Everyone with social anixety just has victim mentality

madeup

Active member
Let's just %#$@ around for just a second and make a generalization.

Everyone with social anxiety is choosing to be anxious in order to play the victim.

So the game is to answer this question.

If it were true that everyone here was choosing to be anxious despite the fact that they hated it, how could that come about?

I have an idea... What if...

Everyone here had some type of problem with where they perceived themselves to be on some social hierarchy. Maybe at school, at home, with friends, or at work... Somewhere, they felt dissatisfied with their position among their peers. It doesn't matter whether they felt they were at the bottom of it or just not at the top... they just share a dissatisfaction with where they think they stack up.

Assuming that was true, and its true for a LOT of people... everyone whose not a king has probably felt it at some time and the kings themselves have probably felt it before.... but anyways, assuming that was true, what if people with social anxiety were stirring up this anxiety in order to have something to blame for not being at the top?

Like our ego wants to believe that we are special and unique and secretly the best no matter what and when we aren't perceived that way by others we create excuses.

But why would anyone ever choose anxiety... Well think about it... Anxiety is a feeling, it comes and goes, it's not permanent.

Compare saying these two things to your peers:

1. "I'm not the leader because I suffer from social anxiety."

2. "I'm not the leader because I'm too ugly."
You could replace ugly with stupid or short or any other more permanent condition.

I think that what could be happening is that people have a gimmick that they play in order to avoid people seeing them as having a serious, permanent disadvantage in terms of being electable to the top of the social hierarchy.

The general idea is "if it wasn't for this damn anxiety, then I'd be at the top and I'd have everything I ever wanted..."

Not only does it create an excuse to give to others, it gives us the ability to disillusion ourselves into thinking that we can solve all problems by solving one problem... social anxiety

If you think hard about it, it's really not difficult to solve at all.

It's just doing two things.

1. Being around people
2. Feeling calm

You can damn well do those things separately so why not together?

Think about what would happen if you were calm around people. What would change?



Personally I have a hard time making friends and I used to think that it was my social anxiety that caused this but I haven't had social anxiety for a few years now since recovering and this problem is still around.

I'm just now turning it around but it's taking a lot of work... It has taken me a long time of blaming everything under the sun before I finally took responsibility for it and now I'm finally making progress.

What do you think?
 

Jellybeans

Well-known member
being calm around regular-ass people is easy as hell. it's just the dicks that tend to make things a little rough. also, dominant-hungry assholes tend to piss me off too, which leads to anxiety.

your logic might not be too far off from the reality, but you're venturing pretty far into narcissism. also, self esteem isn't always to blame for social anxiety.
 

krs2snow

Well-known member
Excellent post, Madeup! :D
That ego. He's a master at self preservation, he is. He'll do anything to keep us from finding out he's a fraud. & we buy into his smoke screen walls most of the time.
 

dottie

Well-known member
i am confused at the point of your post.

are you saying you do not believe in anxiety disorders?
you think the feeling of being gobsmacked on-the-spot with debilitating anxiety is something people choose?
or do you think some people lie and say they have it?

If it were true that everyone here was choosing to be anxious despite the fact that they hated it, how could that come about?

anxiety is not a condition people choose. but people choose how to manage / live with it and that is where the victim card comes in. just like any disability, some people use it as an excuse. others of us push on, try to adapt, and lead "normal" lives (work, independence, etc).

It's just doing two things.

1. Being around people
2. Feeling calm

i go to school and i work. so i have part 1 down. i AM trying to take responsibility but...

how do i feel calm? how do i turn off the feeling of fight or flight? it is a feeling that arises when i am expected to interact with people. it can hit me like a train. it can render me speechless as i'm standing in front of someone trying to interact. the feeling isn't a choice; it is felt instantly like touching a hot stove.

when these feelings hit me i am not scheming about how i could use this as a gimmik or an excuse for my life's failures! i'm so overwhelmed that i can't think straight!

good for you for recovering. were you diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or just extreme shyness? i am going to go back to counseling soon (after many years of not going) so hopefully i can learn some CBT techniques or something to dismantle the intense feelings that hit me like a ton of bricks.
 

worrywort

Well-known member
AWESOME post madeup! yea man, I definitely think you could be onto something.....I relate to this a lot....I've often thought this before too. It's this idea of shifting the blame....I think everybody does it in all kinds of ways.....fat people may say they're big boned, or have low metabolisms....or alchoholics may say they have addictive personalities or something....which may be true to a degree, I dunno....but at what point does the blame shift to themselves for simply being too greedy?.....it really is such a conveniant excuse too, because suddenly it flips me from being a loser to being a hero.....it's like I've been afflicted with this disorder through no fault of my own, and yet I'm fighting through it etc.....people have empathy for that story......

