The Mess of Social Anxiety
Things are getting messy.
I wish mental illness wasn't such a chaotic mess of a beast. I wish you could somehow keep it boxed up and tidy as you navigate it and that it was closer to having a broken bone. Set it, brace it, wrap it up, and rest - maybe crutches and a wheelchair, maybe a little extra support, but clean and simple. All your body needs is time, the proper nourishment and rest and it'll heal up. You can still function for the most part, still navigate life fairly the same, still hold relationships... the injury is contained to one small part of you, and it doesn't really change all that much, and you know it will heal regardless of your focus.
It's not though. It's like being locked in a room with 10 versions of yourself armed with past hurts trying to tear you down and you can negotiate and try to reason with them and dismiss them for a while, but eventually they're all in your face and you can't hear your thoughts and you're trying to do anything to quiet it all and feel a moment of peace. It becomes harder and harder to get there and takes so much energy, and all the while the room is heating up and it's getting so uncomfortable and the window is screaming at you telling you it's the better option, the only option. Despite it, in desperation, you throw a rope for a lifeline - just to have someone in your corner being another voice in the room, and it helps a lot.. more than you thought it could. Even if it's just one voice, just knowing someone is in the room who isn't against you, has your back, and can see what's happening and doesn't run, doesn't turn away in disgust, or dismiss it or pretend, and helps cover your ears and it gets quieter... and you start to trust it, against all of the other versions of yourself telling you not to. But even with that lifeline, and grounding presence, things are still burning and the voices are still everywhere so your grip gets tighter on that person and you start to worry that they'll get scared or tired and let go and then the other versions of yourself are suddenly involved too and in their face it's too much for them.
So, they let go. Maybe for good reason - maybe they were getting too hot and didn't think it was worth it - that you were worth it. Or maybe they thought it was a lost cause or maybe simply they had to go water their garden, rest a bit, or deal with their own fire. So they leave the room safely without a word. And suddenly, that support that you started to lean into and trust isn't there and you're thrown off balance and can't steady yourself and the fire feels more intense and there isn't another voice on your side anymore and you almost wish you never reached out to feel the reprieve because it made the fire feel so much hotter now. You feel dumb for allowing yourself to trust it, to think you were worth it and they would stay.
So, you realize you're alone again. and do the best that you can. and hope it's enough. While wondering why they let go and what you must have done - surely if they saw the room and were in there with you, they'd only leave if they thought you weren't worth it. So, things get louder and you get smaller and just wait and hope they return when they're ready - and hope they do, and hope you're still you when they do and that it doesn't happen all over again.
And then you realize...
It's only been 3 days.
Only three days. That is nothing. But in that room, in that fire, with all those stupid voices... it feels like a month has passed.
And that about sums up social anxiety.
Somehow the smallest social interaction can be so loud when the volume on it is turned up. In the absence of constant reassurance, the silence gets filled oh so quickly with just about every extreme.
It's such a small disorder in comparison to the GAD and MDD - but in the right conditions, when you're feeling more vulnerable, it can really make things messy.
So, I think I'll try to box this mess up a bit.
@mapletreebubble
Wow, that was a great analogy! I hope many others read that.
Social anxiety is a bigtime problem these days.. I dislike greatly all the suffering going on...
Thanks for contributing to the forum in a Big way!
🌲
@mapletreebubble
oh yeah, I love your name as well😍
I've been planting hordes of trees on the website!
I'm honored to be part of the tree society here on 7cups 😉
@mapletreebubble
Thanks for taking the time to respond thoughtfully to this. I appreciate it. I'm sorry you've had to navigate social anxiety, depression, and overwhelming physical pain. I'm glad you're still here and I'm glad you've navigated it enough to feel a sense of peace, and help pull other people out of the same place. It takes a lot of strength to do that and put yourself back in the fire, even if you're wearing a fireman's suit.
You articulated the difference well - the compounding layers and complexity that is mental illness can drive most away simply through time and feelings of helplessness walking alongside them in such a messy chaotic state. We become someone we're not, and the fight to survive is mixed with moments of resilience, despair, and a chaotic assortment of actions that match and actions that conflict. It's confusing and frustrating to witness, especially if the person doesn't spell it out for you - and your attempts at pulling them out are often met with a mess of reactions that aren't always simple to understand. So, of course you'd back off and take a breather. It's exhausting. Their life isn't worth your discomfort. It makes sense, it's just hard to watch from the other end - from the burning room.
From that end, all the while you're checking in on them making sure they are ok and can handle it, handle you.. and they say they can and they reassure you and you begin to believe it just before they distance themselves. So you feel like a disease that needs to be quarantined and it just makes it worse, but it was already too hard to be as open as you were. Because everytime you reached out you were fighting every instinct not to and you were terrified this would happen, and it did. Again. And you wonder if that's just how it will always be, and you hope you're wrong anyway.
@mapletreebubble
But does that mean it's an excuse to abandon someone suffering from mental illness? No — but what I mean is that this cursed illness affects everyone and burns everyone in some way... it destroys us from within and changes us until we're no longer ourselves. I think the only person who can hold on and support is someone who has been through something similar — someone who knows what it feels like, and who knows that the worst thing that could happen to the person who's burning is to be left and abandoned.
@BlueSoul90
It feels incredibly selfish to ruin someone's peace with your chaos, even if you need the support. The overwhelming feeling of being a burden just by existing in their world feels like too much. You are normally contained, easy to digest, controlled... And this, this is just everything as far from that as it gets. How do you decide to be selfish anyway, to reach out when you know you're too much, to ask for help when you feel helpless? And more, how do you cope with that once you do, and you see them struggling with it. I feel like I'll never be able to be real with anyone and I'll always feel this isolation because of it. I am fine carrying people, I'm ok with their mess, but I can't cope with them seeing any of mine, and I can't cope with them choosing to leave after seeing it.
@mapletreebubble
I understand how you feel and how you think — I understand that you don't want to be a burden... I used to think the same way... and I still do, to the point that for a long time in my life, when people asked me why I don't get married, why I'm not in a relationship, something similar would echo inside me... that I don't want to bring someone into my chaos... whether because of depression... or because of social anxiety that makes the simplest things a wife dreams of — like a wedding, parties, and so on — impossible. So I've always felt something similar... and I, too, chose isolation. But sometimes I wonder — is this right? Is distancing myself from everyone and choosing isolation... so I won't be a burden, and so they won't see or be affected by the chaos of my life — is that truly the right choice? I don't know... but sometimes I feel that this choice may have made life harder... and it may be that we've deprived ourselves of the chance to become something better.
