anyone struggle with there job due to social phobia?

Pacific_Loner

Pirate from the North Pole
i started my first full time job a few months ago, and dont get how people can talk so much. I feel rather left out! Does anyone else feel the same way?
I work with 2 women and they have bags of confidence (too much if u ask me) and joke with eachother about stupid stuff, it feels so painful to be with them. I cant quit i need the money and want to gain confidence

Unless it's a job where you should be seen as social and talkative, I think you should try to not worry too much about it. I'm also the silent one at work, and even though they had to get used to it a bit in the beginning, everyone seems ok with it now. I think the important is to be nice in general, and to do a bit of casual conversation once in a while just to communicate and answer the conversation when they are talking directly to you, but other than that, you're there to work, not to chat.
 

TheRadicalAnxiousLefty

Well-known member
My sales job

I remember my old sales job. It was horrible. I was stuck with a group of extroverted young people with social lives, dating lives, and the like. Literally all I could think about when I was out on the field, going door to door, was how much less I had accomplished relative to them, how much better they were than me, how much smarter and more emotionally intelligent they were than me, and so forth. If I had to express it another way, it was like they "got it" and I was a ****ing clueless, half-baked amoeba.

I got very squirmy and uncomfortable when they started joking and playing around, taking the piss out of one another, and being bubbly and social. It annoyed me because I could never tell if someone was joking or being serious when I became the topic of discussion. Either way, it stung like an ice cold knife through my lung.

When I pitched my first person, I was so damn nervous that the lady offered me a glass of water and a cigarette, noticing my frenetic shaking, the beads of sweat trickling down my forehead, the conspicuous cracking and shaking of my voice, the mumbling, the faulty, incoherent delivery of my sales pitch, and my anxious eyes darting all over the room, as if looking for a way out. I am 100% certain that she ended up giving me the sale because the felt sorry for me.

Even two months later, I would still be quizzed by my fellow team member's about why I was so visibly nervous. I didn't have an answer for them.

When we got back to the office, late at night, everyone would fill out their activity sheets for the day, then go into the group room and catalog all their sales for the day, in a chatty and excited manner. I purposefully made sure I was the last to do my activity record, so I didn't have to go into the room where they all were. Fear held me back. I envisioned walking in and everyone's eyes all gazing at me, making me the center of attention, their cold, judgmental stares seeing right through me, into the center of my soul. The anxiety was so bludgeoning to my psyche, it made even saying goodnight to the group a Herculean exercise in self-discipline and gritting willpower. After I plucked up the courage to do so, saying farewell to all and exiting via the stairwell, I would shuffle off across the road, lost in thought, totally, white-hot furious at myself: "why, WHY the **** are you so pathetic? Why can't you just be like normal people? Stupid moron."

This nightly, repeating episode would be made a hundred times worse if I had failed to get sales for the day; two hundred times worse if everyone else had hit their targets. On extremely rare occasions, if I had reached my goals, the pain was dulled by self-pride.

During the mornings prior to leaving for the day to get out on the field, there would be about 7 or 8 of us in the main room, waiting for our team leader to give us a speech. People would hang around and make chit-chat about what they got up to the night previously, or discuss random topics. I never plucked up the courage to join in. So terrified I was, that I deliberately brought a newspaper with me every morning so that I could *pretend* to be reading something, and avoid looking like an awkward loser that was too afraid to interact with my fellow salespeople.

It became clear that I was not a very good salesperson. This made me even more reticent in my interaction with others. I had to regularly ask for money off my already poor mother to pay for food and rent, because I was making so few sales. And the little money I did make would be spent on lunch with the sales team, since I didn't want to look like the odd one out bringing my own packed lunch (I was too self conscious for that).

During my sales pitch, I would be pressured, anxious, and unbelievably self-conscious. I had an inability to relate to most people, and anyone that was even slightly forward or bold would intimidate the hell out of me. If I made a gaffe, it would be all I thought about for the next hour, and if it was a bad gaffe, there was literally nothing anyone could do: I would not be making any sales that day.

In a nutshell, there is nothing good I remember from working in sales. It did not fit my love-shy, social phobia, unconfident personality, and it certainly was not a financially rewarding job.
 

