It’s been a while since I posted on this site. I think that’s partly out of shame, to be honest, since I’ve made very little progress over the past couple of months, despite all the best intentions…
I know what I need to do to beat this. Get back into a routine: three days a week at the gym, once a week at Chinese class, join Toastmasters, make an effort just once or twice a week to eat lunch with one of my colleagues rather than by myself at my desk. Start accepting social invitations rather than immediately finding excuses not to go out. Say hi to the stranger in the elevator in the morning. Walk across the floor to talk to a colleague instead of calling or emailing them…
There are no shortage of positive steps that I can take, and I know that the more of these steps I take, the more momentum I will gain in this battle. I cannot help but improve. So why am I finding it so difficult?
Like many sufferers of SA, I guess that at times I just grow tired of fighting the battle.
It’s funny, but in some ways I am only recently coming to terms with how much damage SA has done to my life. I had often read about the common links between SA and depression, and thought that only really applied to the more severe cases. That wasn’t me.
But it is. A constant feeling of weariness. A difficulty dragging myself out of bed every day. An inability to feel joy or anticipation about events that I should be excited about. If those aren’t signs of depression I don’t know what is.
I need to break myself out of this lethargy. It’s time to take some action…

I had an interesting experience at work this week. I was suddenly summoned for a “get to know you” meeting with a very senior manager at my company who I had never met before. I had little time to prepare. And even if I had, I didn’t know what he wanted to talk to me about. This type of meeting would probably make anybody at least a little nervous, but for somebody with social anxiety, it’s a nightmare. I’ve made some good progress over the past couple of years. But suddenly, that all seemed to disappear. I started to think too much….
What if I say something stupid? What if he asks me something I have no idea how to answer? What if he notices how nervous I look and forms a bad impression of me. I try to shut down all the negative thoughts, but it’s too intense, and it’s too late to stop them. As I walk across the floor to his office, I can feel my whole body tensing up. My facial muscles are tense. I can’t even smile as I walk past coworkers. As I feel the tension in my body rising, my mind races even more. This is going to be a total disaster…
I get to his office and peer inside, noticing that he is stuck on a phone call. Standing outside waiting, the onslaught of negative thoughts continues. His secretary turns to me and says “He’ll be with you in just a few minutes.” I pause for 10 seconds, and then make a critical decision. “Hi. I’m Dave,” I say to the secretary. “I’ve seen you around before but I don’t think we’ve met properly.” She smiles. Suddenly my anxiety drops several notches. I feel my whole body loosening up. I manage a passable smile myself. I can do this, I tell myself, just as I am called into the office.
The meeting goes fine. I feel a little nervous, but I get more and more relaxed as it goes on. I stop worrying about what I’m going to say next and just go with the flow. Who would know I have social anxiety?
I think there’s a big lesson here. That very brief, but successful interaction with the secretary before the meeting helped totally calm my nerves. By being proactive I helped kill the anxiety. If instead I had remained silent, allowing the anxiety to fester, the meeting probably WOULD have been a disaster. It’s amazing what a difference such a small but positive act can have for your confidence.

I renewed my gym membership last week after a 5 or 6 month break from regular exercise. And I have to say it feels great. I’ve only done two sessions so far, and both times my entire body was aching the next day. But both times I came out feeling refreshed, and a lot less anxious about life in general. I know my body is going to ache for a couple of weeks yet, but it is going to get easier and easier. As long as I commit myself to going in three days a week — even when I don’t feel like it — I know there is no way I can’t make progress. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. In some ways I think this is a good metaphor for overcoming social anxiety.
A little over a year ago, I was going to a public speaking class every week, I was pushing myself to attend events that would require me to mingle, and I was making an effort to get to know more people in the office. I was starting to feel the most confident I had in years. And then what happened? I got lazy and complacent. I was busy at work. I had a new girlfriend. And I stopped making the effort to do a lot of these things. And then, little by little, my social muscles started to shrink back to their original size, and a lot of the progress I had made disappeared. All the old anxiety came flooding back. But just like going to the gym, I know that if I start genuinely making an effort again, while there will be ups and downs, there is NO WAY I cannot make at least some sort of progress. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. This time I’m not going to let up.

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.

