“You might have social
anxiety, but it doesn’t mean
that you don’t like people”
wellness
24 CalmMoment.com
risky, explains Chloe, so we need to challenge that
belief in order to overcome it. “We say to ourselves:
‘I’m just going to go for two minutes, I’m going to talk
to two people, and then I’m going to get out of there.’
Just challenge yourself and learn that you survive
when you go to these social situations. You don’t die.
And that’s how we overcome social anxiety and we
become more confident through that process.”
So what causes social anxiety? People often start
experiencing symptoms in their teens and while some
grow out of it, others find it never goes away. It’s often
confused with shyness, but social anxiety is a real
fear of interaction with other people. Sufferers can
struggle with everything from making phone calls to
going to the shops and may worry excessively about
normal social situations.
Around half of the population would describe
themselves as shy, according to Chloe, but only a
proportion of these people have social anxiety: “It
really is a very physical and quite extreme experience
of fearing the judgment of other people, to the extent
where it might hold you back from being yourself. You
might avoid social situations and it can really affect
people’s lives. Often you might have social anxiety,
but it doesn’t mean that you don’t like people: you
still want those connections. You still want to have
relationships, but the anxiety holds you back.”
Fiona Thomas, author of Depression in a Digital
Age: The Highs and Lows of Perfectionism (Trigger
Publishing, £9.99), believes that introverts can bemore prone to social anxiety as we live in a society
that values confidence. “I think introverts probably
are more likely to have social anxiety, but only
because society has led us to believe that an extrovert
personality is normal and us introverts are somehow
at fault by being quiet and needing alone time,” she
says. “Many introverts are working in roles that
require them to put on a high energy persona (people
in retail, team leaders, influencers) and this can have
a real impact on their mental health and make
socialising in their spare time feel impossible.”
Social anxiety can also be linked to other mental
health issues, such as depression, low self-esteem
and anxiety disorders. Fiona developed social anxiety
after a nervous breakdown in her twenties, which
forced her to give up a career she loved. “My identity
was wrapped up in my job so when I was stripped of
that my self-esteem took a hit,” she explains. “I was
suffering from depression and was unemployed.
Whenever I was in a social situation I froze because
I was worried that someone would ask, ‘What do you
do?’, and I would have nothing to say. I felt pretty
worthless, so I shut myself away from the world.”