TheRadicalAnxiousLefty

Well-known member
I remember my old sales job. It was horrible. I was stuck with a group of extroverted young people with social lives, dating lives, and the like. Literally all I could think about when I was out on the field, going door to door, was how much less I had accomplished relative to them, how much better they were than me, how much smarter and more emotionally intelligent they were than me, and so forth. If I had to express it another way, it was like they "got it" and I was a ****ing clueless, half-baked amoeba.

I got very squirmy and uncomfortable when they started joking and playing around, taking the piss out of one another, and being bubbly and social. It annoyed me because I could never tell if someone was joking or being serious when I became the topic of discussion. Either way, it stung like an ice cold knife through my lung.

When I pitched my first person, I was so damn nervous that the lady offered me a glass of water and a cigarette, noticing my frenetic shaking, the beads of sweat trickling down my forehead, the conspicuous cracking and shaking of my voice, the mumbling, the faulty, incoherent delivery of my sales pitch, and my anxious eyes darting all over the room, as if looking for a way out. I am 100% certain that she ended up giving me the sale because the felt sorry for me.

Even two months later, I would still be quizzed by my fellow team member's about why I was so visibly nervous. I didn't have an answer for them.

When we got back to the office, late at night, everyone would fill out their activity sheets for the day, then go into the group room and catalog all their sales for the day, in a chatty and excited manner. I purposefully made sure I was the last to do my activity record, so I didn't have to go into the room where they all were. Fear held me back. I envisioned walking in and everyone's eyes all gazing at me, making me the center of attention, their cold, judgmental stares seeing right through me, into the center of my soul. The anxiety was so bludgeoning to my psyche, it made even saying goodnight to the group a Herculean exercise in self-discipline and gritting willpower. After I plucked up the courage to do so, saying farewell to all and exiting via the stairwell, I would shuffle off across the road, lost in thought, totally, white-hot furious at myself: "why, WHY the **** are you so pathetic? Why can't you just be like normal people? Stupid moron."

This nightly, repeating episode would be made a hundred times worse if I had failed to get sales for the day; two hundred times worse if everyone else had hit their targets. On extremely rare occasions, if I had reached my goals, the pain was dulled by self-pride.

During the mornings prior to leaving for the day to get out on the field, there would be about 7 or 8 of us in the main room, waiting for our team leader to give us a speech. People would hang around and make chit-chat about what they got up to the night previously, or discuss random topics. I never plucked up the courage to join in. So terrified I was, that I deliberately brought a newspaper with me every morning so that I could *pretend* to be reading something, and avoid looking like an awkward loser that was too afraid to interact with my fellow salespeople.

It became clear that I was not a very good salesperson. This made me even more reticent in my interaction with others. I had to regularly ask for money off my already poor mother to pay for food and rent, because I was making so few sales. And the little money I did make would be spent on lunch with the sales team, since I didn't want to look like the odd one out bringing my own packed lunch (I was too self conscious for that).

During my sales pitch, I would be pressured, anxious, and unbelievably self-conscious. I had an inability to relate to most people, and anyone that was even slightly forward or bold would intimidate the hell out of me. If I made a gaffe, it would be all I thought about for the next hour, and if it was a bad gaffe, there was literally nothing anyone could do: I would not be making any sales that day.

In a nutshell, there is nothing good I remember from working in sales. It did not fit my love-shy, social phobia, unconfident personality, and it certainly was not a financially rewarding job.
 

JamesSmith

Well-known member
I read through a lot of this thread. Something that still surprises me is not that many of us are having problems, but that so many people at our jobs do not understand that there are people that are shy. That's what has surprised me the most at my jobs, too.

I've worked like 15 different jobs throughout my life, and at most of those jobs, the majority of people acted like they'd never dealt with a shy co-worker in their life. There are a decent amount of shy people in the world, I'm not quite sure why it's so "shocking" to our co-workers that someone prefers to be reserved and introverted while at work.

At one of my last jobs, I got laid-off just because I was shy. My boss came up to me and was like, "Well, we have to lay someone off, and you are the shyest and most least valuable socially, so we are going to have to lay you off." That was at a janitor job.

