Anonymous123
New member
Hi, I'm a 16 year old boy from Norway. I'm pretty anxious around people i dont know very well, i find it very hard to paticipate in groups of people (not so much in class discussing a subject where everyone have to say something, or presentations. In fact i am kind of less anxious around presentations when i know the content good enough, i often get a grade 5 out of 6 (like A or B i think)).
When walking my 15 minute walk home with my 6 friends every day, which ive done as long as i can remember, the only subject i dare talk about or participate in, is about school and tests ( things i feel regards everyone)(sometimes i can talk about my other interests skiing, golf, music, movies and tv, pc and internet- but my friends nearly only talk about mopeds and motorcycles and cars and real life things like buying stuff and doing everyday things i dont do (i find it very hard just to cut my hair, and i just got a bank card which i've never used- i'm afraid of using it wrong getting embarrased). If i study the things they talk about and read more abot them i dont dare to talk about it with them in fear of them thinking or saying «suddnly he startd talking about that»
But sometimes when a subject i know something about is being conversated about i just shut my mouth because i dont want them to think thats all im interested in (like, i dont find it very cool to chat about computers). I also know absoulutely nothing about most of the things they talk about, and due to previous incidents when they talked about football (which i also dont like) and i tried saying who scored and was wrong, i got so embarrased, my brain learned a habit of shutting up when there is something i dont know much about that is the conversation topic. When i've been quiet for almost the whole walk, i also dont want them to tell me "oh there he suddenly starts talking" in a negative way (which have happened to me before) after being quiet for so long. One on one conversations i can do very well (depending on the person im talking with), but usually its the other person im talking with who has to choose a subject. i'ts only with my best friend i can talk very good. Sometimes i stutter and talk too fast( i try using slow talk as the CBT tapes say, and have gotten better at it)
At home i can be myself completely and i am not afraid to do or say anything, i am in fact a very noisy person who can babble away about all or nothing. I am also a very joking and funny person at home laughing a lot. I can have very long conversations with my mother.
I am self conscious about my voice, i feel it's too girlish at times still now(because of my anxiety, when im calm i can make it deep). I felt puberty was a very dumb/stupid thing and tried to hide it from my friends (because one of the pupils in my class hit puberty before everyone else in 5th grade and got bullied about it)
When i hit puberty in 6th or 7th grade, i always tried to hide my kind of deeper voice from the other pupils who made fun of one of my classmates. I felt teased when they said «he has gotten a voice change» in a negative way. Since sixth grade (now im 16) i know i look good always found excuses for not being with my friends so i wonder if it's SM instead of SP cause i can speak perfectly well with some people( mainly my mother and sister) i can also speak pretty good with my closest friend, but i do feel anxious while doing so. I feel i havent got the chance to develop proper social skills, like which "comebacks" to use or how to I wont swear cause i dont want my friends saying "i've never heard him swear before"(the reason for this is because i heard some of my friends badmouthing one of my other classmates who suddenly started swearing. this incident have lead me to avoid doing other things like that too. For instance, one thing that has haunted me many times is that (as stated earlier, when i hear someone say something is stupid, weird or not cool, i take that very literally and avoid doing teat later) in 7th grade my friends started talking about girls which i still thought was a stupid thing (like everyone in 1st grade and so think) (i didnt think that myself, but felt it was stupid that i should talk about that, so i tried to hide it when they asked me if there was any girls i liked in class (which i did) i said no, and that eventually through a lot of similar conversations lead to them thinking i was gay, which was an absoulute self esteem killer. I got very depressed after and during 7th grade (8th was pretty good) then it went downhill to where i am now i've pretty much lost all contact with friends after school (except for xbox live, which i hate, because of having to use the mic). But still i am somewhat a part of the class and the friend-gang in a way.
I also have a fairly low self esteem. However i do like something about me, i'm very good looking. If people see me for the first time i think they think im a very cool person, i dress in a cool way and have cool hair etc.
I've just started Dr Thomas A. Richards Overcoming Social Anxiety CBT tapes, but now when i recently discovered about Selective Mutism i wonder if those self help tapes are right for me if i do have SM. Things became even more confusing when i read about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), I wonder if i should stick with the Thomas A. Richards tapes or try that instead? So what do you think, do i have SP or SM? (I myself think i have just SP)
physical reactions i have are sweaty hands and sometimes a bit sweaty on my forehead and nose, always being nauseaous, having my shoulders always in a stressed position (not noticeable, but always have a lot of stress on my shoulders), before i tended to avoid eye contact, but now i can do it almost perfectly (i find it harder on adults). I am always afraid and often prepare what im going to talk about next morning in class the first hour.
