing something else. Of course I was filled with dread when I got this letter. I quickly decided I wasn't going to go. I convinced myself I'd mess everything up and that I wouldn't be able to do the job anyway because of my anxiety (the job was for a care assistant in a psychiatric ward). I thought how can I help someone else if I cannot help myself? Anyway, I didn't even have the curtesy to phone up and say I wasn't going. But then I received a phonecall from them saying the day had been cancelled anyway. When I spoke to the guy he sounded nice and kind of made me wonder why I was so scared in the first place, and made me feel bad for not phoning him sooner and saying I wasn't going to go.
A couple of days after, I was beating myself up about letting the anxiety win again and for running away from something. Then today I receive an email from another job I had applied for - inviting me to an interview next week! I got the same feelings of dread, however this one seems to be a bit easier in the sense that there's only a 3 panel interview and no other tasks to do. This is for a Support Worker post in a hospital. I've been trying to convince myself that I can do this job and that it will actually help my anxiety because I will be interacting with loads of different people - so I should be helping myself as well as the service users.
Now my main question for you all is do you have any advice for job interviews? Talking about myself is the one thing I have trouble doing. When people ask me things about myself I usually give short answers and try to change the topic of conversation around onto them - but I know I cannot do that in an interview. I hate having attention placed on me, especially as I will be the sole focus of it all, and from three complete strangers who will be judging me on my responses. I also can suffer from blushing when I'm in that sort of situation. What can I do? I must also mention that I haven't had a proper interview before as I've never worked so I don't know what to expect. My friend is going to give me a mock interview I think, so hopefully that will help. But I would really appreciate any suggestions if you have them. I know even if I'm not successful that this will be a learning experience, but I still don't want to make a fool of myself as I will have a hard time trying to forget it.
I did search this section for other topics but didn't find anything useful.
Thank you all in advance, and I'm sorry for such a long post.