Location & Social Anxiety

[market.garden]

Does anyone feel their location has played a part in shaping their social anxiety?

When I was a kid, I lived further away from my friends and classmates, and they all lived in a kind of cluster, very close to each other in the centre of town.

As a result when I was growing up, I often missed out on things from parties to spontaneous gatherings because it was always more difficult for me to get into town and even harder to get back home if people were planning on staying out late.

Has anyone here grown up on say, the outskirts of a town or city or even a more rural area, away from activity centres & friends etc and felt it's had a negative impact on you when you were growing up?

 

[MikeyC]

I can't say that I have had this happen to me. I live in a good place, close to everything. Once I got my car it was a lot easier to get around. I just hung out with the wrong people.

 

[megalon]

I grew up in a somewhat rural area but I don't think it played a part because even if I had lived nearer to potential friends, my overprotective mom wouldn't have allowed me to go anywhere anyway.

 

[market.garden]

I can't say that I have had this happen to me. I live in a good place, close to everything. Once I got my car it was a lot easier to get around. I just hung out with the wrong people.

I only started to drive recently at 26... I'd imagine I would have been more inclined to go off to random places with people had I had the freedom a car gives you when I was younger.

 

[O'Killian]

I've often wondered this myself. I've always lived six miles north of the nearest town, which is itself a fairly small town. Pretty much all my social interaction was, thus, school. I did have a few friends, pre high school, that my parents would take me to visit, but they moved away. There were also a lot of family gatherings all through my childhood, so I suspect I just didn't see the need to have a means to go into town; I didn't learn to drive more-or-less purely out of apathy, despite the fact I wouldn't have trouble getting a vehicle.

I wasn't particularly socially anxious during this period, either, but I'm sure it's ingrained in me that being alone and physically isolated is the norm. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I believe that led me to just not realize that something was up until I'd wasted more years and more opportunities than I care to admit.

In my adult life, I see being this rural as a bit of a hardship since there's a couple of extra hoops to jump through, both logistically and financially, to go anywhere. If I wanted to walk anywhere other than the 7-11 down the road it'd be quite a hike, heh.

 

[Arthur_Dent]

I lived almost half of my life on a house that although was in the middle of a huge city, the other places around where apartment buildings, the only socialization I got was the half hour during the breaks at school. I barely left the house to visiting relatives and I never knew what it was to have friends at the neighborhood, so in my case I think my location didn't helped at all.

 

[theslowesthand]

Living away from everything was pretty much the norm for everyone at my primary school, less so after that, but being in a rural area it was always a fairly common thing. And i look at practically all of my classmates from primary, & NONE of them seemed to have major SA like me. So i think its "nature" first and foremost, and due to my rural location it allowed me to "indulge" in isolation (ie the "nurture" part). Whereas they had the SAME degree of physical isolation of home, yet DIDN'T develop into socially-phobic as i have.

 

[WeirdyMcGee]

I lived in a small town-- a few small towns.
Usually on the 'wrong side of the tracks'/ the harbour.

I never really had friends, but if I did-- they probably would've lived in town too not far away.

 

[9407]

Not for me. Since I live in a big city, everyone was always close to me. It's my own fault that I didn't hang out with my friends outside of school. They would sometimes invite me out on weekends and during the summer but I was always either too shy or too lazy to go. During the weekend and during summer breaks I was always locked up in my house on the computer or playing video games.