I had a very childish humour and joked a lot before 7th grade, my friends said i should stop doing it and i hid my real personality after that, which has now been buried for a long time, i cant be myself in any social situation except for at home. I barely dare laughing because i had a comment towards me that my laughter was ugly.
My mother was too easy on me never made me do chores like buying groceries, my father was waaay too strict said dont say that blablabla and shouted at me and got angry for anything little. Such as when i said something as mild as «shut up» to my sister (which may be one of the reasons for the swearing problem mentioned earlier) he shouted etc.
Sorry for a very messy post but i just had a lot to say and couldnt organize it properly
Additional info i didnt bother with fitting in the text:
I am very analytical. I go through every conversation (positive or negative) in my head. (i've kinda stopped with this after doing my first week in the CBT tapes)
I think i've had this since i hit puberty, but before that i always found excuses for not playing with my friends, i simply wanted to be alone ( i am never bored when alone)
recently its been very stressful with xbox live i bought a whole years membership and many people are asking why i'm never on ( i dont like using the headset to communicate).
I never log on to MSN messenger anymore, because i dont have more than 12 contacts and the others in my class have like 50 each, plus i hate chatting on a pc, i like it much better in real life. But one thing that has been wondering me is how they get all these contacts, do they ask each individual person for their adress and write it down? Cause i've never heard it been talked about except for when someone wanted my adress. But anyway like i said im afraid of going on MSN because i hate it and for my contacts to discover that i dont have all of my classmates on there. I also dont have facebook.
I hate recess, just standing in groups in the hallway or outside, i find it hard fitting in the group, they sorta block me out in a way.
If i could have SA in a society where i didnt feel pressure or needed to socialize in work or school, i would have loved having it, i prefer being alone relaxing(im intoverted)
I feel i have a lot of potential under the «skin» of social anxiety/phobia/selective mutism(whatever it is i have) and a great personality (maybe still a little too childish)except for the lack of some social skills like saying thank you for a present or greeting someone etc. I have bad replying social skills sometimes (if someone said they did something cool for example i dont always know waht to sau)
I also have a lot of all the other common symptoms/problems expected with social phobia that i havent taken the time to mentione(on diffferent levels)
i used to have whole evenings when i couldtn get to sleep when i thinked about crap that had happened in the past(not after the CBT tapes- currently in week 2)
Wow! That was a lot of mess.
i know this is much to read, but please read all of it before answering. I didnt have time to edit all this im just writing all my thoughts
When walking my 15 minute walk home with my 6 friends every day, which ive done as long as i can remember, the only subject i dare talk about or participate in, is about school and tests ( things i feel regards everyone)(sometimes i can talk about my other interests skiing, golf, music, movies and tv, pc and internet- but my friends nearly only talk about mopeds and motorcycles and cars and real life things like buying stuff and doing everyday things i dont do (i find it very hard just to cut my hair, and i just got a bank card which i've never used- i'm afraid of using it wrong getting embarrased). If i study the things they talk about and read more abot them i dont dare to talk about it with them in fear of them thinking or saying «suddnly he startd talking about that»
But sometimes when a subject i know something about is being conversated about i just shut my mouth because i dont want them to think thats all im interested in (like, i dont find it very cool to chat about computers). I also know absoulutely nothing about most of the things they talk about, and due to previous incidents when they talked about football (which i also dont like) and i tried saying who scored and was wrong, i got so embarrased, my brain learned a habit of shutting up when there is something i dont know much about that is the conversation topic. When i've been quiet for almost the whole walk, i also dont want them to tell me "oh there he suddenly starts talking" in a negative way (which have happened to me before) after being quiet for so long. One on one conversations i can do very well (depending on the person im talking with), but usually its the other person im talking with who has to choose a subject. i'ts only with my best friend i can talk very good. Sometimes i stutter and talk too fast( i try using slow talk as the CBT tapes say, and have gotten better at it)
At home i can be myself completely and i am not afraid to do or say anything, i am in fact a very noisy person who can babble away about all or nothing. I am also a very joking and funny person at home laughing a lot. I can have very long conversations with my mother.