BUT there is one little problem with this whole theory, and that's the fact that next time I'm at a party, I WILL feel anxiety, even if I'm totally aware of this theory and I'm really trying my hardest to be normal and not play the victim etc.......so even if this theory is true, it's definitely a unconscious thing, which means fixing it becomes much harder!......but also, I wonder, WHAT IF there IS actually something chemically wrong in our brains.....I mean my dad has depression and social problems.....it could well be genetic.....when I first noticed SA in my life I definitely didn't ask for it....and why does SA often come on during teenage years?....cause there are pills you can take that fix SA or at least help it, so something chemical must be going on......but is it possible that our choices in life [conscious OR unconscious] can actually affect our brain chemistry? I don't see why not......

and one last thing I wonder about is....whats so bad about losing or failing or taking the blame anyway? Why do we hate it so much? How come we all tend to think of ourselves as way more important than we actually are, when you think of the billions of people to have ever lived? we're all really very insignifcant, mathematically speaking.....but what's so bad about failing?.....hmm....
 

krs2snow

Well-known member
The reason I like this post is because i do think social anxiety is a coping method. That's not to say it isn't real. It's very real. But, I think it's born out of our not trusting ourselves. The less we trust ourselves & our ability to interact in the world the more we suffer. & the ego is the one telling us we shouldn't trust ourselves. He's the one saying "Stop! You'll look like an idiot, you idiot!" He feeds us these lies b-cuz he doesn't want us to know the truth. That we're all here for a reason & ea. of us already possess exactly what we need to live in the world.
 

Argamemnon

Well-known member
madeup said:
If you think hard about it, it's really not difficult to solve at all.

It's just doing two things.

1. Being around people
2. Feeling calm

You can damn well do those things separately so why not together?
Being around people? How can I be around people, if I don't have any friends? And being around strangers will not bring happiness. You have to have people you feel close to.
 

bleach

Banned
You lost me at "Everyone with social anxiety is choosing to be anxious..." because it's flat wrong.

If you've had anxiety, you know. Certainly some people choose NOT to do anything about their problems, and others do. But the anxiety itself is a reactive emotion, not a willed one... not a chosen one.
 

Argamemnon

Well-known member
Every single day I decide not to "fear" people anymore, but as soon as I come across people, I experience the same debilitating anxiety. Surely, it's not as simple to overcome this horrible disorder as some people make it sound...
 

lonely_down_under

Well-known member
Argamemnon said:
Every single day I decide not to "fear" people anymore, but as soon as I come across people, I experience the same debilitating anxiety. Surely, it's not as simple to overcome this horrible disorder as some people make it sound...

Yeah me too.

'madeup' can't see through or hasn't properly researched about this disorder and judges this from a very superficial perspective.

In simple words, he's a mother fucking cuntjob.

That's my theory.
 

dzerklis

Well-known member
what i like about this site most is that its social phobics only and yet we see strangers passing by every once in a while..
 

LostViking

Well-known member
Phobia:
a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.

Irrational:
1. without the faculty of reason; deprived of reason.
2. without or deprived of normal mental clarity or sound judgment.

Thank you, dear dictionary.

Problem here is that a phobia involves an irrational fear. You know you're safe, that nothing is going to hurt you, that you'll be fine, etc. But you'll still be anxious/worried/scared.

I'll just give the OP the benefit of doubt and assume he's playing the devils advocate here.
 

Benatom

Member
I do wish that I could be at the top or a more important person but I don't use anxiety as an excuse for why I am not that type of person. Besides I want to be at the top but social phobics are afraid to do so because they don't like being judged. Although I do have to say that perfectionalism does play a part in the develpment of social anxiety disorder
 

Fairy001

Well-known member
I think we do not choose to have anxiety, however, we do have responsibility and choices as to how we cope with it.

