Hi there,
I have always thought that I have suffered from PD with some Agoraphobia. However, slowly I have started to wonder if my phobias do in fact stem from a Social Anxiety. Even before PD entered my life 8 yrs ago, I used to get embaressed when I would have to walk by people, or have to talk to people. Yet, I do talk to people, I don't avoid it. But if it is people that I think (in my mind anyway) are better than me in some way, I become tongue tied & sometimes have weird thoughts that I will say or do something really silly or embarrasing. If I am in a restaurant & I have to go to the toilet & feel so so self concious & find it difficult (but I do do it) but usually wait until I am desperate. Also, if I am with people I do not know very well & I have to talk I often find I cannot find the right words & begin to trip over my words or forget what I am trying to say. Later, I will go over this in my mind & feel so embarassed & beat myself up about how stupid I was etc. etc. When I am having a panic attack my overiding feeling is that I am going to lose it, go crazy & make a complete & utter fool of myself. This underlying fear is what I think makes me not want to go in an elevator - for fear that if trapped I will go crazy & make a scene & people will laugh at me. My fear on a motorway is that if trapped in a traffic jam I will lose it & start running screaming up the motorway - everyone will see me & laugh & think what an idiot that women is - she should be locked up. Same with on a train or a plane - my overiding fear is always that I will lose control of myself, run up the aisles screaming, banging on windows trying to get out. Everyone will look at me with horror - the pilot will have to sedate me to protect the other passengers from me & everyone will be tut tutting and my family will want to disown me! Then I will be banned from ever getting on a plane again. I remember now that when I was a child & had to go on stage to do dancing & would stand in the wings & have a major panic attack because I did not want to go on that stage for fear that I might make a mistake & everyone would laugh & say what a rubbish dancer I was - (always did get onto the stage & dance ok) I was always self conscious at school & often did not join sporting activities that I sometimes wanted to for fear that I would make a fool of myself. The reason I am asking if this is social anxiety is because for 8 yrs now I have read everything about panic, anxiety, phobias, agorophobia etc. but I have never ever read anything about Sociel Anxiety - not even in threads on sites like this - because I never thought that was me - until just very recently - for some reason I have been thinking are my main fears stemming from a social anxiety? I really would love to hear all of your views - especially from those who do have a social anxiety.
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