I still haven't figured out how to open up to co-workers on a consistent basis. I'm currently working with just a boss at a flower delivery job. I haven't really opened up to him, but I've managed to effectively communicate with him enough to make my job manageable. It helps that it's only part time. Eventually, I'm going to have kick it back up to full time if I want to get out of my parents' house, so we'll see what happens. What makes it tough is that so many jobs involve dealing with people when you only have a high school diploma.

Of course, it's just as bad if you have a degree, as many of those jobs require communication with others constantly. Although, I found it interesting to hear my brother describe his job. He says he's in front of a computer most of the day by himself. So, it does vary a bit. I would say the majority of jobs are "people dealing with" jobs, though.
 
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TheRadicalAnxiousLefty

Well-known member
At one of my last jobs, I got laid-off just because I was shy. My boss came up to me and was like, "Well, we have to lay someone off, and you are the shyest and most least valuable socially, so we are going to have to lay you off." That was at a janitor job.

Yeah it seems Western culture has little to no concept of the introvert or the reserved person.
 

Solitudes_Grace

Well-known member
@TheRadicalAnxiousLefty

:eek:That seems like it must have been hell. I would never be able to deal with a job like that. I do not know how long you had this job, but your post seems to indicate that it was for at least a few months. Kudos for sticking with it for as long as you did.
 

TheRadicalAnxiousLefty

Well-known member
Thanks.

Too be honest, I don't feel proud of myself. At all. I didn't become any more social or open with people, it just served to expose my limitations. And my reliance on my mother was shameful. I still have guilt over it.
 

recluse

Well-known member
I've just been fired for the first time in my life because my stupid sa stopped me from performing my job duty::(:
 

-lonestar-

Well-known member
Sometimes I wonder if openly talking to people at work about social phobia would make them have empathy for you and at the same time get some of them to give you tips or just get over it since once something is out its no longer just your cross to carry. Just a theory, might only work sertain work places perhaps, where being macho isn't praised so much.
 
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-lonestar-

Well-known member
I used to work full time in an office with mainly women, it was actually quite nice. You just need to be polite and talk to people and it will get easier from there on in.

The worst thing for me was answering the phone and trying to deal with difficult calls I didn't know the answer to.

Do you work in an office? if so what type of education/training did you take I think I'd be happy with this type of job, where there are manners and no slobs.
 

-lonestar-

Well-known member
Unless it's a job where you should be seen as social and talkative, I think you should try to not worry too much about it. I'm also the silent one at work, and even though they had to get used to it a bit in the beginning, everyone seems ok with it now. I think the important is to be nice in general, and to do a bit of casual conversation once in a while just to communicate and answer the conversation when they are talking directly to you, but other than that, you're there to work, not to chat.

I've noticed this too, every now and then I could find some people to talk about nott for abit and itmade me mre coforabe. ost people are ardwired o talk ecause of attention = feeling good and just so people know you are not a bad person or snob.
 

-lonestar-

Well-known member
My sales job

I remember my old sales job. It was horrible. I was stuck with a group of extroverted young people with social lives, dating lives, and the like. Literally all I could think about when I was out on the field, going door to door, was how much less I had accomplished relative to them, how much better they were than me, how much smarter and more emotionally intelligent they were than me, and so forth. If I had to express it another way, it was like they "got it" and I was a ****ing clueless, half-baked amoeba.

I got very squirmy and uncomfortable when they started joking and playing around, taking the piss out of one another, and being bubbly and social. It annoyed me because I could never tell if someone was joking or being serious when I became the topic of discussion. Either way, it stung like an ice cold knife through my lung.

When I pitched my first person, I was so damn nervous that the lady offered me a glass of water and a cigarette, noticing my frenetic shaking, the beads of sweat trickling down my forehead, the conspicuous cracking and shaking of my voice, the mumbling, the faulty, incoherent delivery of my sales pitch, and my anxious eyes darting all over the room, as if looking for a way out. I am 100% certain that she ended up giving me the sale because the felt sorry for me.

Even two months later, I would still be quizzed by my fellow team member's about why I was so visibly nervous. I didn't have an answer for them.

