Social Anxiety

So many people in our community suffer from social anxiety. It ranges from just a twinge of it to a debilitating amount. What bring this to mind are a few experiences that I had at Leather Fiesta. I was toot-a-ling along doing my thing and I ran into a few people that either treated me like dirt right way including looking me up and down,  to  ignoring my hello  and scurrying off,  to  blushing and waving hello  without saying anything. 

I get the later two, what is harder to digest is someone I don’t know looking at me like I am scum and walking off.  It is a bad way to give a first impression that will actually color the relationship for years. 

I know this because I was that kind of social anxiety person. 

Someone new and gregarious saying hi to me would for some reason force me into a complex place of defensiveness, anger and scrutiny. No matter what they said, how nice they were, or how they tried to engage me. I just couldn’t. Not only that I was hyper critical of them, what they said, what they wore, what they did. Here is the real kicker- there was absolutely no reason for my defensiveness. 

Nothing that THEY could have done would have changed the emotional outcome for me. 

It took years to change that, to change me. 

So what changed? How did I change?

Well first off- I haven’t changed completely.  I still struggle from time to time. 

Secondly, my slave, she was amazing in holding me accountable to me. When I am struggling with my social anxiety she reminds me that MY ISSUE IS NOT THEIR FAULT.   

And three, my AH HA moment. I was coming out of Exhale, when it used to be Exhale, and this beautiful woman stopped me and asked me where the ATM was. I was rude, dismissive and overly hostile (a defense mechanism tied to feelings of fear and insecurity) for absolutely NO REASON. This was in  NO WAY her fault.

Now to be clear, I haven’t completely conquered this behavior. It still comes out. 

But writing pieces like this reminds me that I am not alone, and that if I continue to hold myself accountable, I can make this better. I may never completely overcome this,  but I can  hold myself up  to  a standard that will  remind me that I CAN be better. 

So for those of you those are socially awkward. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. 

And when you see those of us that make it look easy, we have also had our hurdles to jump through to make this easier for ourselves.   

What you see can often times be years if not decades of practice in the dark waters of accountability.