by racheH -
Hello everyone. Some of you may remember me. I used to be a regular, seeking support. Then I became a regular offering support. Finally I decided that in order to put the past behind me properly I needed to think about it far, far less. So I left.
It seems like an eternity since this was my crutch. My only social comfort not nullified by anxiety. I can scarcely believe it was just two years ago. It feels like another life, another person. Perhaps it was.
I just want you all to know that you can beat this. If I can, believe me, anyone can. And I know that probably, possibly each one of you is thinking that you can't because unlike 'normal' people, you're incapable of any such miraculous change. You're not a hero, right? You're extraordinarily ordinary and somehow at the same time you're an extraordinary loser. Wrong.
You are surviving something that most people consider among the worst forms of torture imaginable. Chronic isolation. Whether you realise it or not, you are most likely also experiencing a chronic identity crisis. The person you and everyone else sees when you're in the grip of anxiety is not the person you're designed to be. Most people are aware of much their personality through interaction with others, because that's when your unique characteristics or combinations of characteristics are at their most tangible: when sharing your internal reactions with other human beings. However, with a social phobia ever breathing down your neck/whispering sweet nothings/doing whatever yours does to hypnotise you, you're constantly reacting to fear, and even if you and everyone around you know that, you can't simply subtract fear from what you see and believe what is left to equal the sum and worth of your personality. Fear does not just pepper your reactions to the world. It suppresses and replaces them. That's why you may have come to believe you never have anything interesting to say. Ask your average Joe to make riveting conversation while waiting to be pushed off a cliff. Think he's going to charm everyone in sight?
Don't think that's a hyperbolic analogy. At times I knew I would have quite literally rather died than experience certain social situations. Often what was put in me went above and beyond 'the fear of death'. Only love for my family prevented me from choosing the latter in favour of the former. Perhaps their pain was all I feared more than them both. No, my case, I assure you, was not mild. Yet here I am. Emmerged unscathed from the wreckage to aid the rescue efforts of those always on the search for survivors. Bless them; they do mean well.
You may not like my advice for how to escape. But it is effective and most importantly, very worth it.
You must stop running away. Both physically and in your mind. Turn to the beast sitting on your shoulder announce that you don't believe it any more. Everything it says is a lie. Repeat aloud, shout if it helps. But you must come to believe this fact, that the things it says are dangerous are not. Disapproval, in itself, can not harm you, and never has done. Perhaps as you read this the demon leapt in your stomach; don't be alarmed, it is just frightened that you'll realise the truth. What has caused you distress is the creature (read: the phobic neuropathways formed in your amygdala when the stimulus of disapproval became, through conditioning, irrationally associated with that of distress) that pokes and prods you painfully every time the abstract but to you vivid concept of disapproval enters your mind. You've come to associate the two, but they are not naturally related: only arbitrarily so.
Understanding and believing this was the first step towards disarming my own beast. It knocked his confidence, and crucially, allowed me to finally force myself to consider, risk and face disapproval for longer stretches of time on a regular basis, until I became numb to the prongs of his vicious trident, and he learned that he could no longer hurt me: I didn't need his warped protection. Ever seen an episode of The Panic Room series? In a matter of three days of intensive therapy two people are cured of very severe phobias. One of them is treated through systematic desensitisation. This involves for once voluntarily exposing oneself to the phobic object to a bearable degree until, in a matter of seconds, it no longer seems quite so scary. It's fascinating to watch as their reported 'fear rating' steadily drops in the space of a minute. The principle is exactly the same, although usually less practical, for treating social phobias.
Exposing yourself to and dwelling on fictional accounts of other people's experiences of disapproval, especially when this disapproval results in no negative consequence (which in real life is the case 99% of the time) will have a similar effect. Go out in a safe, life-consequence-free environment wearing something that may attract thoughts of ridicule. Do all this while using the desensitisation techniques recommended by therapists to remain as calm and rational as possible. They work just as well for our phobia as any other! There are numerous consequence-free ways of exposing your mind to the concept of disapproval that you've so long avoided, and even here prefer to skirt around by discussing the anticipation anxiety of interaction instead of the actual phobic concept. Get creative!
Finally, my fellow survivors, I wish you the best of luck, health and happiness. Don't entertain the idea that you deserve these less than others. Your experiences put you in a relatively unique position for understanding and contributing to the world, if only you can break free to look at them through the eyes of reason.
I hope this message helps or at least gives you some hope. Or even gives you a laugh: as a non-phobic, others' ridicule no longer provokes inner turmoil. :wink:
Rachel. x
Source:
http://www.socialphobiaworld.com/there-is-life-after-social-phobia-7765/
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