We can hide a way, avoiding all social contact, become bitter and nasty.

We can seek therapy or medical help if thats whats needed.

We can try meditation or yoga to try and balance our minds.

And lots of other things, positive and negative. In the end, it is OUR problem, it isn't about blame and we can change, with a lot of work and honesty.

Here endeth the sermon!

Peace xxx
 

madeup

Active member
I want to clarify and reiterate my point but let me preface this by saying that this is just a game, it's not my belief of which I want to stuff down your throats.

Here's the idea in simple terms (as simply as I can make it.)

John is in high school and suffers from social anxiety. John is not the most popular kid in his school. Why he isn't the most popular is subjective and unimportant. What is important, is that John realizes that he is not the most popular kid in school. For whatever reason (genetic?) he has a heightened awareness and focus on the fact that he isn't the most popular.

Popular represents a few things in this case: respected, admired, loved, etc.

Now my question is this... Is it possible that John creates his anxiety around people in order to have an excuse for not being the most popular.

One poster mentioned that its not possible to create emotions but that isn't true. Your brain is the source of your emotions and you have a great deal of control over your brain.

Choose to focus your attention on a time in your past where you felt very calm and you will start to feel calm. Even more dramatically, choose to do something that calms you, like take a bath and you will feel calm. Even more powerfully, by being open-minded and re-evaluating a situation you can learn to integrate an entirely new feeling into a situation. A lion tamer isn't fearless of lions since birth, he or she re-evaluates the sight of a lion from "Oh $^#% a LION!" to "this is Jacob the lion and it's my job to use my understanding of lions to train Jacob." And it can take time for him to do this but it’s definitely possible and it happens all the time.

When people claim they can't control their emotions, its not so much that they can't control them, its that they don't like what they are feeling and wish they could feel something else. However, it's entirely possible that you believe on a deep level that you NEED to feel this way in this situation despite the fact that the feeling is uncomfortable.

Nobody enjoys feeling fear but when your car loses control on the highway, you subconsciously believe that it is necessary to feel fear to motivate you to take action to save your life. You subconsciously understand that if you were to feel happy when this situation was occurring, you could end up sitting back and enjoying yourself and end up losing your life.



What's likely happening when someone with social anxiety feels anxious around people is that their brain is bringing up all kinds of images and thoughts that create anxiety. Your brain is choosing to create anxiety in response to your environment (people).

Now this is subconscious, you don't think to yourself, "Oh hey people, I'm going to think of some really scary stuff happening to stir up some anxiety."

No, it's a subconscious part of you thats doing that(so it feels like you have no power over the situation) but nonetheless its a choice your brain is making and those choices can be edited.

So this relates back to another question that was asked: how is it then that someone with social anxiety can suffer so much pain and keep choosing to be calm around people and yet end up feeling anxious?

Well, what if there's a part of you that believes feeling anxious around people is MORE important than the part of you that wants to free yourself from the discomfort of feeling anxiety?

Well then in that situation, you can choose to be calm around people all day and night and in the end that part of your brain that believes feeling anxiety is more important will win over.

What if the reason feeling anxiety is so important for John is because…

1. He is aware of a social hierarchy at his school and he feels the need to be at the top.
2. His ego (his self-image of himself) part of his brain wants to believe that he's secretly the one best qualified to be on top.
3. His logical side understands that he's short and less intelligent and less attractive than some of his peers.

… and feeling social anxiety is a very complex, creative solution to this problem.

With social anxiety, John gets to:
1. Still have the desire to be at the top of the social hierarchy - He doesn't have to change what he wants...
2. He still gets to believe that he's special and superior and that its just this social anxiety thing keeping him from being the best.
3. He gets to completely forget about the other "problems" that keep him from being at the top.

The downside?
Feeling anxiety...

John could try to add lack of friends, poor relationships, whatever... but really these are separate problems.

When John tries to link SA with these other things, he’s really saying:

“If I were to solve my social anxiety and feel calm around people, I would have great friends, great relationships and whatever else I want.”

And this is great for him because that means he only has one problem that’s between him and everything he wants… How’s that for creating hope?

So he begins to really believe this but whenever he gets close to actually solving the problem, he backs down because he subconsciously knows that without social anxiety he’s going to get smacked down again by the same problems from before that are a lot tougher to solve.