I am self conscious about my voice, i feel it's too girlish at times still now(because of my anxiety, when im calm i can make it deep). I felt puberty was a very dumb/stupid thing and tried to hide it from my friends (because one of the pupils in my class hit puberty before everyone else in 5th grade and got bullied about it)
When i hit puberty in 6th or 7th grade, i always tried to hide my kind of deeper voice from the other pupils who made fun of one of my classmates. I felt teased when they said «he has gotten a voice change» in a negative way. Since sixth grade (now im 16) i know i look good always found excuses for not being with my friends so i wonder if it's SM instead of SP cause i can speak perfectly well with some people( mainly my mother and sister) i can also speak pretty good with my closest friend, but i do feel anxious while doing so. I feel i havent got the chance to develop proper social skills, like which "comebacks" to use or how to I wont swear cause i dont want my friends saying "i've never heard him swear before"(the reason for this is because i heard some of my friends badmouthing one of my other classmates who suddenly started swearing. this incident have lead me to avoid doing other things like that too. For instance, one thing that has haunted me many times is that (as stated earlier, when i hear someone say something is stupid, weird or not cool, i take that very literally and avoid doing teat later) in 7th grade my friends started talking about girls which i still thought was a stupid thing (like everyone in 1st grade and so think) (i didnt think that myself, but felt it was stupid that i should talk about that, so i tried to hide it when they asked me if there was any girls i liked in class (which i did) i said no, and that eventually through a lot of similar conversations lead to them thinking i was gay, which was an absoulute self esteem killer. I got very depressed after and during 7th grade (8th was pretty good) then it went downhill to where i am now i've pretty much lost all contact with friends after school (except for xbox live, which i hate, because of having to use the mic). But still i am somewhat a part of the class and the friend-gang in a way.
I also have a fairly low self esteem. However i do like something about me, i'm very good looking. If people see me for the first time i think they think im a very cool person, i dress in a cool way and have cool hair etc.
I've just started Dr Thomas A. Richards Overcoming Social Anxiety CBT tapes, but now when i recently discovered about Selective Mutism i wonder if those self help tapes are right for me if i do have SM. Things became even more confusing when i read about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), I wonder if i should stick with the Thomas A. Richards tapes or try that instead? So what do you think, do i have SP or SM? (I myself think i have just SP)
physical reactions i have are sweaty hands and sometimes a bit sweaty on my forehead and nose, always being nauseaous, having my shoulders always in a stressed position (not noticeable, but always have a lot of stress on my shoulders), before i tended to avoid eye contact, but now i can do it almost perfectly (i find it harder on adults). I am always afraid and often prepare what im going to talk about next morning in class the first hour.
I had a very childish humour and joked a lot before 7th grade, my friends said i should stop doing it and i hid my real personality after that, which has now been buried for a long time, i cant be myself in any social situation except for at home. I barely dare laughing because i had a comment towards me that my laughter was ugly.
My mother was too easy on me never made me do chores like buying groceries, my father was waaay too strict said dont say that blablabla and shouted at me and got angry for anything little. Such as when i said something as mild as «shut up» to my sister (which may be one of the reasons for the swearing problem mentioned earlier) he shouted etc.
Sorry for a very messy post but i just had a lot to say and couldnt organize it properly
Additional info i didnt bother with fitting in the text:
I am very analytical. I go through every conversation (positive or negative) in my head. (i've kinda stopped with this after doing my first week in the CBT tapes)
I think i've had this since i hit puberty, but before that i always found excuses for not playing with my friends, i simply wanted to be alone ( i am never bored when alone)
recently its been very stressful with xbox live i bought a whole years membership and many people are asking why i'm never on ( i dont like using the headset to communicate).
I never log on to MSN messenger anymore, because i dont have more than 12 contacts and the others in my class have like 50 each, plus i hate chatting on a pc, i like it much better in real life. But one thing that has been wondering me is how they get all these contacts, do they ask each individual person for their adress and write it down? Cause i've never heard it been talked about except for when someone wanted my adress. But anyway like i said im afraid of going on MSN because i hate it and for my contacts to discover that i dont have all of my classmates on there. I also dont have facebook.
I hate recess, just standing in groups in the hallway or outside, i find it hard fitting in the group, they sorta block me out in a way.
If i could have SA in a society where i didnt feel pressure or needed to socialize in work or school, i would have loved having it, i prefer being alone relaxing(im intoverted)
I feel i have a lot of potential under the «skin» of social anxiety/phobia/selective mutism(whatever it is i have) and a great personality (maybe still a little too childish)except for the lack of some social skills like saying thank you for a present or greeting someone etc. I have bad replying social skills sometimes (if someone said they did something cool for example i dont always know waht to sau)
I also have a lot of all the other common symptoms/problems expected with social phobia that i havent taken the time to mentione(on diffferent levels)
i used to have whole evenings when i couldtn get to sleep when i thinked about crap that had happened in the past(not after the CBT tapes- currently in week 2)
Wow! That was a lot of mess.
i know this is much to read, but please read all of it before answering. I didnt have time to edit all this im just writing all my thoughts
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