When we got back to the office, late at night, everyone would fill out their activity sheets for the day, then go into the group room and catalog all their sales for the day, in a chatty and excited manner. I purposefully made sure I was the last to do my activity record, so I didn't have to go into the room where they all were. Fear held me back. I envisioned walking in and everyone's eyes all gazing at me, making me the center of attention, their cold, judgmental stares seeing right through me, into the center of my soul. The anxiety was so bludgeoning to my psyche, it made even saying goodnight to the group a Herculean exercise in self-discipline and gritting willpower. After I plucked up the courage to do so, saying farewell to all and exiting via the stairwell, I would shuffle off across the road, lost in thought, totally, white-hot furious at myself: "why, WHY the **** are you so pathetic? Why can't you just be like normal people? Stupid moron."

This nightly, repeating episode would be made a hundred times worse if I had failed to get sales for the day; two hundred times worse if everyone else had hit their targets. On extremely rare occasions, if I had reached my goals, the pain was dulled by self-pride.

During the mornings prior to leaving for the day to get out on the field, there would be about 7 or 8 of us in the main room, waiting for our team leader to give us a speech. People would hang around and make chit-chat about what they got up to the night previously, or discuss random topics. I never plucked up the courage to join in. So terrified I was, that I deliberately brought a newspaper with me every morning so that I could *pretend* to be reading something, and avoid looking like an awkward loser that was too afraid to interact with my fellow salespeople.

It became clear that I was not a very good salesperson. This made me even more reticent in my interaction with others. I had to regularly ask for money off my already poor mother to pay for food and rent, because I was making so few sales. And the little money I did make would be spent on lunch with the sales team, since I didn't want to look like the odd one out bringing my own packed lunch (I was too self conscious for that).

During my sales pitch, I would be pressured, anxious, and unbelievably self-conscious. I had an inability to relate to most people, and anyone that was even slightly forward or bold would intimidate the hell out of me. If I made a gaffe, it would be all I thought about for the next hour, and if it was a bad gaffe, there was literally nothing anyone could do: I would not be making any sales that day.

In a nutshell, there is nothing good I remember from working in sales. It did not fit my love-shy, social phobia, unconfident personality, and it certainly was not a financially rewarding job.

This is how I felt in highschool, the worst statements were are you a virgin? to which I just said nothing, and in later years said no tho I doubt I sounded convincing which often followed by teasing for me to share stories. trust me being seen as a virghin in highschool hurts alot when your secret reason is a secret and its a lame phobia. I felt awful everyday like actual physical pain inside and exhaustion at how weird I was to people whom would eventually not even acknolege my presence, sad so sad.
 

-lonestar-

Well-known member
I read through a lot of this thread. Something that still surprises me is not that many of us are having problems, but that so many people at our jobs do not understand that there are people that are shy. That's what has surprised me the most at my jobs, too.

I've worked like 15 different jobs throughout my life, and at most of those jobs, the majority of people acted like they'd never dealt with a shy co-worker in their life. There are a decent amount of shy people in the world, I'm not quite sure why it's so "shocking" to our co-workers that someone prefers to be reserved and introverted while at work.

At one of my last jobs, I got laid-off just because I was shy. My boss came up to me and was like, "Well, we have to lay someone off, and you are the shyest and most least valuable socially, so we are going to have to lay you off." That was at a janitor job.

I still haven't figured out how to open up to co-workers on a consistent basis. I'm currently working with just a boss at a flower delivery job. I haven't really opened up to him, but I've managed to effectively communicate with him enough to make my job manageable. It helps that it's only part time. Eventually, I'm going to have kick it back up to full time if I want to get out of my parents' house, so we'll see what happens. What makes it tough is that so many jobs involve dealing with people when you only have a high school diploma.

Of course, it's just as bad if you have a degree, as many of those jobs require communication with others constantly. Although, I found it interesting to hear my brother describe his job. He says he's in front of a computer most of the day by himself. So, it does vary a bit. I would say the majority of jobs are "people dealing with" jobs, though.

am I the worst at posting? I feel I'm a serial quoter but oh well lol... Yeah I hate that too theres always gotta be atleast one person who notices and makes rude coments about the shy guy, for some reason I felt less of a man, because deep inside I'm not as they see me, I'm actually witty and cool well as far as I can tell lol. I'm not much different from most when I'm in my comfort zone, in fact I think Im better than those yapping losers, I'm just more sensetive or something.
 

tenuous~hold

Well-known member
heck yeah. jobs can totally suck, along with the politics that go with them. & then there's the bosses...............
 

