I know I said I wouldn't have a pissing contest, but my ego told me otherwise.
I think there is an "avoidant personality disorder" which may or may not have more to do with your personality, but we are talking about SA.
APD is essentially a more severe form of SAD:
https://www.verywell.com/avoidant-personality-social-anxiety-disorder-difference-3024444
And you think the reason you fear everyone is because you are prideful and egocentric?
When you
focus on yourself constantly, how you don't measure up to society's or the people's around you standards of what a person is supposed to be, yes, you become fearful of being judged and ridiculed. So you withdraw. People tend to think that if you're egocentric, that you're full of yourself. Well it can go the other way too.
Also I'd say that I was proud, but also without pride. I think that what happened was that I used to take pride in myself, then woke up to the reality of things, felt inferior, so felt that I needed to make up for it in some way -- boom, superiority complex. You can even call it an alpha-beta mentality. I needed to prove that I was better (mostly against other men and those who had slighted me), not on any conscious level, but I was doing it nonetheless. I felt that everything was a competition, which stressed me the **** out during every single social interaction. Everything I identified as was riding on winning or being better. I considered this as "just being a man." And whenever I "lost," friendships would either dissipate, or I would make up excuses for how I was "special" in some way, and that I would show everyone up one day. So I ended up burning out eventually and hated socializing. Over ten years of experiencing this. But now that I see that I don't
have to partake in this little game of pride, and it honestly feels good.
And in retrospect, it seems like a lot of the people I knew suffered from some sort of egotistic mania, which obviously didn't help because I myself was suffering from it too. That's just a recipe for disaster. I'm doing a little experiment right now where I'm trying as little as possible to compete with other people or become overwhelmed by my pride. To see and treat them as complete and utter equals. Historically, I've either thought of people as better or worse than me. No more. And of course I've heard of the platitude "treat others as equals" but that never really made sense to me on any meaningful level until recently. I can already think of one friendship that, from my point of view, has improved because of it, and it's only been about two weeks since adopting this philosophy.
My experience is that it's not different at all, as long as you hold up the standard of only diagnosing the disorder in those who had their lives significantly damaged by the symptoms, like never being able to graduate from school or finding a job. I can relate very much to what they feel even when their lives are totally different from mine. Can't pick up the phone or make a call? Can't do the most simple things in the presence of others, like drinking a cup of coffee? Made it to college but can't enter the classroom? Can't leave the front door, and probably wouldn't even if your house were on fire? Been there. Been there a million times, even when I read about situations I have never been through, I feel exactly the same in my own circumstances.
I too can relate to these things. It took me a decade to get my bachelor's degree, in part because of my anxiety.
I still have no idea how you reached the conclusion that maybe it all comes from a self-centered personality though. The most effective treatment available, with the best results (CBT), never mention your ego or things like pride, lazyness and cowardice, to mention some other nice traits people like to believe are what SA is all about. They are wrong as well. Actually, It's all about teaching your brain to stop behaving irrationally, and that's all.
If my ego is out of control, I'd define that as irrational thinking. Also I didn't say "it all comes from" the ego. I said that if a person realizes their ego is out of control, they can take steps to mitigate it which in turn, can blunt the blows of SA. I'm not saying it solves SA entirely. I agree that CBT is effective.
I find it hard to believe a social anxiety that goes away this easily was destroying your life to the extent that Social Anxiety Disorder usually do, and you were probably mistaken about having it.
It's not gone. Maybe it's lessened, but it's not gone. I've only just thought of this. Let's see how it plays out in the long run... and I hope it plays out well.
I think a lot of my SA stems from coming from a broken family, and verbal and physical abuse as a kid as well. Addressing those issues in a meaningful way is probably required to make a full recovery, if there is such a thing.
You are actually right about this, depression and SA like to hang around. But as I said, the behavior seen in the cluster B is usually the opposite of what we have with SA. The psychos over there usually crave attention, while we avoid it at all costs, and also how we react to attention, how we understand attention, everything about us is totally different in every way. To think we could have a similar emotional framework makes no sense, they do not overlap at all in this case.
This feels like a general blanket statement that makes SA black and white, and I think SA is more grey than anything. SA is far from being solved as a mental disorder. Otherwise, this forum wouldn't exist.