“How do I make everyone love me when I’m not as tall, intelligent, and attractive as everyone else.”

That’s a bitch of a problem…

So in reality, curing social anxiety is just the start. Because all it really means is feeling calm in social situations. Being calm won’t instantly give you great friends and great relationships.

And to say that SA prevents John from having friends, relationships, whatever… Yeah I believe you, I know… but that doesn’t interfere with social anxiety’s ability to solve the 3 problems John was facing to begin with…

So someone else pointed out that they understood this theory and yet they still felt anxiety…

I don’t think its enough to understand, you have to take action on it to see if it works.

My solution?

Forget the social hierarchy. Give up that desire. How? Give up trying to control other people. Walk into a room with ABSOLUTELY no intention or motivation to control other people in anyway (that includes trying to control how they perceive you) and see what happens.

You could counter this with “that’s too hard” but really there’s less going on here than what most people usually do.

Spending energy on trying to control how others perceive you is an intricate, complex behavior.

Walking into a room and giving up all control and not creating value judgments on everything is downright lazy in comparison.

It takes practice but whenever I do it, I get this deep level calm wash over me that lets me see everything that’s going on without judgment and its fascinating to see how everything interacts with one another.

What do you think?

And if anyone tries and comes back and posts about it.... pure awesomeness...
 

phoenix1

Well-known member
First off, fascinating post madeup.

I think in many ways you are right. We do create our own anxiety because we do not want to accept certain thoughts or perceptions (such as being ugly or stupid). Anxiety is essentially our effort to control the situation around us.

We create anxiety for really one purpose, that’s to stop pain. And in a way focusing on the control of how to stop every little bit of pain is an excuse to not focus on certain possible realities. I mean in many ways it is easier to focus on every word you say or every little physical attribute because it gives you a feeling of control and a feeling that if we work hard enough we just might be able to overcome it. It’s a complete lie, because the harder we work at stopping the pain the more pain we give ourselves when it comes to social anxiety.

If we learned to accept our perceived faults or problems, then we wouldn’t have anxiety, but it’s more complicated than that. Being ugly or stupid is never black and white and it’s a perception and our minds know that. If we lost the ability to walk, it would actually be pretty easy to move on with our lives because its black and white and permanent. Being ugly or stupid can change from day to day. That’s why we can’t accept something like that, even though many of us try all the time. The only thing that happens is that we go on a rollercoaster ride of being depressed as we accept it…to feeling happy as we realize we aren’t as stupid or ugly as we thought.

So basically we are left with anxiety to try to control the situation.

Anxiety happens when you fear the pain of society anxiety more than you desire the benefits of social activity. I guarantee that everyone who has social anxiety focuses more on how to free themselves from the pain of social anxiety more than they do on the benefits of being social. The day you feel more of a desire to be social then a desire to stop the pain is the day you won’t feel anxiety.

People who are outgoing and anxiety free aren’t the ones who free themselves of pain. They are the ones who care more about being with people then they do about the pain of mistakes or failure.

madeup said:
Well, what if there's a part of you that believes feeling anxious around people is MORE important than the part of you that wants to free yourself from the discomfort of feeling anxiety?

Trying to free ourselves from the discomfort of anxiety is what causes anxiety. Like I said, I think the internal battle is more along the lines of freeing yourself from suffering (causing anxiety) vs wanting to be social (opposite of anxiety).
 

krs2snow

Well-known member
Every single day I decide not to "fear" people anymore, but as soon as I come across people, I experience the same debilitating anxiety.

Hey. Just some thoughts on this. I chose this quote b-cuz it highlights what I was thinking. I think the reason the "debilitating anxiety" is still there is b-cuz we are focusing our attention on the WRONG thing. We do not actually fear people. We fear our Reaction. The reaction is fear. And we Fear it. I gotta say that again. The reaction is fear. And we Fear it. The people are just people. Being people. I also believe it's when we become conscious of our reactions instead of afraid of them, we can eventually achieve the sense of calmness madeup (hey madeup! What's up!?!) refers to.

Heres a quote from an author to further emphasize me point! :D

An Author said:
To be consciously afraid means that you know you are frightened, but at the same time you know that these very fears, as real as they may seem- are not You.
 
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