What do you think caused your SA

Srijita52

Well-known member
So what do you think caused your SA?although i was always painfully shy for me it was definitely the bullying I faced in high school.What about you guys?
 
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Plz

Member
Probably a bad combination of genetics, an overprotective dad, no kids other than my brother in the neighborhood, and going through most of elementary school with the same 16 other kids.
My grandpa got really bad anxiety problems as he got older, leading to stomach issues, making him quite the *******, TBH. He eventually decided to just stop eating and pass on. I'm scared that I'll be like him and change into a completely different person nobody recognizes eventually.
My dad is slowly turning into my grandpa--to the point of stockpiling soup for WWIII just like grandpa. When I was little nobody could ever do anything because if we weren't home when he decided we should be we were kidnapped and/or killed, no exceptions. He still thinks this way and I'm 17 now. I couldn't even take swimming lessons because I might drown. Counter-productive, much? He also loves injecting himself into everything and therefore making things more painful than they should be. When the time comes he's going to a nursing home. Like grandpa.
In first grade I got to take a special test that put me in the last year of the district's gifted program. (I was in the last year because they wanted to get the money for it without actually having it.) I didn't really want to go, but I decided to since my best friend was going. Five years later at the end of sixth grade there were 17 of us, total, from what was a full class. Most of them left because two of the three teachers we ended up having were two of the dumbest, meanest people you could ever meet. It certainly didn't help meeting so few people my age in that time, nor did those two treating me like I was retarded. Halfway through sixth grade the teacher decided that a C was never, ever, under any circumstances, acceptable and was as good as an F, and a B was decent sometimes. (She was very similar to Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and that was enough to make want the centaurs to kill her. She (the teacher) couldn't teach and expected us to know everything already.) Later she tried to convince us that 7th grade would be as harder than my teachers are currently saying college will be. All she really taught us was not to trust anyone and never do anything social.
...
I actually managed to write an essay for my freshman english class about just how bad those two teachers were, without going into how much they're still affecting my life. Got a very high grade; 98% IIRC. It nearly hit the upper size limit.
But back on topic, I can't look any of those 16 other kids in the eye any more and not remember that torture.

Some of this probably makes no sense (forgotten details, misplaced stuff, etc.) or is completely off topic but I'm tired and have a headache and I just don't care.

tl;dr My biggest problems all boil down to extremely limited socialization when I was young.

Edit: You could say bullying hurt me. It wasn't from other kids. Those two teachers were bullies in every sense of the word. Those anti-bulling campaigns teach us how to deal with kid bullies (which I luckily never dealt with), but what do you do when your teachers are the bullies?
 
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r1979

New member
I've always been shy even as a small kid, but in high school I experienced some bullying freshman year mainly due to being such a late bloomer. Started HS at age 13 and honestly could have passed for 11. That brought my self-confidence down a lot. My social life outside school was zero. Things didn't start turning around until college. I became a lot more active with friends. Even then I still had issues (afraid to date, etc.). Now I'm still considered 'quiet', but I consider it more by choice. I'm fine interacting with folks and even with public speaking when I need to. My 3 yo son seems to be very outgoing, he goes up to strangers and chats them up all the time (something i never would have done as a child). If there is a social phobia gene, it appears he luckily got skipped.

For you younger ones, don't get discouraged. Just keep working on small things every day that you can approve. You'll be surprised how much your personality and confidence can change over a decade.
 
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Quiet Angel

Well-known member
A very bad "friend" who was a complete bully to me in the 3rd grade. Everyday, she would criticize me and no matter what I did: she was NEVER satisfied. She said: "Everybody stares and gossips about you, don't you know? They say you walk and run weird and I definitely agree! You dance weird. You eat with a fork weird. You clap your hands weird. You smile weird. You talk weird. There's not one normal thing you can do." She criticized my clothes, the way I looked, almost everything. That made me self-conscious because I felt like everything was wrong with me and that people were out to get me. She loved to tell me exactly what other people said about me, too.

About time to move on though. :) No point in holding onto it.
Childhood stuff is pretty powerful, though.
 

