Personal Narrative: My Journey With Social Anxiety

What does having social anxiety feel like? After doing quite extensive and lengthy exploration into the topic, I came to the understanding that it was something that was unique to each individual. Overall, living with anxiety was awful, and often accompanied by other mental illness, such as depression, anorexia, or even a few others combined. People who live this way often come to the understanding that not many people can interpret their actions and know that the things they do are because of their social anxiety. Not everyone who has anxiety can easily open up about their emotions or what they feel. This made it difficult to find anyone to interview, or even just talk to about their mental illness. I was unsure of who had it, as not many

people are able to just come straight out and say they have it. It is an internal battle many deal with, yet so many people struggle silently. However, our computers hold little portals into the worlds of people with social anxiety. In a more accessible sense, our phones also contain these portals. Apps on our phones, and web pages on the internet, allows people to share their emotions, making it easier for people to understand them.
Social anxiety is not an uncommon disorder, so it seems we should understand it and possibly even be able to pick out those who have it, right? Wrong. Sure, there are times when you can see that someone is not totally comfortable in the social setting, but so often people mistakenly assume this means that person is awkward. Even though so many people have been clinically diagnosed with social anxiety, I have found that there are even more people with this anxiety that do not visit the doctor. Social anxiety can be a very difficult topic to discuss, and even harder when someone has it. In order for me to understand social anxiety, I have downloaded a few apps on my phone that are for people with different mental illnesses. These apps are designed to help people to anonymously talk about how they are feeling and some even give advice and tips or tricks for these people.
Pacifica is an app that offers daily tools for stress and anxiety. Not only is this an app that allows people to talk about their feelings, but the pacifica community is there to support these people. It is a beautiful representation of what we need to help those who are suffering. When I took my first looks into the app, I was amazed. This was such a beautiful app. Could it really work? Over 215 thousand people have downloaded the app, showing that people want help, and will look for it in simple applications. Pacifica is an app that offers many services to those seeking help for their anxiety. They also offer services and support for depression, insomnia, eating disorders, and people suffering from many other mental illnesses or diseases.
Opening the app, there is a hope board. Here you list your hopes, not your hurts, as you should “let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” A daily reminder is set to ask the user, “how are you feeling today?” This reminds the user to continue to guide themselves to the positive, and if they are hurting, they can get help. Pacifica allows people to keep track of their mood, thoughts, goals, and overall health. It will keep record of these and put them together in a progress report. The app allows users to follow guided lessons and activities to help them learn techniques to manage stress, anxiety, and/or depression. There is a section that gives lessons on how to relax. It guides the user through the basics; deep breathing, unguided meditation, and muscle relaxation. It goes through many sections of mindfulness, stressful situations, calming down, and finding your inner strength. The last sections include support groups and public posts. Here, people are allowed and encourages to join groups based on topics they would like to discuss with others who feel the same way. They are allowed to express their feelings in an anonymous way, seeking for their needed help and guidance. The users can enter communities to express their feelings. Gratitude, quotes, health, goals, music, work stress, anxiety, insomnia are some of the many communities the app provides. This application is not only accessible to download on phones or other portable devices, but can be on the computer as well (Pacifica, 2017).
Tumblr is a website, and app, and a community. Here, many people openly express what living with anxiety is like. On user posted what they actually mean when they can not do something versus what people hear or assume. The anxiety version included things such as, “I am unable to do that. I am too stressed out to do that. I cannot face the humiliation of attempting to do that. I am on the verge of a panic attack,” among a few others. The post said that people without anxiety hear, “I am unwilling to do that. I am just shy. I am overreacting. I am lazy. I need to get more experience in a social situation to help my anxiety,” along with a few others. I found that so many people with anxiety want people without it to understand, but not many people do understand. There are many images put out on the web that depict what battling with social anxiety is like. I found many people thought it was quite easy to write their emotions in the online setting, either exposing themselves by using their real name, or masking themselves by going unanimous, or just using different name. Tumblr allows their users to decide whether or not to share their personal information (Tumblr, 2007).
Blogging is not uncommon for people who suffer from social anxiety.

Sites such as blogger, joyable, weebly, and many others allow people to write without limitations. On joyable, I came across a blog called “My Journey with Social Anxiety,” posted by Erica P. that tells a valuable message about living with social anxiety. She outlines her childhood life, and how growing into the woman she is today was difficult, simply because she faced a battle with social anxiety. She then goes on to speak of how she joins a program called joyable, and from here, she is able to conquer some her worst social anxieties. Some of the things that interrupted her daily living were included in her

blog.
When faced with being around new people or in new places, Erica says, “It takes me an hour to get comfortable in a new setting.

If it takes longer than that, I usually just leave, if I can.” Even working can be a struggle, “I left my last job because there were too many triggers for my anxiety,” and sometimes she will even “duck into the bathroom or my cubical more quickly than normal if [she] see[s] someone turn a corner walking my way, to avoid small talk.” Making or taking phone calls can be a challenge, unless it is with immediate family. Those with very strong and outspoken ideas are nerve-wracking, and people of authority can also make her nervous. If she was able to turn her brain of, Erica says she would like to sometimes. Being one-on-one with someone can be more nerve-wracking than being in a group, because all of the attention is on a one-to-one base, and there is a pressure to be better, to be “awesome.” However, these all were able to be overcome, and Erica would feel less pressure in these

situations.
These pressures or struggles were worked on with this Joyable Program, where provided is a personal coach who starts off by chatting to the user about how anxiety affects them. From there, some exercises were done to help understand the anxieties and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). What Erica learned from this experience was that everyone has social anxiety, to some extent. Social anxiety is normal, and never will go away completely, and no one should stop themselves from doing what they desire just because they deal with it. Each person deals with social anxiety in different, unique ways, and some people are very uncomfortable with one-on-one interactions with a friend, while others fear large groups instead. One person may have trouble talking to strangers, while another really struggles with speaking to authority figures. These fears are caused by negative thinking errors experienced when particular social situations occur, or are going to occur. One way to turn these thoughts around is to challenge yourself and the thoughts to come up with a more positive view of the situation, which helps bring anxiety down a bit. Those negative thoughts are based on core beliefs about yourself. A major step to overcoming social anxiety is identifying and challenging those core beliefs.
I could speak endlessly about the valuable lessons I learned in Erica’s blog. However, I think the most important thing I took out of it was that everyone deals with social situations differently, and we all have our own anxieties about being around new or unfamiliar people or places. The blog ends with the author speaking that because of this program, she is not ashamed to be herself anymore, and is less afraid of social situations. An important topic she touched on was that she realized that mistakes are possible in any situation, but they will not truly be all too terrible, and she is able to recover from those situations (Erica P., 2015).
In the end, what I took away from this entire process was that each individual deals with social anxiety in some form, and everyone handles it in their own, unique and personal way. There are many ways people share their views, whether it be through speeches, blogs, articles, or interviews. They have the option to find places where they can share their names, or write anonymously. There are many ways that people are able to get help online, I found many websites and programs that had incredible reviews of people they have helped. No matter what, it is important that everyone tries to understand when people feel pressures from their anxiety. Social anxiety, or any anxiety, for that matter, is a tricky matter to understand, and may even my tricky to discuss. However, there are many portals online that are easily accessible to those who deal with those pressures, and for people who simply seek to understand the depths of those who suffer.