What does your SA stem from?

[Zor]

There are a lot of things that I think culminated in my AvPD.

I was always hyper sensitive to the emotions of the people around me even from a very early age. I think this leads to me being hyper aware of the mistakes that we all make when we are children. This lead to some shyness in my youth.

I feel like I never really fit into my peer group because of a couple major difference between and the rest of my class. I was tall--very tall. I was about a foot taller than anyone in my 5th grade class, including the teacher. I was also smart. I was put into the Gifted and Talented program at my school (special program for smart kids) but I was the only one from my class and I feel like that made me stand out too.

I know some of you might be thinking I should feel lucky being "smart," AND "tall." If you are then I don't think you know what it can feel like to be incapable of blending into your peer group.

Anyway, I did have some friends that I made when I was in first grade. They were the best. But then in fifth grade, the School district built a new elementary school and I was suddenly rezoned into a new school and all my friends stayed at the old school. Then in sixth grade, my best friend betrayed me and left me with absolutely no friends at all. This was the start of my lifelong depression.

I wasn't able to make any friends in middle school, high school, or in college. By my junior year in high school, I had given up trying to make friends with people. I felt like people simply didn't like me and never would. I'm pretty sure this is when I completely withdrew and developed my AvPD.

 

[j_brown87]

My life completely changed about a year after i smoked weed for the first time when I was 14. It was all fun and good at the beginning but after time I got depressive, experienced some bad highs and i couldnt deal with it. My friends started makin fun of me and i just got lower and lower and couldnt deal with anything anymore. I even got that belief that I fucked up my mind because i smoked so much and it just all got worse with time as i convinced myself of so many irational beliefs and my friends were brainwashing me haha

I now know its all not true but the damage is still here and i cant get out of this shit because i had so many bad experiences

So my life is like in 2 parts, before i started smokin weed (the good life) and after that, the negative shit I am in now, I was so confused at those times when my friends didnt accept me anymore, because I started acting all strange and anxious and couldnt even talk anymore. I believed everything they said to me. They brainwashed me completely with all kind of shit. So i have some long term effects of that and i dont trust anyone anymore and i developed SA because of that.

 

[lunarskye]

ok for me it is totally to do with my upbringing. I was never allowed an opinion and i was always under the wrath of my mother. It crushed my soul and ability to interact with others. 8O

Same here. Plus my mother was over protective. Also my father was shy as a child and my mother too, she has no friends either.

 

[LeeAnne]

My mother was abusive and unpredictable. She often get my brother to abuse me. Sometimes she would be loving. Then there were times where she was just evil and manipulative.

This really created mistrust in people. I found it hard to connect to people in a traumatised state.

There is other stuff. Depressive episodes. A hospital stay that proved unhelpful.

Really a bunch of stuff probably stemming from PTSD and depression.

 

[autumn_82]

I've always had shyness tendencies--I get that from my dad. But it probably got exacerbated into SA by my emotionally sensitive personality and being bullied in preschool by the bigger kids (for being small and sensitive) and going to school with a group of rough kids while being a minority.
Outside of school I had to deal with my witchy aunty and my bullying older cousin who both kept it up my whole life, and that whole side of my family's racial viewpoints which are the mentality of many people in this community (which was traumatic for me). Growing up in a small town where I have repeatedly seen my mom rejected for being what the small-minded people here think of as weird.
In addition, I think I've always been mentally younger for my age, so the friend thing was tricky for me in various ways. I was also interested in different music, etc. than people around me, so I felt I had little in common with them. Geez. Everything kinda converged on me to cause SA--it was unavoidable.
But going to live in the city where there's a wider variety of people and a greater degree of anonymity has helped me somewhat, as well as having a little more maturity(not that i'm that old, I'm 25).

 

[billy]

in the 9th grade i messed up in a few classes so i got 2 8th grade classes when i went to highschool. That led to me not going to classes because i didnt like the fact of being behind and my friends ahead made me sort of ashamed. so now iim 17 its been 3 years i have no friends. Ive lost the most important years for me to learn how to socialize, make a sense of humor for myself,understand how to just be around people and how to accept things. I really am as interesting as a wall, but thats even giving myself alot of credit there. thats where i believe my sa/sp stemd from. Im slightly insecure and dont have many chances to meet people and even when i do i sort of kill conversations and ive created a studder when i talk. my anxiety has come up so much i talk so fast i cant be understood>.< and people seem to make comments on it alot. Sorry for ranting

 

[Lexmark]

Deep down i think im a worthless peice of shit
conciously I dont think this at all so its very frustrating
For everyone that says they have it coz of generics thats really just not true.
Its not a disease its something we have created in our minds.

 

[proudmummy]

Something happened, really embarrassing, in front of my best friend at the time & my then-boyfriend (i was really, really young - about 12). I think it made things ten times worse, as I was already beginning to suffer a little shyness (thats just in my blood though!) and I think maybe thats what made full-on anxiety, as I was so unbelievably worried what they thought of me - I know they still remember it NOW, thats whats scary!!!