Srijita52

Well-known member
A very bad "friend" who was a complete bully to me in the 3rd grade. Everyday, she would criticize me and no matter what I did: she was NEVER satisfied. She said: "Everybody stares and gossips about you, don't you know? They say you walk and run weird and I definitely agree! You dance weird. You eat with a fork weird. You clap your hands weird. You smile weird. You talk weird. There's not one normal thing you can do." She criticized my clothes, the way I looked, almost everything. That made me self-conscious because I felt like everything was wrong with me and that people were out to get me. She loved to tell me exactly what other people said about me, too.

About time to move on though. :) No point in holding onto it.
Childhood stuff is pretty powerful, though.
My friends used to tell me those too,'Everyone thinks you're wierd?','Everyone laughs at you' then the added 'we just say these cos we care about you' but it really made me feel self concious,I told them how I felt.One of them understood & stopped but the other said I was being a jerk & left me
 

vanfuggle

Active member
I was really outgoing and from a very small Catholic school with a class of 28. I graduated and went to public high school where I was very nervous. I started smoking pot and the panic attacks came on full force.

I wish I'd never touched the stuff.
 

Luka

Well-known member
I was always painfully shy but I could still make friends and I wouldnt be shy around them. Then a mixture of things happened - mostly family related but also to do with friends and the one relationship I had. My mum when she was very young, about 18, 19 years old had become mentally ill and had even attempted suicide. Of course this was before I or even my elder sister was born. So I found out my mother this year actually (I'm a 14 year old girl btw) and that hurt me real bad because I found out through my best friend. Yep, my best friend knew about this before I did. It hurt. Also a few years back when I was 12 years old my father split up with his girlfriend who they'd had a baby with, my half brother. I treated my half brother like a real sibling, I loved him so much but they moved out and I thought I'd never see them again as they were moving out of this country. Then a month later my dad found another girlfriend and decided to move out of the current country I live in. I think this was the thing that set me back so much. I was in pieces and I had no one to turn to. I had no brother and no father. My mother took full custody of us but it was proven difficult for her to manage us alone as she, also was a and still is a weak person. Then when I moved to secondary school (in england this is a school for 11-16 year olds) and I had friends but one of the stabbed me in the back a lot, I was often pushed out of groups and I didn't fit in. I never changed who I was, which I thank myself for. Then I had a relationship. and when we split up, I was told afterwards that he was using me to be with my friend. I felt so ashamed of myself, I didn't feel good enough because of the past things that happened to me. I think all of this has caused such a huge impact on my life and I am now suffering SA for the past few years I'd say.
 

sucettes

Well-known member
A combination of a lot of things;
I've felt neglected from my dad since a very young age. We started to move around a lot when I turned 4, it continued like this for years, which led to that every time I got to know new people, we moved away again and then I lost contact with them. The first time I went to kindergarten some c*nt bit me and that made me never want to come back. In second grade my only "friend" found someone else to be with and I got completely left out + they were really horrible to me. When I turned 13 I got bullied in school very badly + that my mum got cancer.

Since a very early age, people have just always managed to slap me in the face. People = sh*t. Most of them anyway.
 

IGotSeoul

Well-known member
We started to move around a lot when I turned 4, it continued like this for years, which led to that every time I got to know new people, we moved away again and then I lost contact with them.

relate. the longest I stayed in one school was 2 years, resulting in about 9 different schools and never having the opportunity to grow with other people or make friends. it seriously messed me up.
 

takethislife

Well-known member
Partly genetic i guess
definitely bullying
plus i didn't attend catechism in primary school where basically everyone did so i was always 'that guy who doesn't go to catechism'
 

Dr. Doom

Well-known member
I think it was mostley my weight. I noticed alot more coming into puberty. I got really shy because of it. I felt (still do) that other people notice it so I shouldn't even be near them or talk to them. I wouldn't want to gross them out or have them make fun of me. This was probably towards the end of 7th grade.

From there is just got worse and worse. I started to really get nervous talking to people, ask questions in class, makes new friends or form any kind of new relationship. I was generally okay in front of my then friends, or any family but I usually get weird around new people.
 

sarah_alia

New member
I guess I've always been shy, but it has gotten worse recently. My situation is a bit unique. You see my paternal grandmother and two uncles live with us, that being my parents and siblings, in our house. Now my grandmother is VERY oldschool and overbearing to the point where she treats all of her descendents like little children- everything must be done her own way or she instantly gets angry and horribly immature. This in particular has had a crippling and devastating effect on my two uncles who are both in their 40s. I guess over the years they have borne the brunt of her overbearingness. You see when my grandmother and grandfather divorced decades ago they were left with my grandmother. While the rest of my dad's siblings were a bit older and thus more developed at the time, these two uncles were only young kids of like 4 or 5. The divorce coupled with a move to a foreign country, where they were picked on for being foreigners, I think traumatized them and made them withdraw. They became scared of the outside world. Today both are unmarried, unemployed, and basically have no contact with anyone except each other and my grandmother; they are as isolated from their own family as they are from strangers. No doubt my grandmother's obsessive overbearingness played a part in formulating and worsening their social phobia.

