Online Social Anxiety?
I always didn't like to be around people, it made me nervous and weird and I ended up alone almost always and it wasn't horrible because I handled being lonely, I had to, I'm 21 and there wasn't a time when I couldn't feel lonely and thank God I manged to survive. The problem is with people and every time I have to face social life and I don't seem to be handling that at all. The new thing is that I found this problem inside my room playing my favorite game Which was my comfortable zone that I used to escape to from the people outside. I play this online game usually with few close friends or randoms and I made some local and international friends in the game but I always kept this kind of relations as superficial as I can, some of them are friend's friends from inside or outside the game and some of them are girls (I don't have any female friends irl), the problem is that these in-game friends are usually inviting me to play and hang with them within the game and I just can't proceed any step past the superficial level and I always find myself escaping and avoiding companionship in the game unless there's a close friend involved which they are not plenty and I'm ending up lonely, afraid and anxious wich is exactly as what happens in real life but this is INside my safety zone that I escape to and it just taking me even more down. I'm grateful that I'm used to figure out things to survive but this still takes me to dead ends and I can't see it through.
Just to clarify things, is it that you cant trust the people online with your personal details?
or it feels like your safe space is being invaded by people?
Because I can definitely relate to this. When I really need to escape Ill play an old school arcade game on mame. Cant get more non-social than that ;P
@sympatheticKitten8138 hi. it's just that i feel like burden somehow idk why, maybe scared of what they'll think of me, its that I don't want to isolate myself all the time. the arcade game thing is interesting though!
@Stan92 have you had a negative experience with other online gamers in the past?
@sympatheticKitten8138 no actually everyone is fairly kind
This is completely random, but your story reminds me of extroverts with social anxiety. I read some articles online the other day. They really, really want to be around other people, but they feel anxious, so they end up avoiding people, then it feels bad :( Does this sound similar to what youre going through?
@Stan92
@sympatheticKitten8138 I always considered myself extremely introverted, I really don't want to be around people unless I have to. So the problem is when I have to. Though I always been confused in the terms of being an introvert and social anxiety.
@Stan92 I know there's some contradictory in my words, i always had problems at expressing
@Stan92 Im not a psychiatrist and cant give you any diagnoses but when someone is on the fence of being an introvert vs having social anxiety, Id bet on them having social anxiety.
Imagine if you had the most perfect, comfy, fun group of friends in the world. They love you for who you are, and you guys like to crack up over nerdy jokes and have a fun time together. Would you still not like being around other people?
And this is another unpleasant opinion, but youre 21. This is pretty young ... lots of people are awkward when theyre young, then grow into feeling more comfortable as they get a job, meet more people, etc.
@sympatheticKitten8138 can't I have both? Lol it's not necessary a versus thing . I have some friends as the group you described but i don't think the extrovertion definition is limited on close friends.
@Stan92 no, you can have both. Its just that in online discussions I see people saying meh Im an introvert when in their post theyre clearly describing symptoms of social anxiety (like feelings of dread, physical symptoms, fight or flight, rumination, thinking of worst case scenarios before the event, etc).
Its a shame because they use the introvert excuse and end up avoiding other people, which makes the symptoms even worse. Anxiety gets worse when you avoid whatever thing makes you anxious.
@sympatheticKitten8138 I get you and this is definitely valid
@Stan92 I can totally relate to this. Much like interacting with people in real life, interacting with people in-game chats suddenly became exhausting. Do you mind if I ask if you're using text or voice chat?
@frankieh voice chat. You ?
@Stan92 Voice chat was what was rough for me too!! It started to get a little bit easier when I would frequently mute myself and just chill out for a while until I felt stable enough to talk again. If anyone asks why you're doing it, you could just say there's some background noise you don't wanna bother them with if anxiety's not a topic you wanna openly discuss. You can mute them too while you take a breather if it helps. Most of the people I interacted with never asked any questions about it.
@frankieh thank you :) , I'll use this
@Stan92 No problem!! I really hope it helps.
@Stan92
Hi Stan92..
I'm so happy to meet you here! You are very good at describing your situation and you manage to do that well! I hope you'll write much to 7Cup. And so: All the "devils" that at coming towards you (fear). Maybe you could talk it over with a listener here or a therapeut? As you know it is all in our brain. Maybe you also could say: Go away bad thought.
Good luck to you beautiful Stan92.
@Helgafy Thanks for your kind words :)