Blogging Against Social Anxiety

Suddenly I have a microphone in my hand. My memories of that point on are really quite hazy. Try as I might, I CANNOT even remember what song it is that I sang. But if you can imagine a cat with laryngitis trying to hit the high notes in “We are the Champions”, that may be a close approximation to what I sounded like. Luckily my buddy had the other microphone and a louder voice, so I resorted to lip-synching in Milli Vanilli style for the second half of the song. At this point I just felt like shrivelling up into a little ball and disappearing. Nobody says anything though, and they soon go back to doing their own bad Bon Jovi impersonations.

But from this point on the night gets interesting. In the past I would have left the party in this state, gone home, and ruminated for hours about what a fool I had made of myself, adding to the endless cycle of anxiety and depression. It just happened that later this night, one of my friends was doing birthday drinks at a bar in Manhattan. I was not planning to go, because two parties in one night is just too much. But I suddenly think, what the hell, can the night get any worse? So I go to this bar, meet up with my buddy, get introduced to his friends, and feel as relaxed and comfortable in this kind of setting as I can ever remember feeling. I actually have a great time. I even make conversation with a couple of girls. By that stage I’d had a few drinks to help calm me, but I don’t think it lessens the achievement.

So the lessons I draw from the night (for me, at least) are as follows: Try to accept all social invitations and push yourself to go, even when you don’t feel like it. There are always going to be major setbacks and times when you feel humiliated in public. Usually though, that is only in your mind and others are not paying as much attention as you think. The important thing is that after a setback like this you get right back on the horse and do something else. The worst thing is always to give up at that point and spend hours analyzing how you screwed up. We’ve all been there…