Social anxiety

Does anyone here have personal experiences with social anxiety? I recently found out that I've been suffering from social anxiety since before puberty most likely without even being aware of it. And I'm not talking about any 'meme image' of social anxiety that is about people with poor social skills or hipster introverts. I'm talking about the actual mental disease. An irrational, crippling fear of being judged by other people, not being able to eat in public, have phone calls with strangers, have small talk with strangers, showing physical symptoms of fear whenever there is a socially triggering situation. My life would have turned out very differently if I had known earlier that this is a treatable mental disease. But I feel like it's very sneaky compared to other mental diseases. I've lived my whole life thinking I'm just shy. Being shy is a healthy fear of social situations. I've never felt like I was 'sick' or really different from others, except for the fact that I had a hard time to socialize with strangers or talk in class, especially in group work or giving presentations was especially bad. I am also naturally introverted, so I never experienced my lack of social contact as a bad thing, since I always still had a few good friends to hang out with that I had met before my social anxiety had really developed. During my entire school years, I was constantly told by teachers I'm too shy. Yet nobody ever came up with the idea that I might be suffering from social anxiety after realizing that me trying to overcome my fear does nothing to make it better. I mean this mental disorder develops 99% in late childhood/puberty, and is apparently the third most common mental disorder after drug addiction and depression, yet all my teachers just kept telling me 'aww you're shy, poor you' rather than trying to help me effectively with their 20+ year experience of working with children and teenagers for a living. I do think that older generations had less opportunity to develop a potential predisposition for social anxiety, since nowadays the internet offers a lot of ways to escape the need to engage in real life contact to cope with life. So maybe this is more of a 'new' disease. It's still a big mindfuck to me that I've lived 15+ years of my life with a mental disease without knowing about it.

Either way, I am curious to know if someone has been able to 'heal' their social anxiety with (cognitive?) therapy and how exactly does therapy help with that. I used to work at a coffee shop for a year when I was trying to overcome my 'shyness' but overcoming my fear 50 times a day by talking to strangers changed nothing. I believe this is the difference between a healthy fear and an unhealthy fear. It doesn't just go away by exposure to a (perceived) rational threat, because it simply isn't rational. Some traumatic experience in my childhood has wired my brain in a way that social situations are perceived as a threat, no matter how many times I'm rationally proven wrong by experience. And I wonder how therapy can rewire my brain in a healthy way. Is there even hope for that after having lived with it for such a long time.

So yeah, social anxiety thread, if anyone has anything to contribute.

 

Are you sure that your traumatic experiences as a child didn't just make you shy and then you became less shy by making new, positive experiences? Or did you actually get the official diagnosis 'social anxiety' from a health professional? But it's good to hear that you don't let your fears win, that's the most important thing!

 

Well, fear and shyness are not really opposites. Shyness is a rational, healthy fear of social situations. Someone can be afraid of a barking dog because they anticipate an aggressive dog to bite or maybe they have been bitten by a barking dog before. That is a rational, healthy fear. A dog phobia is an anxiety mental disorder, where a person is afraid of a dog, despite knowing that they shouldn't be afraid, for example by knowing that the dog is really friendly and tame. But ultimately, it doesn't really matter if one is just shy or socially anxious, as long as you have figured out a way to not be afraid anymore, that's all that matters. For me, having lived with this for so long and having tried many times to overcome my fears on my own but just not getting better, I realize that I need professional help.

Thank you for your words, I appreciate it.

 

I used to have a crippling social anxiety to a point I was afraid of getting out of my apartment. I used to go out during the night covered with caps like a camouflage
When I saw some girl approaching or people in general in front of me, I would change course and go to the other side of the road. I never went to stores, never went to new places. Social gatherings, I ran from them like the plague. But I consider myself relatively cured except for my sense of inferiority, on which I'm actively working and getting better each day.
I did that the hard way. I got a job as a cab driver in the capital city hahhaha
It was lunacy to take such a task when I was scared of talking to strangers, was afraid of new places etc.
It sucked, really sucked. I did this for about 6 months but even though I hated it. By the end of it, I had become immune to people talking trash to them and could very well be in conflicts most of the time. And my fear of going to new places vanished as I had to push myself to go to new places everyday. So nowadays, whenever I have to go somewhere in the rush hours uknown. I don't really care, I just go.

Also forgot to mention but I took pills for my anxiety. in the beginnning especially, they help immensely.