Some thoughts on Social anxiety and some things I’m learning along the way #4

Following on from Blog #3
Of course its horrible encountering those sorts of people and situations, but I think I really have to weigh that up against what avoidance does to my life. It’s not as horrible as waking up and realizing that you have let five years of your life go by. If I could go back, that’s what I’d say to myself; that as difficult as it can be to be around other people, it’s really worse when you’re not. It’s when you spend time too much time alone and you let yourself get isolated, that the problems escalate and you only end up creating more issues to work through. As painful as it can be, there is something healing about being around other human beings.

Then I would say that there is an opportunity in having a condition like social anxiety. And I do not mean that in this over-the-top positive thinking kind of way – it is not something I would wish on anybody, going around feeling so distressed in the company of other human beings so much of the time, and I think we’d all give it back if we could – but I think there is so many people out there who are going around half asleep, never really doing any work on themselves or taking a look at their lives. But if you have a condition like social anxiety, you can’t be like that if you want to come out the other side of it. You have to wake up as bit more. You have to work on yourself emotionally and mentally in a way that a lot of people never experience. And in meeting those challenges, you are possibly creating the conditions for a more fulfilled and meaningful life at some point down the line. Maybe then, we will have learned how to use the super-sensitivity in our personalities that made us vulnerable to developing conditions like social anxiety, to our advantage instead of hurting ourselves with it.