 

[UnXpectedErrror]

for me it stems from adolescence. its the feeling of not living up to the high expectations of others. i was pressured by my family and friends from a very young age to be better then everyone else. manly because of what i was capable of intellectually wise and also my physical appearance. i could never take the pressure,i just wanted to be average so i could be invisible by blending into the mainstream. not only that but if i ever failed at something it be ok. then when i was around 17 i started having panic attacks for no reason, which just added to my feelings of inadequacy. i was then afraid to go out and do things in fear that people would look down on me for having them and see me as less of a person.

it gets me down to know that i have things going for me that people wish they had. yet i cant over come my own insecurities and shortcomings to do something productive with my self

 

[Argamemnon]

Mainly because I think I'm ugly.

 

[BreakingFree]

I never had supportive parents. Never was I accompanied by an adult to provide moral support when joining ballet school, piano lessons , the tennis club etc. Come to think of it even my first day of school I was by my lonesome self. I remember I was quite scared, but I took myself to my class anyway. This was the pattern much of my life and still is. I still prefer doing things by myself and also prefer my own company. I will carry that deep sense of insecurity all my life,I think. How do you fill up the lack of support/security parents gives you when facing new challenges in ones young life?. Its a hole that I think cannot be filled unless someone else feels differently? I possess all the confidence knowledge gives you to do your job or whatever, but the deep sense of self believe will always be missing. Its belief you need to take your place in the world.

Needless to say, I was always scared having to approach strangers for guidance some not very sympathetic or supportive. I was also very uncomfortable with and addressing the people I needed to. And the main cause of my SA, is me avoiding interacting with people. When family or family friends visit our home, I went and hide in my room and only surface when they have left. At school I hid my uncomfortableness with people well by always being in a group taking the attention away from myself. Pretense was also another way of hiding my uncomfortableness. Unbeknowns to me I was not laying a good foundation where it comes to social interaction. It came back to haunt me in the form of social phobia.

To me SA is a combination of lack of the support and security you needed as a child to make yourself feel safe and secure in social situations and self conditioning. Today I have to unlearn self taught behaviour.

I am by nature an introvert (genetic) and not acquiring social skills exacerbated the problem of social interaction.

 

[lalaquiet]

Growing up, my family was never very talkative with each other. There wasn't much interaction.

 

[r80sgirl]

When I was 11, my mom's personality just changed for the worse. My mom doesn't tell me much about what's going on with her, so to this day, I don't know what her problem was/is. She always kept me in the house except when I went to school. I was allowed to talk to friends on the phone, but she wouldn't let me hang out with friends outside of school or go to their houses, even if they lived right across the street. I don't know what that was about, especially since before, I was able to hang out and spend the night at friends' houses.

Right before 8th grade, I developed trichotillomania, meaning I pulled all my hair out and couldn't control doing so. When I started school, some classmates treated me like a freak because I was bald. I told them that I cut my hair because it would've been embarrassing to say I pulled it out, and I didn't know there was a name for this at the time. Two weeks into the school year, my mom had me pick up and move from TX to AL to live with my dad and his wife. Even though I did make few friends after this move, I was treated badly by my stepmother and the kids at school. My stepmother was never accepting of me, so 3 months after moving into her residence, I had to move again when she wanted my dad to pick b/w her and me (he chose me). My dad and I moved to a neighboring city and ONCE AGAIN, I had to adjust to my THIRD school in 5 months.

The people here were worse, including one of my teachers, an elderly black lady. She was very sarcastic and acted like she hated me, and it had to be b/c of the way I looked. Rumors were going around that I had cancer because of my looks, so people were afraid to get near me, like they were gonna catch something. So, so far lack of needed social interaction, trichotillomania, 3 different schools, and lack of acceptance. But I think what triggered my SA was one day at school, I was late for lunch. Since my class was already in the cafeteria, I had to walk in there alone. There were a couple hundred people in there. As soon as I walked in, literally EVERYBODY stopped and stared at me and were whispering to each other as I was looking for a seat. That killed me inside.

Even though I've let my hair grow back and look "normal," I still felt like an outsider and had no social skills, and those feelings are still here, 12 years later.

 

[steve1]

My father was always angry. He was angry at everthing in life, and I think that his anxiety spilled over into me. But he would always take his frustration out on me. My grades were horrible, I didn't do this right, or that and he rode me like a witch. He would always look at me with disgust. I think these things are where my SA comes from. Ain't life grand? :lol:

my father was always angry and miserable as a child if i was ever loud or over excited (as kids do) he would give me a evil look and i would instantly stop in my tracks and sit there and be quiet.Ihave a brother and sister and they also dont have a good relationship with him (so sad)but i was the unlucky one who seemed to get this S.A ilness.......IM now 40 years old and even now when i talk to him he sometimes has a `pisstaking grin` on his face that really pisses me off and i leave there house feeling real down.

 

[faithnomore]

The expectations society has of me. I mean its very frustrating when loads of people you know tell you "you have so much potential, and are capable of so much".

Well i don't think so! If i did have potential etc, i would have had some luck in life...