The anxiety that plagues me plays a large role in how I deal with daily situations and how I interact with people. It's a constant thing and it's always there. The blessing/curse is that I have become extremely good at toughing it out even while anxious, which is why it can be classified as high-functioning anxiety, and it's also why sometimes you really can't tell if I, or others like me, am just an aloof, sometimes annoying, antisocial jerk or if we're feeling really crummy inside.
Let's state it loud and clear: I have anxiety. I think most of it is social anxiety, because much of my distress comes from social interactions (or the thought of them) and interpersonal relationships. I want to establish now that some things I say in this post may be contradictory and confusing. Trust me, I'm confused too. But I'm really saying it how it is, and I don't think anybody could truly make sense of it all in a succinct and definitive way. The first paradox: I love who I am. I think very highly of myself. In some ways, I don't care what others think of me because as long as I know my own worth, it doesn't matter. However, I still have this desperate urge to feel liked and appreciated. This is an inherent trait in everybody, I think. Who doesn't want to feel like they're cared about?
But here's the problem: I get obsessively worried about what other people think about me, and no matter how much I try to shut up the little voice in my head, it's always there picking at every interaction I have with everybody, wondering if they like me and wondering what they think about me. It's maddening and frustrating. Obviously I'm aware of the fact that not everybody is ever going to like me as a person; that's impossible. And then, I know that even if I am likable, it still doesn't mean I'll be everybody's favorite person. And yet I still try and aspire to be, and there's that tiny annoying hopeful gremlin in my head that's like "listen, June. You gotta make sure these people think you're awesome and want to talk to you all the time! you GOTTA!"
I realize this makes me sound desperate for emotional validation and that I sound weirdly obsessive. I know. It annoys me more than I could ever communicate.
That leads me to another thing: it's okay to feel. I'll say it again: it's okay...to feel. To just feel a certain way, to let your emotions have their way for a few minutes. I grapple with this a lot, but we have to understand that our emotions are valid. Whatever you feel is what you feel and there's no changing that. Part of the process of feeling better - less nervous and less anxious (for the moment, that is) - is understanding your own thoughts and emotions. It's aggravating sometimes but I find that if I actually listen to my internal concerns and worries, understand the reasons for why they exist, and acknowledge their existence, I feel a little better. Sure, the problem may not be solved, but that's okay. Now at least I understand what the problem even is. I can sort through what is in my control and what isn't, and work from there. Or I can just acknowledge how I feel and leave it at that.
When it comes to all this, I'm still working on remembering that exterior validation isn't and never will be as important as the validation I can provide for myself. Does that mean I don't seek validation? Haha. No, it doesn't. I'm constantly on the fence between thinking "forget everybody else, I'm doing me and that's great!" and "maybe I'd ultimately be happier if I didn't do this or if I improved on that..."
Another struggle I have is something I've talked about with a therapist. Yes, I went there; I started talk therapy last semester because I was overconfident and took a full 18-credit load and suddenly felt my mental health spinning out of control. I'm making a point of this because I hate the stigma that comes with mental illness and getting help with it. Mental illness is valid and real, people!! You don't have to feel sorry for me or think any differently of me because I go to a therapist to help me sort out my anxious thoughts. If you feel like you need or even just want help with mental stuff, please just go for it. You go to the doctor if you feel physically ill or break a bone, so why wouldn't you go to get help for something inhibiting your mental state from feeling better?
Anyway, back to the struggle. My social anxiety stems from my inherent longing to feel liked. My need to feel liked comes from the fact that I was kind of lonely as a little kid. I was shy, introverted, and probably had some sort of social anxiety back then too, because I tried so hard to fit in with other kids but somehow couldn't, either because I was too shy to show that I wanted their company and ended up pushing them away unintentionally, or because I simply wasn't interested in what they talked about or did. This is not to say I didn't have friends or meaningful relationships, but rather what I'm trying to say is that even with my best friends I still felt like something wasn't right. I've always had this inherent fear that suddenly my friends will decide that I'm too annoying/boring/weird/all of the above, and that they'll stop wanting to be around me. This was true back when I was a young child, and it's true now as I sit here typing this. So sometimes what may seem like nothing or an offhand, meaningless comment from someone will be overly picked part and analyzed by yours truly, all the way until I manage to somehow convince myself that all my friends actually all dislike me and only agree to speak to me because they're nice. Yeah, I know, it's very dramatic, but that's what it feels like.
