Blogging Against Social Anxiety

I had an interesting experience yesterday that suddenly reinforced to me the craziness of the automatic negative thoughts that race around the minds of social anxiety sufferers. It was after my Chinese class and I was standing around chatting with a group of my fellow students. We were all commenting on how little progress we seem to be making in Chinese, and one of the girls commented that she was so envious of people that are able to master a foreign language, especially one of the difficult Asian ones. And at that point I found myself thinking, “lucky she doesn’t know that I am totally fluent in Japanese”. Which I am. Which is a very impressive fact. Which is something I should be very proud of. Which is a fact I should not be hiding when I am talking to an attractive girl. What on earth is going on here?

On the face of it, I’m a fairly interesting guy. I’ve lived in four different countries and visited many more. I’m fluent in one foreign language and can get by passably in a couple of others. I’m well educated and have a decent job. I have no shortage of experiences to talk about. But I hate being the center of attention. I hate it when people ask a lot of questions and I am put on the spot. And this is ridiculous. These are all things I should be using to my advantage. But I’ve gone through most of my life trying to hide them and to be as inconspicuous as possible.

I’ve heard that it helps to keep a diary of your automatic negative thoughts because facing them in writing makes you realize just how ludicrous many of them are. And this was just one example. For many of us, there are hundreds of similar irrational thoughts racing through our minds every day. I’m making a concerted effort this week to record some of them and expose them for the irrational lies that they are.