I watched the BBC1 programme about Tourettes. The frankness of John Davidson and Greg Storey was refreshing. It made me think about mental health in general and also in particular relation to my own mental health.
I, like the FP, believe there shouldn’t be a stigma around mental health. People shouldn’t feel ashamed of their mental health problems. And as the FP often says, if anyone was to have a wooden leg for example and they needed help or wanted to talk about it, there would be no stigma in that. Mental health issues are different, you can’t see them, you can only see the effects. Inspired by Greg Storey and John Davidson, I’m going to open up a bit about my own mental health problems. One in particular. The one that rules my life.
If you are one of my friends who reads this blog, you’ll already know what I’m on about. If you read this blog regularly, you may or may not have noticed I often say how nervous I am about things, or how I dread them. Why? I have Social Phobia that’s why.
Not many people really understand it. I have few friends who know I have it and even fewer who are supportive of it. Some get annoyed by it, by the fact I physically can’t make myself do the things they do. For example, at the age of 14, now this will sound ridiculous, but I didn’t feel I could even stand by the edge of the road by myself to cross it. I had to have someone with me. Everything I did, I had to have someone with me. I was/am afraid of other people, of being judged, teased, thought about negatively. It often shows itself in the form of a panic attack. The first panic attacks I used to have, weren’t the stereotypical “I can’t breath” types, although breathing was an issue. If I saw people and it was a rare occasion on which I was on my own, I would hold my breath so they couldn’t see an increase in my breathing rate, my heart rate would soar so high, my mind would be in a panic and I’d often end up going a completely different direction to what I should be going in, in order to avoid the people. Often that meant getting a bit lost and in more of panic. It amuses me to think of actually. And still, even know, I get the urge to go another way when I see a group of people. Difference is, now I can logically see the ridiculousness of that and ignore it.
At my very worst, I had a fear of getting panicky when I was out. I’m very lucky it didn’t take the form of agoraphobia. And that’s not to say I don’t have supportive friends. I do have some amazingly supportive friends and without them, goodness knows where I’ll be. There are also those who I feel I have lost due to having it, but that’s OK.
Another symptom of my social phobia is I will analyse for hours and hours and hours anything I have said to people. Every conversation I have sticks in my mind and I go over them thinking “I hope they didn’t think I meant this…” “I hope I didn’t look as awkward as I felt.” “I hope they didn’t take that in the wrong way.” Again at my very worst I’d have to hit myself in the head and shake it a bit to stop. This is one of the symptoms that has stuck with me. Even writing comments on people’s blogs I go away thinking….eeek.
Some people gloss over my social phobia. They’ll say stuff like “oh I have that too.” But not to be rude to them, they don’t. If they did, they’d be like me, behind everyone else socially, only just branching out and being able to do stuff. Everything I do now,, because I do so much more alone, takes so much effort. It can be exhausting. Working as a volunteer….I spend the whole day feeling really panicky. Etc etc. Some people think being a social phobic is just being shy. That’s not true, although I am extremely shy too. But shyness isn’t feeling panicky in a queue for something, incase you get looked at funny or judged for what you are buying.
Writing this post has been extremely cathartic, although it may not make entertaining reading for many, I hope it at least provides some insight into social phobia. And it has allowed me to practice what I preach in that I shouldn’t be ashamed of having it. And I’m not ashamed of having it, but I am slightly ashamed of the person it has made me, or rather who I was and no longer who I am. And for the record…I’m quite nervous about publishing this.