So at that point I'm suspicious that nobody actually really likes me, and I'm very introverted and am usually content spending time alone anyway, so I avoid being around other people. Usually I don't like being in groups of people unless I'm very comfortable around all of them, because otherwise my shy nature causes me to be left out. And then me being left out leads to me feeling unliked, which isn't necessarily true, but my anxiety thinks it is. But then I get lonely, as one does, and seek out my friends, and then the agonizing cycle of overthinking starts again. I usually prefer spending time with just one good friend, because that's where I'm most comfortable (and where I can re-convince myself that my friendship is actually real and not something I just made up). Two's company, three's a crowd. And you wouldn't ever be able to tell all this chaos is happening unless you're really trying to read me.
With all this, then, why do I still find myself spending time in groups of people? If I am so nervous about being around people, why do I still go to social events and how in the world do I seem so composed while I'm doing presentations in front of people? If I know that I don't like being in crowded places, and that I will kick myself for saying stupid things later when I'm with friends, why do I still put myself out there? Part of it is the cycle described above that I keep getting stuck in, but part of it is my aptitude for putting things on the back burner of my mind.
I'm told that I am amazingly high-functioning despite the inner turmoil my mind is in most of the time. But I want you, as the reader, to understand that this doesn't mean the anxiety isn't there. It's always there. I like to think of it as being an annoying pot of any liquid of your choosing - actually, let's call it a saucepan (to keep things saucy, of course) - that's constantly on the stove. Sometimes it's on high heat and everything is boiling over and I feel terrible about everything and nothing can go right and my head is spinning with racing thoughts and I start feeling funny in my stomach and I don't feel like I'll ever be okay because everybody hates me and--and you get the picture.
But other times the saucepan is just on the back burner, simmering and gurgling anxious thoughts at me every so often. I can ignore those or work to reason with them as they come because it's not all that overwhelming. Due to my combined experience with this over the years, my natural inclination to just "suck it up" when it comes to my feelings, and lots of practice, I've gotten really good at turning the heat to a lower setting and shoving the hot pot aside to simmer in the back of my head. But it's always there, and it's always threatening to boil over. It's my Saucepan of Impending Doom.
Some people aren't as good as I am with tending to the Saucepan, and some are even better than I am. This is why we shouldn't ever compare different people's mental conditions, and we should never make concrete assumptions on how somebody is feeling. I may have a saucepan, but someone else may have a huge pressure cooker and somebody else might just have a tiny pot.
I appreciate a gentle check-up every so often, especially if I seem off, but I hate when people hear that I have anxiety and immediately start treating me like an oversensitive, fragile baby or a mentally incapable person. I'm a frickin' adult, and I've been handling this on my own for years, so just treat me as you would treat anybody else. If something makes me feel uncomfortable, I've learned that I need to voice it explicitly to people who otherwise won't pick up on it. And in my experience people don't typically like to bring up matters of the mental illness variety. Hence why I'm writing about it now and hence why, if you've noticed it when you're with me in person, I speak very frankly about my mental turmoils. It's uncomfortable and it's hard, but some things are better left unsaid and some things are waaaay better when they're talked about.
While we're talking about uncomfortable things, let me talk write to you about my thoughts on mindfulness. Because I've heard that phrase way too often: "have you, you know, tried...mindfulness?"
First of all, yes, I have tried being mindful. Sometimes I think that my problem is that I'm too mindful. I'm an introvert and my specialty is being alone to think about things. I work constantly to understand myself. Many of my friends have told me I think too much and that I need to go outside and just do stuff for a change, and quit being so conscious of the entire world and overthinking everything.
Mindfulness is about being conscious of your thoughts and feelings and being in the moment. It's about accepting things as they are, right now, right here. That's cool and all, but what I hate is when people treat mindfulness as a solution, a cure. Do you ever get this? You're stressing about something, you're complaining about your back hurting, or you've got tension headaches and that one person just comes up to you and is like, "okay, but have you tried meditation?"
Listen up. Meditation and mindfulness are not the cure-all. It helps for some, and it doesn't for others. If it helps you, good. But it sure don't help me and my saucepan. And that's okay.
Really, it's okay. Because with all my complaining about being in emotional hell and struggling to cope with my anxiety sometimes, I always know deep down that it'll be okay. It definitely doesn't feel that way sometimes, but at the end of the day I'm still here and still pushing through. You can call it grit, resilience, or whatever you want. All I know is that this is what I live with, and it may or may not be what you have to live with, but at least now I hope you have a better understanding of my anxiety and maybe it helps you think about things a little bit differently.
I also want to point you in the direction of a nice article I came across about coming to terms with your own thoughts and how to lessen anxiety, because to some extent everyone's got some sort of Saucepan of Impending Doom (or, if you read the article, a mammoth) in their lives. It was helpful and put things in perspective for me, and it might for you too.
Until next time!
~ JP
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