New person here

[yaraxia]

I'm new to the forum and just wanted to introduce myself 🙂

I'm 18 and a second year university student. What prompted me to sign up was actually a birthday invite by a friend, and the subsequent anxiety it produced.

I fear that I may be developing some form of social anxiety (although my symptoms are not quite as severe as others). I've always been quite introverted and liked my own company yet these uni holidays I can count on one hand the number of times I've left the house (other than for work). When I do go out I feel extremely vulnerable, I'm worried that people are looking at me and judging every part of my body. Traffic lights are the worse.

I've been ignoring messages from my friends even though I do care for them, because socialising has become hard.

I don't know how I'll survive uni this year, because last year I skipped several classes and limited the amount of time I spent there because I felt deeply uncomfortable in class or even just walking around the campus. It's like the only time I feel comfortable is when I've isolated myself in my room.

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi Yaraxia,

Welcome to the forums and thanks for joining us!

Some of the things you've described certainly does fit in with social anxiety. There's a big spectrum of what anxiety looks like in people and how it can feel/present.

You've mentioned some of the ways that it affects you, can I ask about what you've been doing so far to cope or manage with it? If you like maybe we can talk about that and build on those skills so that next year doesn't have to be quite so daunting!

You also might want to have a look at these threads here -

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/online-forums/anxiety

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/online-forums/staying-well

Hopefully this is helpful and hope you enjoy being here.

[yaraxia]

Thanks for the reply romantic_thi3f's

I don't really employ any healthy coping strategies to deal with this. I mainly practice avoidance (I don't attend any social functions unless I'm forced to by family, I avoid unnecessary conversation at work). Or if I have to go out I'll try to do whatever business I have to get done as quickly as possible. I'm kind of getting sick of this and I am trying to research better ways to manage.

[Preacher]

Anxiety has many different forms and many different reasons for being. I am pretty introverted too and its taken me many years to accept myself as who I am and not what other people have tried to shoebox me into.

Be wary of worrying yourself into a state of anxiety that might be just you trying to find your way, you are young, at University and trying to establish who you are and what you are about, other people whether they are friends or family will have an opinion and a view about you, that may not necessarily be correct. These kinds of social pressures will impact on your daily decision making processes and they will influence you in ways that you might regret.

Ask yourself, how important is your university study? Are your friends more important? Does your family want you to stay at home, or be successful at Uni?

What do you want?

Often, overthinking and ruminating on things is key to feeding anxiety. But you also do need to pay attention to how you are feeling and try to identify what it is that leads you to indecision and worry.

When I first went to college, many years ago, being introverted and exposed to a new environment, exciting and nervewracking at the same time, I often felt torn between being sociable, being cool, hanging out and being a geek and getting on with my study. I also had to deal with having the freedom to make my own choices.

Invariably, I was overly influenced by friends and social status. I failed miserably at college and then couldn't get into university. I lived with that for a long time.

Its OK to not want to be sociable. Some of us just aren't that sociable. Most of the time I would rather read a book or watch a lecture or TED talk on YouTube. Its OK to think that maybe your friends just aren't that interesting or that your family social events are boring. And it really is OK to ignore stuff on social media.

You define who you want to be and then work hard to be that person.

[romantic_thi3f]

Hi yaraxia,

Thanks for your post and good to hear from you again.

So avoidance is kind of a funny coping mechanism, because it works in the sense that you avoid all those situations and feeling anxious, but then at the same time it doesn't help long-term, because you won't always be able to use this strategy and the more that you avoid things the harder it can be to participate in them.

I think for me personally one of the things that helped is trying to manage my anxiety first so that I feel somewhat ready to go out in public.

There are lots of different ways to do this, one of them might be looking at your thoughts. How likely is it that people are judging you? What are the chances that when people are stopping at traffic lights, all they are thinking about is you? and so what if they were?

I wonder if you've ever thought about talking to a therapist? This might be helpful.