On managing social anxiety and learning to be myself

I have terrible social anxiety. Or, I used to. I’m not sure anymore.

Two years ago, I couldn’t talk to strangers. I’d avoid eye contact, smile politely, mouth the right words to the cashier and walk away, never having connected with anyone. I was in a bad place and not only couldn’t I talk to anyone – when I did finally talk to people, I would be crippled by the fear of what they thought of me. Did I talk too much, laugh too loud, speak too strongly? Was I enough? Was I too much?

It was tough, so I just stopped and basically became a very polite recluse.

Shortly after,  I became part of the team organising the Aussie Bloggers Conference. Conference day came around and yes, I wanted to vomit, but I had no choice. I HAD to talk to people. This was my job and part of my job was making sure as many people as possible felt as welcome as possible.

I went into that trip determined to have fun and I did. I talked to everyone I saw, asked them questions, listened to their answers and was not told I was an idiot by anyone.

Throughout that day, I realised that people are incredibly forgiving and that the people who aren’t forgiving have their own issues.

It wasn’t an epiphany that changed my life overnight, but it was the beginning of the building blocks I needed to get over myself.

Over the last twelve months, I’ve attended a few conferences, a couple of blogging events and a music festival. I’ve forced myself to make eye contact with strangers, to start conversations and to smile at everyone. 95% of the people I have met have been amazing.

You know what? It gets easier with practise. Nowadays, I can almost forget that I have social anxiety when I start up a conversation with new people. At MONA FOMA, while I was waiting for The Dresden Dolls to perform, I talked to people. We laughed and chatted and danced and enjoyed the music. I didn’t know them, and yet, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and had amazing fun anyway. I did the same thing the next night for the Supergroup and had just as much fun.

People are clique-y. Yes.

People are also, generally, quite nice and willing to talk to someone who strikes up conversation with them.

[If they’re not nice, they’ve either got crippling social anxiety themselves, or they’re an arsehole. Be kind either way, both things are hard to live with.]

I realised this week, as I sat down next to a couple of the school mums and struck up a conversation all by myself, that people don’t scare me so much anymore and it’s really nice.

In fact, it is damn freeing to realise that I can just talk to people.

People are interesting and people have stories and I want to hear what their stories are, without having to hide behind a computer screen to get there.