Social anxiety can be invisible too.

 

I love Natalie Dee, she gets it.

Hi, I am Samm and I have social anxiety.

I might look cool, calm and collected on the outside but inside my different I-positions (the different parts of Self) are a cacophony of screams and sobs and rocking. There's a war going on inside me and one side of that war is standing like Anxiety Girl telling me that I got this, I can do this, I'm fine, I'm safe, it's ok, nothing bad is going to happen. The other side is bawling their eyes out, holding their hands over their ears with their eyes scrunched tightly shut, curled up in a ball rocking back and forth, hiding under a blanket fort. That side used to be far louder and more in control than it is these days. I am grateful to acknowledge that my Anxiety Girl in her superheroine pose is definitely becoming stronger and rallying more internal cheerleaders around her to make sure I live my life and do things normal people take for granted.

Something that has intrigued me ever since I began my Bachelor degree in Arts Psychotherapy is how often my peers would tell me that they enjoyed my presentation, that I was so confident. It really juxtaposed my lived experience. It really spotlighted that we can never know what someone is feeling on the inside, what they are going through or dealing with internally, based on how they appear externally.

This is my truth.

As I walk out of my house and get into my car I feel the first twinges of 'butterflies', like pins and needles the size of fat fingers. I feel it in my stomach and around my chest and collarbone. I ground myself; I sink my roots right down into the Earth and draw on my Mother's womb energy. I keep chanting to myself I can do this, I'm fine, It's fine. I'm ok. It will be over soon. I notice my breathing is more shallow than usual and I try to take deep breaths. As I get into my car I let out a guttural, low exhalation and it feels good, it pushes the fat-fingered pins and needles out of my gut momentarily. So I do it a few times as I put on my seatbelt and turn on the car. I pull out of the driveway and that somehow allows my monkey mind to take over so I have to consciously keep reigning it in. There's an insistent jabbering in the back left of my brain telling me to turn around, to go home, you're running late, you hate being late, just turn around, don't go. Only, I'm not really running late. Yes, I did want to leave about 3 minutes earlier than I did but I am by no means running late.

Then there's another voice in my head at the front right saying, it's ok, you've got this, Baby Gurl may have said she doesn't care if you don't go, and maybe she really doesn't, but ultimately she will feel good to see you there, to see you showing up for her. #MummaRepresent

As I pull onto the long street heading toward the high school those fat-fingered pins and needles kick it up a notch. They are more like little mosquitoes of electricity zapping around through my body. I can feel my pulse like a ring around my upper neck threatening to choke me, to take my breath away but I keep going. I keep going because my Baby Gurl is going up on stage to receive an award for doing really well at school and she has her own anxiety about that and I am grateful to hear she has changed her wording and has been calling it excitement. I like to think I had something to do with that, when I told her that anxiety is just excitement of a different colour, it's just one step down from excitement so if you can step up that anxiety then perhaps it can become excitement. She's been talking herself into it and I love that. I love that so much and I really do hope that is my influence. Yet still, I know there is anxiety underlying the excitement, I know it because I feel it and if she can get up on the stage and receive her award - a thing she was begging me not to make her do a week ago - then I sure as shit can get over myself long enough to walk into that school and go watch her.

By the time I get out of the car my whole jaw is buzzing with electricity and my mouth has a metallic taste in it. My stomach is roiling and my shoulders feel so tense. I can barely catch my breath. My mouth is dry. I've lost a lot of my peripheral vision at this point. But can you tell? If you were observing me, could you tell any of this was going on inside me?

No.

No, you couldn't because I look just fine on the outside. I have some colour to my cheeks and my eyes might be a little wider than usual and perhaps I speak a little faster and I seem like I am out of breath (because I am) but only a very observant person who truly knows me would pick up on that stuff. On the outside I am fine. I am cool. I am calm. I am collected. I am confident. -- would you look at that, all words beginning with c. I am the 4 c's, the four seas, hmmm feels like an art journal spread there. I do love a good metaphor.

My daughter comes racing out the hall doors as I arrive. Was she waiting for me? Was she watching for me? How did she know I was walking up to the doors? I don't know but I'm glad she came out. She was a lifeline. She was an anchor. She was a reminder of why I was putting myself through this physiological and psychological torture. It is all for her. She is a billion times worth it because you know what, she was there ready and waiting for me. So it WAS important that I show up for her. She DID really want me there regardless of saying she didn't care. She did and I showed up for her.

"I have dry anxiety mouth," I say to her.

"Me too!" she says to me.

We hug and she walks me inside.

Julia Michaels sings it perfectly.

It didn't take long for my anxiety to ebb once I was seated and I no longer had to be seen, I could hide in my seat. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to get up and perform. I didn't have to go on stage. I didn't have to pretend to be socially capable or hide my social unacceptability (I'm not exactly a mainstream muggle).  So once I was seated, I grounded myself again and it was ok and I was almost out of the whole situation. School presentations are boring AF, by the way. I got to see my daughter on stage for a blip of time and the rest was trying not to fidget or go on my phone to pass the time. In the end, she came up and gave me a hug and then I got to go home.

That is just a taste of my anxiety. Any time I have to leave the house there is at least an element of this in me. It might only be some gentle butterfly whispers or it might be a roaring so loud in my ears that I can't hear people talking but it's always there. I wish it would go away. I wish I didn't have to feel it. I wish that in order to LIVE my life rather than just survive it, I didn't have to force myself to go through this all the time. But it is there. And I live with it. And it's invisible to the naked eye.

I share this for those out there who need to know they aren't alone. Those who need validation for their feelings. Those who need to hear that someone else gets it. I get it. I am right here with you. We just keep putting one foot in front of the other and taking as many deep breaths as we can and we get through it. I see you as you see me.

In Joy