What I need people to understand is that getting out bed is not easy.
Leaving the house is not easy.
Talking to people is not easy.
Ordering food is not easy.
Making phone calls is not easy.
I need people to understand,…
Let me preface this by saying: I am not here to yell at you, or for a fight, or for hate. I am here to have a nice, calm conversation and if anything I say or do comes across as otherwise, I apologize for that. And full disclosure right at the outset: I am not an expert. I am not a therapist or involved in a psych field. I have never been diagnosed with anything, which may either be my own fault or because there is nothing to diagnose, so I am saying this from experience, from research, from education, and from knowing a lot of people with similar problems. So take from this what you will, but I think it had to be said.
I think the core of your message, as I seem to understand it, is actually a pretty good one: that something to hope for for people with anxiety is that they are eventually able to live their lives unburdened by it, or able to better manage it, as the case may be. And I actually agree with you: the thing I’d love to see in anyone with anxiety, much less my friends, is that we can all hear triumphant (hyperbole) stories of them living their lives despite their anxiety. The problematic part here is your solution: that they get over themselves, or that they get a shrink or pills or something. The second one especially is actually a reasonable solution — that they seek help in managing these problems — but as skypeopleandswans says, it’s not always that easy.
Social anxiety makes you nervous to talk to people. It makes you nervous to see people. It makes you nervous to think about those things. It makes you nervous about yourself, about the people around you, about things that nobody is probably thinking but it seems like everyone is. And nervous is putting it lightly — it can make you terrified, and it can shut you down, and it can make you want to take very drastic measures in the name of what you think is best, or in the name of what you think will make it stop. And fighting with that, with your own fears and thoughts and self-perception, isn’t as simple as telling yourself to stop thinking that way. It’s like telling yourself to stop thinking about penguins if the thought is put in your head — even telling yourself to stop thinking about it still requires thinking about it, which can spiral into a very confusing mess.
On top of that can — not necessarily does but can — rest a characteristic that seems to go along with a number of mental illnesses: feeling like there’s nothing really wrong even when everything is. Feeling like it’s all in your head in the sense that you’re just making it up; feeling like it’s just a bad day even if it’s weeks or months or years in a row and that it’s not worth making a big deal over; feeling like you’re not worth anything anyways, so why would you pull someone else like a therapist or a doctor or a friend into your problems; feeling bad about yourself so you think you deserve your feelings; and a lot more that I’m either forgetting or simply don’t know about. So even though yeah, the best choice may be getting a therapist, seeing a doctor, getting a prescription, etc., there are, or seem to be, obstacles in the way that are sometimes very difficult to overcome.
And if you do eventually make that step to finally seeing someone or telling someone, it doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t just go away.
And in all this, I’m not going to deny that there certainly are some people who see articles or posts on the internet about social anxiety and decide that they have it, and that some people do take advantage of a very real problem in a way that may not necessarily be honest. But that doesn’t mean that social anxiety is not a very real problem for some people, or that it doesn’t affect everything you do, even your willingness or ability to get help.
So yes, the ultimate world would be one in which we would hear about people living instead of their struggles with anxiety, but that’s only because in this ideal world anxiety wouldn’t exist to cause difficulties for those suffering from it. But in this world, in the real world, it’s just not always that easy.
I don’t disagree with almost any of this volume of text I awoke to :)
But look at that original post. People “need” to understand… Do they? Maybe your (OP’s) close friends and family will give you a break, but the rest of the world won’t. And shouldn’t! The rest of the world could not function if it revolved around you and your mental illness.
Social anxiety is an illness, and as such should be cured. It’s not up to the rest of the world to acknowledge how hard everyday tasks are for you. It’s up to you to make them be less hard. Whether through medical help, spiritual help, or just plain biting the bullet and doing it.
I’m actually like 10000% behind this. Though I do think there is a place for a better social understanding of mental illnesses and perhaps a bit more sympathy in the daily world, the greatest hope I could ever have for anyone suffering from anything is the courage and ability to seek the help they need in managing their illnesses, mental or otherwise. And sometimes yeah that does take an immense leap that everyone is not always ready to make right away, but it’s an important step in regaining your life. And like you said, maybe a little more sympathy might come from family or close friends, but yeah the world does need to keep turning and we need to do our best to turn with it.
I would wish, in an ideal world that I one day hope we achieve, for everyone to be able to take that first leap to face their struggles, and a little more patience from the wider world when maybe they encounter someone trying to manage those issues. Compromise, I think, is key in this whole effort, and maybe that’s not something the world has achieved yet. Though I do also think there’s a problem, which the OP seems to be hinting at, with people minimizing the issues that the people trying to manage them do struggle with, but that’s a whole separate thing.
Key points: understanding, patience, and effort on the part of both parties involved. What do we think of this?
Also can I just say I am so delighted with how this is an actual lovely discussion.