As I said in my last post, I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about relationships and SA. It’s my impression (purely a subjective one based on reading forums, etc) that a lot of SA sufferers end up in unhealthy relationships that do them more harm than good. Here’s my take on that. Most of us never dated at all in high school and university, and “stumbled” our way into relationships rather than meeting a wide range of people and then making an informed choice about who we really wanted to be with. When your options are limited (because of your anxiety and shyness) then you are more likely to settle for whoever is available. You are also more likely to attract somebody with emotional issues of their own. And when that relationship is not fulfilling your needs, you are less likely to leave because you feel like there is nobody else out there for you.

Now, I’ve been in two serious relationships before my current one. None of them were particularly unpleasant and I have some great memories of those times. But in retrospect the amount of time I spent in those relationships really held me back from experiencing other things. I dated the first girl for almost 7 years (from my early 20s), and even though it was apparent after two years that it wasn’t going to work out, I never had the courage to leave. More recently, I’ve had the opposite problem. I’m happy with my girlfriend now, but sometimes there’s still a voice in the back of my head telling me that I shouldn’t settle down with anyone until I’ve sorted out my SA for good. I’ll be a different person then, more confident, and I’ll have more choice in who I am going to be with. Scarlett Johansson is still single, right?

Of course this is just a fantasy. But I do feel like the area of relationships and SA deserves a lot of thought and discussion. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m curious if anyone out there has any thoughts…

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships and social anxiety. After about one and a half years of staying totally single, I’m in a relationship again. It’s been six months now, and I’m having a great time with my new girlfriend. But here’s the thing. While those six months have been a very happy time for me in many ways, I’ve recently come to the realization that in other ways I have been going backwards. A year ago, I was pushing myself to regularly attend events where I didn’t know anybody to practice mingling, I was going to the gym regularly, and I was taking public speaking classes. Now, the easy option on weekends is to just hang out with my girlfriend. And I have become very lazy. As a result, I can really feel the SA starting to creep back into my life. I sometimes feel anxious even meeting up with friends, and I feel much more nervous attending meetings at work.

In retrospect, this is something that has happened to me EVERY time I have been in a serious relationship in the past. Battling SA takes a lot of energy. So does maintaining a relationship. Working on the two at the same time is not easy, and is something I have never successfully managed to accomplish. I have seriously thought of ending my current relationship and just focusing on my SA again as a single guy. But I don’t think that is really the answer. I get the feeling that this same issue is going to come up WHOEVER I am in a relationship with, because ultimately it is about me. So I’m going to start with one thing at a time. I haven’t been to the gym in three months and I’ve just renewed my membership. The weather is warming up. I have no excuses for not getting out!

Well, it’s been more than a year since I posted on this blog, and I’ve decided it’s time to start writing again. In retrospect, the best progress I ever made in beating SA was the period of a few months when I was blogging about my experiences in early 2008. There is definitely something very positive and motivating about getting your thoughts down in print. SA has been on my mind a lot again lately, so I’m hoping to start posting again quite regularly. Standby!

Ever had that experience where you suddenly find yourself the center of attention and turn bright red for no reason? Where the more you think about stopping it the more you face starts to look like an overripe tomato? It hasn’t happened to me for quite some time, which I guess is a mark of progress. But of course, as is the way with social anxiety, just when you think you’ve got something beaten it comes back at you with a vengeance from time to time. I got my hair cut really short last week, shaved number 2 all over. I’m still not sure why – I suddenly decided on a whim to just see what it would look like. And Monday mornings at work we have a regular team meeting with about 12 people. So of course I rock up and am instantly faced with all sorts of comments about my hair. “What happened? Are you joining the military? “Are you going to Iraq” and so on. I make a lame attempt at defusing it with a joke and start to turn bright red. I start to think that everyone must be noticing me turn red. I turn even more red. It’s a classic vicious circle. The same thing happens to me again later in the day when someone jokes that she heard I went red in the meeting (not a very sensitive comment but I don’t think she was intending to be mean). So it was a horrible day. But I’m trying to think about it rationally. A couple of years ago I would have treated that sort of event as a catastrophe and crawled back into my shell for weeks. Now after feeling shaken up a bit for a day, I’m fine. Who cares what anyone thinks about my hair? And if I did go red, big deal. Is it really the end of the world? There are more important things to worry about. I have no plans today, so I’m going to go out, do some shopping, and practice talking to some random people asking for directions. Just a little bit every day and I can’t help but keep making progress.

