10 Things I Learned Curing My Paralyzing Social Anxiety

It has been a very long decade working on untying all this, but as of this writing I no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for social anxiety.

Here are 10 things I have learned along the way:

1. When I am within +/- 6 feet of people, I can feel their energy. I am weirdly grateful for March-April 2020, because I might never otherwise have gone long enough without being in anyone's personal energy space out in public to understand this so clearly.
2. When I was feeling other people's energy, I had thoughts about it. Trying to calibrate myself not to be too much, etc. My thoughts about how I was showing up added to the build-up of anxiety.
3. I am somewhat neurodivergent, and I spent a lot of energy trying to figure out what a "normal person" might be like in a social interaction, trying to mimic that and also hide that I was doing that. I have learned over the years that being neurodivergent isn't a thing I have to hide.
4. If I have kindness in my heart and I am treating people well, that's good peopling. I can use my words and check in with people and ask them if the interaction feels good for them when I'm not sure. I don't have to be hypervigilant about it.
5. I can avoid people that like to see me upset, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. I am an INFP, and sensitive, and I can choose to be around people who think that's precious and who don't try to squash that out of me. They aren't my people.
6. I don't have to socialize with people who aren't my people unless I feel like I want to. I don't have to be accepted by people who don't get me to be acceptable.
7. Seeking acceptance from people who can't understand me from their perspective is crazy-making. I could have saved myself a whole lot of therapy if I'd gotten this one sooner.
8. Rather than trying to figure out the right way to be and being that, I have learned to ask myself if I like me and how I'm showing up. If I like me and how I'm showing up, even if I feel weird energy around me or am getting confusing social cues, I don't take it personally.
9. Sometimes social stuff is weird. I get curious about why it is weird but I don't need to make it mean I have to change.
10. My inner state of calm is much more important to me than any one else's opinion of me. I will not sacrifice my calm to try to make someone who doesn't value it feel catered to.

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Pretty cool, huh? In 2011, 3 years after I graduated from my Master's in Social Work program, and a year after I left my marriage, I fully met the diagnostic criteria for social anxiety and agoraphobia. But I found a good therapist, and by the end of 2014 I had sold everything I owned that didn't fit into the trunk of my 1995 Honda Accord, and went wandering the country to see what I'd been missing. I did take my social anxiety with me at first, but it was no longer a paralyzing thing.

I did all kinds of work during that time of resetting my identity file, trying to find a stable story of self that I felt comfortable enough interfacing as. I even shaved my head to help reset my image of myself, finding the authentic-me under my vanity. It's been a trip.

To update my identity file I use a technique called verbal acupuncture on myself, letting these truths come to the surface and integrate with my understanding of how the world works.

This kind of work is accessible to most people who can cultivate insight into their own patterning, which is most people. I am available as a guide and mentor.

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