MustangDave
Member
Okay I've come to share my story and hopefully it will inspire you.
I grew up in a very rural environment so I had no-one around for miles, literally. My mother was bipolar and when I came along she feared my father would stop loving her... so she done everything in her power to make me fail in life.
If there is one weakness any child has, it is the predisposition to fear. When I was young, I was sexually abused without understanding what was going on. I regularly got beatings that consisted of my mom hitting me with anything she could find until she couldn't move her hand anymore. Sometimes I bled, sometimes I took a cold bath to dull the pain, oftentimes I dreamed of dying. I fervently started reading the Bible, praying for strength; nothing happened, no-one saved me. I spent days outside preferring the cold and loneliness to the blunt pain of another beating. My mom regularly told me I'd be a failure; that I'd never amount to anything. Sometimes she used social issues to make me fear and pity her. For example one time she told me she had AIDS and that most likely I had it too. Eventually I made it though and in high school I stood up to my mother and hit her back for the first time in my life.
In college I avoided any form of oral communication. I won many awards for my intellectual ability mostly because I had nothing else to do - no parties to go to, no friends to hang out with - just a library and lots of books. Eventually I graduated and landed a job with a professor who ran a company out of a trailer. I was a help desk person - often fielding calls from japanese engineers who could barely speak english. My nervousness didn't seem to bother them and they liked it when someone had as much trouble as they did communicating.
Until I was 26 I had a total of four disasterous dates that started and ended in miscommunication. Finally I was offered an invite to a party by this outgoing married coworker. It was either that or hangout with the guys who were into Dungeons and Dragons. I decided to skip the D&D and went to the party knowing I would be good at holding a wall up somewhere. Eventually I started getting out more and more and to my surprise people romantically enjoyed my stories of a life spent terrified of everyone. Being a social phobic can be funny when you think about it.
Now I find myself in my thirties married to another social phobic whom I admire and love. We have two children together and I've bound myself to end the nightmare of my childhood. I don't ever tell my children they can't do anything.
I regularly have phone calls with clients where I just freeze and get caught up in the panic attack. I struggle to fight back the paralyzing fear that I'll fail in life. I keep trying though and I think of more and more ways to force myself to be social. I don't want to do it and I'll think of every excuse why I don't need to... but I roll the dice and talk to people everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes I ask people for directions when I get lost, sometimes I just talk to people who are close to me when I walk. I don't want to be social and I'm not good at it but I'm brave enough to know that the day I stop fighting is the day I lose in life.
David
I grew up in a very rural environment so I had no-one around for miles, literally. My mother was bipolar and when I came along she feared my father would stop loving her... so she done everything in her power to make me fail in life.
If there is one weakness any child has, it is the predisposition to fear. When I was young, I was sexually abused without understanding what was going on. I regularly got beatings that consisted of my mom hitting me with anything she could find until she couldn't move her hand anymore. Sometimes I bled, sometimes I took a cold bath to dull the pain, oftentimes I dreamed of dying. I fervently started reading the Bible, praying for strength; nothing happened, no-one saved me. I spent days outside preferring the cold and loneliness to the blunt pain of another beating. My mom regularly told me I'd be a failure; that I'd never amount to anything. Sometimes she used social issues to make me fear and pity her. For example one time she told me she had AIDS and that most likely I had it too. Eventually I made it though and in high school I stood up to my mother and hit her back for the first time in my life.
In college I avoided any form of oral communication. I won many awards for my intellectual ability mostly because I had nothing else to do - no parties to go to, no friends to hang out with - just a library and lots of books. Eventually I graduated and landed a job with a professor who ran a company out of a trailer. I was a help desk person - often fielding calls from japanese engineers who could barely speak english. My nervousness didn't seem to bother them and they liked it when someone had as much trouble as they did communicating.
Until I was 26 I had a total of four disasterous dates that started and ended in miscommunication. Finally I was offered an invite to a party by this outgoing married coworker. It was either that or hangout with the guys who were into Dungeons and Dragons. I decided to skip the D&D and went to the party knowing I would be good at holding a wall up somewhere. Eventually I started getting out more and more and to my surprise people romantically enjoyed my stories of a life spent terrified of everyone. Being a social phobic can be funny when you think about it.
Now I find myself in my thirties married to another social phobic whom I admire and love. We have two children together and I've bound myself to end the nightmare of my childhood. I don't ever tell my children they can't do anything.
I regularly have phone calls with clients where I just freeze and get caught up in the panic attack. I struggle to fight back the paralyzing fear that I'll fail in life. I keep trying though and I think of more and more ways to force myself to be social. I don't want to do it and I'll think of every excuse why I don't need to... but I roll the dice and talk to people everywhere and anywhere. Sometimes I ask people for directions when I get lost, sometimes I just talk to people who are close to me when I walk. I don't want to be social and I'm not good at it but I'm brave enough to know that the day I stop fighting is the day I lose in life.
David
