My famous outing

This section is dedicated to those who, like me, suffer from social phobia and, as an aggravating circumstance, also write.

You know the writer who complains because the publisher does not organize enough presentations for him? Here, my category, the category of socialphobic writers, despairs for the opposite reason, because at the idea of ​​sitting in a library, smiling at the audience and starting to talk about himself and his books with all eyes on him, guts become entangled to the point that it becomes difficult to untangle them.

If you are social phobic what social phobia is you already know, if you are not, this section is not for you.

I’ll start by re-proposing my famous outing, a piece I wrote years ago, in a moment of desperation. It caused a sensation and aroused an uproar of comments: people like me who understood and sympathized but also many good doctors who pretended to give advice.

Remember the “muggles” of Harry Potter, the normal ones who don’t know magic? Here, even for the social anxiety it is the same: do not fool yourself, the normals will never understand you.

So I wrote this

Either I die here, now and forever or I still have to live and move on.

The only option is to come out into the open. Who brings to light their homosexuality, who anorexia, who bulimia, who drugs. I am a social phobic.

Those who do not know this disease, those who do not experience it on their skin, do not know how much we suffer. There is no talk of it around, only I know how much I suffer.

What for others are normal gestures of daily life, unconscious, mechanical gestures, for me are superhuman obstacles: signing under the eyes of others while my hand is shaking, working if someone observes me, calling, talking to two people together, telling a stupid joke, greeting a friend on the street, chatting with someone who comes to visit me at my workplace, passing through a crowd of people on the sidewalk, turns into an unspeakable torment.

I enter into a spiral of anxiety, a neurovegetative earthquake sets off, I sweat cold, I tremble, I fill with blotches, my jaws dry up, my vision dazzles, I get a headache, I can no longer articulate my words, think clearly, remember what I meant. I see everything black and I lose the thread of the conversation. It seems to me that I have nothing interesting to tell and that my life is an empty box. The only thing I can still think about is that I don’t want others to notice. I don’t want it with all of myself. I am willing to disappear, to sink, to die instantly, to lose those people forever. Patience if they are dear to me, patience if I love them, if I need them to live.

And, the more I think about it, the more it shows. I blush violently, move awkwardly, jerky. The awkwardness and embarrassment ooze from all pores, I stumble, I drop the objects around me, I appear clouded and dark in the face. I get unpleasant, I look angry while I’m just scared and unhappy. I am at my worst.

My discomfort is so palpable, so evident, that it communicates itself to others, makes them anxious, makes them run away. I lose all friends this way. And, the more friends they are, the more I care about them, the more I feel destroyed by their judgment.

Yet, without false modesty, I know that I am an intelligent, cultured person, with a discreet chatter, ironic and witty. I’m not even shy. The social phobic is not shy, but is terrified of the judgment of others, suffers from performance anxiety. If I relax I am cheerful, volcanic, chatty, even an exhibitionist. But there are fewer and fewer opportunities to be relaxed. I’m getting worse.

To relax I have to be deeply immersed and focused in what I am doing, so much so that I forget who I am around. Or I have to have a glass of wine.

I understand those who can’t take it anymore and pop pills in order not to go crazy. I don’t take drugs and I suffer so much that I get sick, that I can’t work anymore, that I don’t see anyone anymore.

It is useless to say to ourselves that the real problems are others, that people endure grief, disease and poverty with courage and dignity. It only serves to esteem yourself less.

It is useless to tell me that if I blush, I will not kill anyone, it only serves to regret lost opportunities.

A lot of time has passed since then and I have learned to live with social anxiety.

But I’ll tell you about this another time.