l'amoureuse
New member
I'm about to graduate from college and I'm just now acknowledging that I have social anxiety and that it has negatively impacted my life in so many ways. I want to know how I can recover from SA and put my life back on track.
For one thing, I guess it's important to mention that I will be getting married soon. My fiancé and I have been dating since high school from about a week after I moved to a new town. He's always been a buffer that makes me feel normal. I now realize that if he hadn't been around my social anxiety would have been apparent much sooner. I've had these issues longer than we have been together, yet our really close relationship has certainly aggravated my reclusive behavior.
Anyway, I'm about to graduate from college and don't think I will ever be able to get into a grad school because I have absolutely no resume (no extracurriculars, no work), some bad grades that are directly attributable to my social anxiety, and I interview really badly (I have a lot of trouble speaking). It just really sucks because I'm hard working, really intelligent, and have almost all A's. I also don't have any ambitions anymore. I've realized that years and years of self-loathing have convinced me that I'm not good at anything.
However, realizing all this has kind of taken a load off my back. I always felt lazy and disliked and all these different things. Reading people's stories and understanding that this is something I can recover from has really helped me forgive myself. But I'm also overwhelmed by the daunting task ahead of me. My mom tells me I need to expose myself to my fears by just going out and talking to strangers--and I know she's right--but just the thought of it makes my insides churn.
Sorry, this is getting lengthy and I've probably said a lot of stuff that has no import on my question. Anywho...therapy seems like an obvious solution but I'm scared of it for a lot of reasons. 1) As one would expect, I have trouble trusting and feeling comfortable around people. 2) I have a character flaw of always wanting to do everything myself and kind of associating receiving help with weakness. 3) I'm worried about confidentiality issues, since my childhood wasn't the happiest and there are some things that may technically require reporting (while I know that they don't, and such a report would actually make my life a lot worse). This is kind of hard to explain without going into details, but trust me, everyone is better off with the status quo.
This has gotten long enough. I'm going to come back later to see if anyone has responded and hopefully continue this discussion. Thanks for your support
For one thing, I guess it's important to mention that I will be getting married soon. My fiancé and I have been dating since high school from about a week after I moved to a new town. He's always been a buffer that makes me feel normal. I now realize that if he hadn't been around my social anxiety would have been apparent much sooner. I've had these issues longer than we have been together, yet our really close relationship has certainly aggravated my reclusive behavior.
Anyway, I'm about to graduate from college and don't think I will ever be able to get into a grad school because I have absolutely no resume (no extracurriculars, no work), some bad grades that are directly attributable to my social anxiety, and I interview really badly (I have a lot of trouble speaking). It just really sucks because I'm hard working, really intelligent, and have almost all A's. I also don't have any ambitions anymore. I've realized that years and years of self-loathing have convinced me that I'm not good at anything.
However, realizing all this has kind of taken a load off my back. I always felt lazy and disliked and all these different things. Reading people's stories and understanding that this is something I can recover from has really helped me forgive myself. But I'm also overwhelmed by the daunting task ahead of me. My mom tells me I need to expose myself to my fears by just going out and talking to strangers--and I know she's right--but just the thought of it makes my insides churn.
Sorry, this is getting lengthy and I've probably said a lot of stuff that has no import on my question. Anywho...therapy seems like an obvious solution but I'm scared of it for a lot of reasons. 1) As one would expect, I have trouble trusting and feeling comfortable around people. 2) I have a character flaw of always wanting to do everything myself and kind of associating receiving help with weakness. 3) I'm worried about confidentiality issues, since my childhood wasn't the happiest and there are some things that may technically require reporting (while I know that they don't, and such a report would actually make my life a lot worse). This is kind of hard to explain without going into details, but trust me, everyone is better off with the status quo.
This has gotten long enough. I'm going to come back later to see if anyone has responded and hopefully continue this discussion. Thanks for your support