Social anxiety?

When I was little, before school and in the first years of school, I used to find friends easily and I wanted to participate everywhere in school. However, later, when I changed the school, bullying started. Since then it seemed that everything changed, I wasn’t the same courageous girl who wanted to participate everywhere.

When I was 13 I wanted to be normal. I even used to cry about why I couldn’t be normal like others. When I turned 16 I found a group of like-minded people and I was happy that I am different. Then I felt like I was better than others.

Since I was 18 I had depression which started during my studies in Applied Physics in Vilnius. Then I was hoping that changing the city would make it easier for me to change, be more courageous, and find friends. However, my hopes didn’t come true, I didn’t manage to make friends and I fell into depression. However, I don’t want to talk about depression this time, I have a lot to say about it separately.

When I was 19, I got into psychology studies, seeking to understand how the human brain works, to understand people. During my studies, I’ve learned about various disorders and I tried to apply each of them to myself (but as far as I know, all psychology and medicine students go through this stage).

During my psychology studies and many years after that, I was trying to understand what was wrong with me. I was sure I had social anxiety that was caused by bullying at school. Sometimes I doubted that maybe the social anxiety passed, it seemed like maybe it was not there. But then again I encountered new social situations and I would always go back to understanding that it’s still there.

I tried solving social anxiety issues using methods that I’ve learned during my studies. According to cognitive therapy, which is considered the most effective based on research, the first step is identifying automatic thoughts. What do you think in those situations? But I never succeeded in finding those thoughts. My head is usually empty in social situations and I just wouldn’t know what to say, I didn’t have any automatic thoughts. From my teenage years, I remember that I used to have automatic thoughts, I used to be afraid to look stupid. But I didn’t have thoughts like that anymore as an adult. Therefore I didn’t manage to properly use the methods that I’ve learned.

During all those years I have gone to several different psychologists. But it felt like they didn’t understand me. One psychologist suggested, as a starting point to overcome social anxiety, to ask my group members for their phone numbers. But that seemed like an impossible task for me. After that, she decided to make the quiet contest and I was feeling very uneasy because I didn’t know what to say. After that session, I told her that I didn’t want her consultations anymore. But she remarked that I need them because I have a lot of hidden anger. Seriously? Anger? Anger is the one thing that was never hidden in me, it’s one emotion that always was expressing itself easily.

Experience with another psychologist was better, I liked her both as a lecturer and as a person. And I felt like I was telling her everything very openly. But she didn’t seem to believe that my inability to make friends during my studies could have caused depression and that there had to be something else. She also couldn’t understand what is my issue. She said it just like that – she doesn’t see any problem.

A similar situation was repeated with several psychologists. And I was feeling so helpless. I didn’t understand if I couldn’t explain my issue and what I wanted from consultations, or if there was something else I was doing wrong.

But now I understand – no wonder that they didn’t understand what is the problem. I actually didn’t have any social anxiety, that’s why psychologists couldn’t help me overcome something that doesn’t exist. When I was 33 I learned that I have autism and ADHD. It explained my whole life, both my difficulties and my strengths. And the bullying at school was not the cause of social difficulties my whole life, it was rather just one of the “symptoms”.