do I have social anxiety or not?

coriander1992

Well-known member
Hi :)
in the last few years I have developed into a very shy person, and I was wondering wether I have social anxiety.
I do have friends, and am quite confidant when around them, and people I know well, but just being around people I don't know causes me to get stressed out because I think that they are judging me, and that I am not worth being around them. This occurs more when i'm around teenagers around my own age.
I am familiar with some of the mentioned "symptoms" of social anxiety, my main ones are:
- Avoiding eating infront of people, and when I have to I find that I cannot lift a cup to drink because my hands shake, and I constantly think people are looking at me.
- I cannot walk down the street like a normal person. I have to be holding bags, or something so that my arms aren't hanging by my sides because I feel uneasy and anxious when I have to walk without anything.
-I can't look people I don't know in the eye when talking to them.
-I try my hardest to get out of going anywhere by myself, or doing anything by myself.
-I am really shy of people.

Do I have social anxiety, or am I just shy?
comments greatly appreciated :D
 

haze

Well-known member
the eating thing i dont have a problem with allthough the rest i do to a certain extent.
i will feel awkward walking down the street if i cant occupy my 2 hands with something but thats what pockets are for :D
i can look people in the eye if i dont know them but not when there looking at me aswell it just doenst feel right so i end up looking at lots of diffrent things and looking at the eyes aswell.
i do that with certain things aswell but i try and make the lie plausable and if i cant think of something in time (the amount of time i give myself depends on how badly i want to get out of doing whatever it is) i just do whatever it is.
iam also really shy of people but only if i dont already know them quite well.
 

coriander1992

Well-known member
thanks

Hi, and thank you both for your comments and help. :D
Those links you gave me littlematchgirl have been quite helpful, and i have been reading them, and its helping me to understand why i act that way a bit more.
I think (and it took me a while to realise this) that the reason i have become this way is because of bullying in my first 3 years of secondary school, because all the way through primary school i was a very confidant child, and I loved going out to places, like disco's etc., but now the thought fills me with dread.
The bullying was of the girl-on-girl type, so it was verbal rather than physical, and I was hearing nasty comments about myself the whole time, so I think that, not being used to the nastyness of it, it has caused me to become more un-happy with myself, and really aware, and uneasy, of what other people think of me.
sorry for ranting on :oops: thanks for helping me again :D much appreciated :D

ETA : another thing that I have only just realised is related is when i went ice skating at the weekend. I got there and there were loads ofolder teenagers in the room/line waiting to go in. I told my dad that I wanted to walk around town instead, and he couldn't unserstand why I had been so excited about it, and let him park and then was telling him at the last minute. We did go in though, as my sister wanted to badly, but I so badly wanted to get out of there, and just felt like I was inferior to everybody else in there.
(sorry for the rant again :oops: )
 
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