Social Anxiety You Always Had It or you "Got" it ?

[dzerklis]

Just because I'm really tired of hearing all my life that I must've had bad childhood experiences (heck, teachers always wanted to know if I was being abused), and we need some balance with people from the other side refusing to admit that anyone not like us exists no matter how many testimonials we hear, I hereby deny that it's possible to have non-genetic social anxiety.

A normal person would've dealt with all your bad experiences in a very different way, like a life of crime for example, while remaining social. You have a genetic predisposition to crawl into your shell when you encounter troubles. Many genetic diseases have a delayed onset, and experiences can trigger the specific time of arrival, but the important point is that you were born with the time bomb and it was destined to go off eventually. You are a product of your genetics, period, and even with the most pampered life something would've eventually triggered your social anxiety.

It's also worth mentioning that what a lot of people with SA call a bad childhood experience is what the rest of the world calls perfectly normal. Most kids are bullied, but they don't have your reaction to it. The fact that you call your childhood bad is a result of SA, not the cause.

wow Hoth, u hit the nail right on its head there! all the genetic SA denyers, IN YOUR FACE!

 

[TheWall]

I was always shy and self-conscious when I was little. I remember when I was 12 typing things like "scared to go pay for stuff at checkout" into search engines to try to find an answer. Then one day I found this site: http://www.socialphobia.org/whatis.html and I was like holy crap this is totally me!

 

[kayelle]

Yeah, I was very very shy as a kid, didn't like talking to the other kids.

Also, I read an article in a medical journal recently about anxiety in kids. The reason it's so hard to diagnose is because kids can't identify their feelings very well at a young age. So what often manifests is kids saying they feel physically ill. I couldn't believe when I read that because I used to always ring home from school begging to be brought home because I felt 'sick'. This sickness would magically disappear when I got home, of course. Other times like being brought to the cinema, or being left with my cousins, I always insisted there was something physically wrong with me and had to be brought home.

I thought I'd had SA since I was around 13 or 14, but after reading that I believe I did have it as a child, that it wasn't just normal shyness.