Hi there,
Joined the site yesterday as I'm just desperate to talk to somebody else that knows how I feel.
I'm 35 married with 3 kids and up until 9 years ago never considered myself to have a problem with my confidence, in fact I never even thought about it. I never shyed away from putting myself out there and thought nothing of standing up whilst at college addressing the whole room. Around this time, I went through some pretty traumatic events and ended up severely depressed and remember losing my self confidence and feeling pretty dire about myself. The antidepressants helped with the depression but the anxiety about my acceptability to others remained and eventually became social anxiety, I withdrew from my friends, become highly uncomfortable in social situations and would start to panic if somebody I knew was walking towards me. I did my best to hide this from family and the few friends remaining although they all wondered and often questioned why I didn't seem like my old sociable self. The problem with this illness is that you feel so ashamed to admit that you find hard what most people find so effortless and don't even question. I'm more enlightened to my illness these days and so I guess don't struggle quite as accutely as I once did, but I still have my bad months where even picking up my daughter from school and having to speak to the other mums fills me with dread! and this is especially if there's any kind of problem going on in my life and I'm under extreme stress. It's hard facing that I'll probably never get back to how I use to once feel but I'd be grateful just to be able to manage it. I have had some sucess with CBT (done on my own at home), and I think I'm finally realising that this is no quick fix and needs constant practise.
Would love to hear from other fellow sufferers and what's worked for you.
Fifi