Do you know what triggered your social anxiety?

Dealing with arrogant sociopathic misanthopes playing victim

I grew up homeschooled. The only time I did any kind of socializing with more than one kid at a time was church, and even then only sunday school. Almost every saturday growing up I spent the day with my best friend. It's surprising how hard it is to have friends and socialize when you don't go to school and aren't old enough to drive.

When I got a bit older, but still didn't have a drivers license. I was able to do some kind of socializing online and had some online friends.

Needless to say, by the time I was really able to socialize and had something the got me out of the house and around other people (a job). I wasn't exactly in a confident, healthy state of mind and able to socialize well. For one thing, I didn't have much as far as social skills went. I wasn't horrible at it, and probably better than I would admit to, but still I wasn't that great.

And spending so much time all alone when I was a kid, without much to do and a lot of time spent pacing around bored, didn't help me much...

So here I am. Friendless, and unable to make any friends, whether face to face or online. Things only get worse.

I don't know.

I had the audacity to be a racial minority, somewhat overweight and have an eccentric personality growing up in a society where kids being cruel to each other is condoned, or at best, ignored (so long as the person on the receiving end is not as likable as the one dishing it out).

Yep..birth sounds about right.

I did handle it all better when I was younger. I would go out with friends (but now that I look back, it usually involved alcohol so I'm sure that made it easier...)

I rarely go out unless it is for work.

I never considered it until maybe the last year, when I starting really examining my childhood...My mother was an extremely verbally abusive person, and overall my parents fought, almost violently, all the time. I never really learned what rational, calm conversation and good negotiation skills were. It probably ingrained into me that if I don't act a certain way or talk just right, I'd get yelled at or something.

I was the only child and my parents were overprotective. Their caring about me also lead me to becoming overweight and all this eventually lead to social anxiety.

Being "different" like it was a bad thing, I was bullied. Once I transferred to another school in high school, everyone left me alone and I kept to myself. Even felt excluded from my own family and siblings. My dad was very passive-aggressive and emotionally distant. My mom was a nag, nit-picker, complainer, kind of controlling , wasn't really overprotective but her words made me feel I couldn't amount much to anything.

Bullied a lot, emotionally abusive parent. Perfect recipe for SA.