How do you know if you have social anxiety? And how do you deal with it? I'm having a lot of trouble talking to people at my high school because I'm afraid of rejection.
Oof, heavy question, love. <:) I'll do my best, though!
Point the first: Disclaimer that I am not an expert! Anything I say in this message will just be me talking from my own point of view and my own experience with my problems. (I don't usually think of them as SAD even--I just have this massive fear of self-diagnosing, and I don't like to put labels on basically anything but that's my personal hangups, ugh. @_@)
Point the second. How do I know? Generally speaking, I consider my social anxiety to be Social Anxiety Disorder (capitals for Big Important Official Title) because it really is crippling. It turns the act of knocking on somebody's door into ten minutes of standing outside chewing on my lips and messing frantically with whatever I have in my pockets (clicking a pen or popping the cap on and off a marker, usually). It turns a single even slightly negative experience where I think somebody was pissed off at me into shaking hands, burning skin, a head that feels inflated and a complete inability to get my thoughts to focus in on anything but the interaction. It's paralyzing and honestly pretty shitty. It lasts a long time after the interaction is over and I avoid the person who caused it for as long as humanly possible afterwards, out of this awful sort of nagging, bone-deep fear that if I come near them they'll start thinking bad things about me and I'll KNOW, I'll just HEAR IT AND THEY'LL HATE ME.
That set of reactions are what distinguish it for me (yet again, for me personally!) There's not really a clear line between "regular shyness" and SAD, I don't think. Then again I haven't been able to talk to enough people to figure out, because as previously mentioned I freeze and panic at the mere thought of starting a conversation with somebody. @_@
Point the third: Dealing. I personally, as evidenced by the previous paragraphs, don't really have a way to "deal" with SAD, per se. <:T And this might be different for you than it is for me! Coping mechanisms are never universal. But here's what sort of helps for me.
Being preoccupied. When I'm doing something (and/or they're doing something) sometimes that helps me not to overanalyze every little thing they do or say.
Professional settings! The two places I am most capable of making conversation with people, I've found, are the hospital I do my clinical rotations at and my job at Wendy's. When I have an "excuse" to talk to them, I don't have the option to fall back because "well, they don't want to talk to me." I have to talk to them. In a way, it takes the pressure off me.
Being intentional with your thoughts! It's really important to learn to catch the thoughts that are paralyzing you, and to recognize them from, like...an outside point of view. :O It's important. You have to see your thoughts and realize which ones are unreasonable and to firmly go NO I AM A DELIGHT and maybe shake them off a little. I have three pages in a notebook somewhere of my negative/paralysis thoughts, so I can recognize them and shake them off. (And also to vent them! Getting them out there helps me get rid of them. :D)
And the most important one: distracting yourself and taking the first step. It's kind of a brain trick; you force yourself to think about something else, and sort of powerwalk forward toward them and then you don't have a choice except for embarrassing yourself further by walking away without saying anything. :U
So yeah. I don't know how much this'll help you. But I hope it can help at least a little bit. Regardless of whether or not you feel like you officially have Social Anxiety Disorder (big capitals) your problem is a problem and it doesn't need a fancy name to be a very real one! If this anxiety and shyness is distressing you or making it hard for you to talk to people you want to talk to, it's a problem. So don't let your brain play this off because (in the words of my brain) "you're just a loser who should stop diagnosing yourself to feel important", "it's just shyness, get a grip" or "you can fake like you're not completely terrified when you're forced to, so it's not a real problem".
Try to love yourself, even when it's hard. Try to find somebody you trust, who can catch your negative thoughts when you don't recognize them. Try to push yourself, just a little tiny bit at a time!