TheRadicalAnxiousLefty

Well-known member
This is how I felt in highschool, the worst statements were are you a virgin? to which I just said nothing, and in later years said no tho I doubt I sounded convincing which often followed by teasing for me to share stories. trust me being seen as a virghin in highschool hurts alot when your secret reason is a secret and its a lame phobia. I felt awful everyday like actual physical pain inside and exhaustion at how weird I was to people whom would eventually not even acknowledge my presence, sad so sad.

I know EXACTLY how you feel. It was like this when I first went to uni for an I.T. degree. Everyone literally just ignored me because they didn't know who I was, and I was too scared to pipe up and make myself known. It was very exhausting and depressing. I felt too timid to introduce myself to anyone; they all were motivated young students with social lives, hobbies, interests and well-articulated visions of their futures. I just felt like a shaken, scared boy in a sea of fast-moving chaos and noise. I literally was over 200km out of my comfort zone, having only visited a city maybe 10 times in my whole life, prior to moving up to one permanently.

And here's the kicker: after living in Melbourne for 4 years, I STILL haven't gotten used to it. I would love to find any excuse at all to move back home to the country and live with my family. The only problem is that I am mortified about what my family and my friends will think of me if I did so. The most ideal situation I can imagine is if they perfectly understood my condition and RECOMMENDED I move back for a couple of years. That would be just ideal.
 

Nanita

Well-known member
I´m not really able to have a job right now, unless I could find a nice peaceful job that would fit me perfectly, which I can´t right now. In the past I struggled a lot with the jobs I had. It´s not only my SA though, I don´t have a great physical health either.
 
I'm having major problems at my work because of it. Funnily enough I got into this area of work because it meant I could work from behind my computer - only social interaction would be online. After years of working externally I got an internal position which I took - basically because I 'knew' the people from online so well that I felt comfortable.

But I recently switched to another company, same field, but a bit up the ladder so to speak. And this is where my SA hit me full blown in the face. As I am supposed to build up a department, it was fine when we were just a small group of people. I was quiet at first but slowely and gradually was accepted into the group. The problem I am facing now is that allot of my job requires me now to crash course train people from other divisions of the company. That means they are at my office for 2-3 days and in those 2-3 days I not only have to devote my time to them to make sure they are fully trained, but I also have to be social with them by taking them out to lunch or dinner after work.

This alone makes me freak out so much that I can't even stand being in meetings nowadays with the people I have been working with for the better part of the year now, my claustrophobia gets the best of me and I start to get a panic attack.

It's slowely... very slowely getting better. The first time a panic attack hit me at work I was on sick leave for 2 weeks, out of fear of going back. The second time, I went straight back home and took 2 days off. The third time, I spent two hours outside in the freezing cold on a park bench trying to get a grip on my self. The last one, two weeks ago, I spent 2 hours on the staircases trying to gather myself again lol...

I have been very open about my SA towards my coworkers and boss, but they don't seem to realise how much I am handicapped in my work. Atleast they don't send me off to other divisions across the country anymore (I declined 3 times untill they got the hint) but still new trainees are pushed onto me, cause I am the only one who can train them.

The coworker who is building the department with me is the only one who I can actually rely on in this matter, when it gets too much, I walk out of a meeting or send him a text that I'm having a panic attack, and he smoothly takes over for me. At this moment thats a fine way of coping with it, but in the end it's only making it easier for me to 'dump' in onto him so to speak and I feel guilty afterwards.

In the end, I truly love my job and I am really good at it, and I'm scared that my SA will get the better of me and all the sick leave and not being able to preform crucial parts of my job (meetings, training, traveling to other divisions ) will in the end hurt my career or even make me lose it at some point, where they might settle for someone who is less qualified but atleast can sit through a meeting...
 
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