Well... to get to the point I think my SA is in large part a learned behavior. My grandmother and two uncles have lived with us for all of my life, meaning I've had 21 years to observe and unfortunately learn their fear of not only the outside world but of people in general. Before I could be comforted by the fact that while I was shy in school I was still very comfortable amongst family members. How to my increasing horror that isn’t true anymore. Recently I’ve even found myself feeling uncomfortable around my own brother and sister. I know it is completely irrational but I just can’t seem to help myself right now. I hope it will get better though otherwise I have a pretty clear indication of what my fate will be, God forbid.

Whew! That was a very long post, but this is the first time that I’ve ever communicated this to anyone. Very therapeutic!
 
I think genetics was a big part of it. My mother's side of the family (all I know about is her, her mother and father) is filled with mental illness. When my father was being a father he was somewhat overprotective. I think people making jokes of every mistake I made, when I was young, may have also added to it.
 

Srijita52

Well-known member
I guess I've always been shy, but it has gotten worse recently. My situation is a bit unique. You see my paternal grandmother and two uncles live with us, that being my parents and siblings, in our house. Now my grandmother is VERY oldschool and overbearing to the point where she treats all of her descendents like little children- everything must be done her own way or she instantly gets angry and horribly immature. This in particular has had a crippling and devastating effect on my two uncles who are both in their 40s. I guess over the years they have borne the brunt of her overbearingness. You see when my grandmother and grandfather divorced decades ago they were left with my grandmother. While the rest of my dad's siblings were a bit older and thus more developed at the time, these two uncles were only young kids of like 4 or 5. The divorce coupled with a move to a foreign country, where they were picked on for being foreigners, I think traumatized them and made them withdraw. They became scared of the outside world. Today both are unmarried, unemployed, and basically have no contact with anyone except each other and my grandmother; they are as isolated from their own family as they are from strangers. No doubt my grandmother's obsessive overbearingness played a part in formulating and worsening their social phobia.

Well... to get to the point I think my SA is in large part a learned behavior. My grandmother and two uncles have lived with us for all of my life, meaning I've had 21 years to observe and unfortunately learn their fear of not only the outside world but of people in general. Before I could be comforted by the fact that while I was shy in school I was still very comfortable amongst family members. How to my increasing horror that isn’t true anymore. Recently I’ve even found myself feeling uncomfortable around my own brother and sister. I know it is completely irrational but I just can’t seem to help myself right now. I hope it will get better though otherwise I have a pretty clear indication of what my fate will be, God forbid.

Whew! That was a very long post, but this is the first time that I’ve ever communicated this to anyone. Very therapeutic!

I really appreciate your attempt.It isn't easy to talk about our problems.I'm very sorry to hear about your uncles,seems like your grandmother's overbearing behaviour affected their life pretty bad.As for you,maybe you should talk to your family about your shyness & what you think are causing it,sometimes doing that can help.Whatever happens don't give up,cause if you give up on yourself nothing else can help. Good luck.
 
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idk123

Active member
For me its my parents. My parents were overprotective and didn't let me play outside when I was young, so i never really developed any social skills. Now as a teen, I find social situations uncomfortable and try my best to avoid them. Being bullied also didn't help.
 

crazydom

New member
In my case, I really do think it was solely the bullying. I was actually extremely active, talkative, etc growing up and in elementary school. Then I went to middle school with new people and was tormented for three years. I had absolutely zero friends, got in fights multiple times a year, and was made fun of in every single class. Even the people who I sort of got along with as acquaintances for a while would betray me sooner or later and join in the torment.

At that young an age, I couldn't possibly handle being in literal Hell for three years straight. It absolutely destroyed me mentally and effects how introverted I am to this day.
 
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