Social Anxiety

I suffer from hypocritical personality disorder. Alright, it may not be officially recognised yet but it’s a very real consequence of my social anxiety. On the one hand, I hate it when people make plans with me and am relieved whenever those plans are cancelled or ended. I will hang around at a party, slowly dying inside and counting down the minutes to when it’s acceptable for me to politely leave. I’m also terrible at keeping in touch with people; being the first to initiate a Facebook chat with someone brings me out in cold sweat. Forget about texting anyone before they’ve texted me first.

On the other hand, I resent people not contacting me. I resent being a social pariah, like it’s their fault I’m a social pariah, like I didn’t spend an entire party hunched in a corner nursing a drink like Gollum with the One Ring. For months I can scuttle away from people, hide in my room or alienate them completely by ignoring their presence because I don’t know how to acknowledge them. Then when they go to the cinema and don’t invite me, I curse them to hell and back. I really have to start admitting that it’s at least partially my fault. Okay, mostly my fault. But if only they wouldn’t take my chronic shyness at face value. I’m fun, I promise. I have it on very good authority that I am funny, whether I mean to be or not. I’m at least weird, which can be amusing or interesting in a friendship, especially if you share that weirdness.

“How dare they not contact me for months at a time!” I fume at a person I haven’t contacted for months at a time. But if so many people do the same thing, then it must be normal behaviour. No one ever messages first, either that or I’m such a chore to talk to that none of my friends bother. But I won’t indulge that paranoia. I think the anxiety comes in when you’re afraid that no one talks to you because you’ve done something wrong, some social faux pas that insulted someone or made you misjudge the strength of a friendship. The anxiety is obsessing about what you might have done wrong, whether this behaviour is normal, feeling guilty and betrayed at the same time whilst everyone else is absolutely fine with it.

Deep breath. It’s not easy to calm that string of insane thought, my mind buzzes with it constantly. I constantly battle my hypocritical personality disorder, and the only way to do that is to take the plunge and start messaging and texting people first. If they don’t reply within ten seconds, my anxiety level will explode out the top of my head, but let it have its hissy fit. I’m not going to let that fear control me so much anymore.