I'm a bit slow on the uptake

[debbsi]

Hi
I've known for a few years that my stressful personality had a name - anxiety and that I wasnt just a stresshead!
However I only realised last week that I had social anxiety I knew about the health and general ones!
Then someone suggested I had a confidence problem - I absolutley agree now I have had time to think about it

Then it just occured to me that I am a control freak and maybe thats part of my problem - not being able to let go, I take it all on my shoulders and I'm just not strong enough

Does anyone else feel like this?

[margaret jones]

hI Debbs
What has made you think you have social anxiety ??? Has something changed in your life ??My anxiety makes me fear large groups and confined spaces . does that mean i have social anxiety ??

Maggie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[debbsi]

I never looked at the social anxiety part of the forum and just thought I'd have a nosey. Someone had copied some info re: symptoms - and I matched up to quite a few - I just never gave it a title eg speaking in front of people, interviews, using the telephone etc

Nothing has changed in my life - only that I want to defeat this anxiety.

I have just been to my parents and my Mum had found some old letters I had written home from guide camp - I must have been about 11. Both letters took me back to being there and hating it and wanting to go home - I always had home sickness, even one of the letters mention me having tummy ache!

Is it possible to get better when i have been an anxious person all these years? It is slowly but steadily getting worse as I get older.

Is there really anything I can do to get better?? I really dont want to be as anxious as my parents when I'm there age - or as worrysome as my grandma when i'm 89!!!!!

I didnt stand a chance really did I?

[blueangel]

I think it is possible to change, but it's a really slow process for most of us. I've only recently realised that I've got one or two elements of social anxiety as well - for me, the worst thing is having to take part in formal, posh dinners, or to a slightly lesser extent, engage with small talk with people that I would define as "posh" (my partner does a "posh" job, so I have had to do quite a lot of this over the last three years, and it's really getting any easier.

I have a terror of doing/saying the wrong thing, using the wrong bit of cutlery, or generally doing something that will make other people look down at me. At the moment, I can't work out where this one has come from; it doesn't seem to relate to any specific events in my life. I was subject to severe bullying for most of the seven years I was at primary school, so perhaps it's linked to a general feeling of inferiority, which of course affects confidence badly.

Oddly though, in some areas I have loads of confidence - for example, I've done lots of work on community and local radio, and I love it and never worry about it at all. Go figure, as they say....