Setbacks are a natural part of the process of overcoming social anxiety. After a few months of really measurable progress, I’ve just had one of those weeks where nothing seems to go right, and you start questioning whether you really are moving forward. It started out well. I organized an event last weekend, getting together a group of people that I met recently at a social event, for drinks at a bar. Now this is the first time I have ever done anything like this in my life. Taking the initiative to invite a whole group of people out, some of whom didn’t even know each other. But on the way there suddenly a whole bunch of old insecurities come flooding back into my mind. Suddenly I start thinking too much. “What am I going to talk to these people about? What if they don’t all get along? What if I start to get anxious like I used to do and they notice I am acting weird…” And so on… It’s amazing what tricks the mind can play. So by the time I got there, I was feeling anxious and jittery. I couldn’t relax. I could feel the tension in my face. The more I thought about it the more difficulty I had smiling. I was back in that vicious circle of anxiety where the negative thoughts in your head become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Logically in my head, I know I have made huge progress. Six months ago I would never even have thought of planning such an event. I would always wait for other people to invite me out, and even then I would often decline. But it’s funny how the mind will always ruminate on the one negative experience and forget about the 10 successes you’ve had before that. I felt a little down after that night out, and a couple of days later realized that I was slipping into the same old bad habits again at work – avoiding small talk and eye contact, and generally keeping to myself.

Well, it’s time to get back on the horse. The only way you can fail in this battle against social anxiety, is if you give up and stop trying, I tell myself. So I’m looking forward to the weekend. I’m going to my public speaking class tomorrow, which I may not be looking forward to, but I at least no longer dread like I did in the past. I also have some shopping to do, and am going to experiment trying to start some small conversations with the shop assistants. I’m really focussing on just becoming a more sociable person in general. It’s hard work and it doesn’t come naturally. But I know that the results will pay off for the rest of my life when I finally get there.

One of the most challenging parts of overcoming social anxiety is learning to become a more friendly and sociable person. If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent much of your life avoiding all sorts of social situations, dreading small talk, and avoiding eye contact. These harmful habits become so ingrained in your brain that you do them without even thinking about it. Have you ever been asked why you’re looking so serious? It happens to me regularly, and the crazy thing is that most of the times it happens I’m not even in a particularly bad mood. The way I feel inside and the way I am being perceived by the people around me are totally different. It’s only recently that I’ve become very conscious of what a damaging impact this has.

Let me describe a common experience I have had countless times over my life. I enter a new social environment, like a new job or a class. Initially people are friendly and show great interest in me. But very quickly over time, I sense that people become colder, and after a while, are even avoiding me. No doubt a lot of this was just happening in my head. But as I look back I now realize that was not all. If you are constantly walking around with a frown on your face, you look uptight and serious every time you talk to someone, and you avoid eye contact every time you walk past someone in the office, is it any wonder that they are going to feel a little uncomfortable around you? In other words, your nervousness makes them nervous, a classic vicious circle.

I’ve been really consciously working on this over the past few months now. In every interaction I have, whether its with the cashier in the supermarket, or passing my boss in the office, I try to at the very least smile, make eye contact and say hi. I still feel uncomfortable talking to some people at work, but I have to say I am seeing real benefits already from this practice. Without a doubt the best thing I have done recently though is practice talking to total strangers through meetup.com.

If you’ve never heard of meetup.com, I highly recommend you check it out. It’s basically an online forum where people in cities all over the world form “meetup” groups centered around all sorts of different interests – whether it’s hiking, politics, singles events, or language exchange. If you live in a big city like New York there are literally hundreds of these events going on every week. It’s a fantastic way to practice meeting people. I still can’t believe it, but I went to two different events last weekend, both where I didn’t know a single person. Just six months ago the very thought of this would have been horrifying.

At the first one on Friday night I was a little nervous and didn’t stay that long. But then I got home and told myself that it was a huge step just going out on my own like that. And I decided to go to another event the following day that was more challenging: a bar full of about 100 people. I introduced myself to 4 or 5 people and even spoke to 2 or 3 attractive girls, while I was there. Myself, a random guy, and two girls wound up going to get dinner later, and I stayed out for about 6 hours and had a great time. Unbelievable. The more experiences like this you have the more you start to internalize the notion that if you are willing to take some risks, there are enormous benefits to be had. This is truly life changing stuff.