Avoidant Personality Disorder is the worst disorder to have

Social Anxiety or Social Phobia is definetly the worst disorder to have.

Reason being that with any other personality disorder or mental disorder, a person basically still makes friends and has intimate relations very easily. Social anxiety disables that.

Humans are hard-wired to really enjoy social networking and forming intimate relationships.

Looking back at the dozens of missed opportunities in my life, I can only shake my head. It is frustrating going to websites like Facebook to see some of these people whom I should have been friends with or dated, but because of anxiety, I was viewed as being "weird". It hurts to be rejected, especially when my self-esteem used to hang on their every word and action.

Not being able to talk and become outgoing is the equivalent of cutting the wings off of an eagle, or breaking a cheetah's legs. It is deblitating at a very fundamental level.

There's no easy way around it.

You either go on facebook and try to be popular, avoid going on those sites all together, or focus on success and happiness in real life. Or maybe some combination of the above. It's up to you.

You Owe It To Yourself To Overcome Depression and Anxiety. Favorite Mistake.

Looking back at my life being depressed, always having the belief that I would fail in most social happenings, I feel sad. I feel sad for all the missed opportunities that were there. The girls who were probably interested (atleast open to the idea of wanting to get to know me better), and either I never even talked to them or if I did, I messed it up with silent awkwardness.

Some were even very obviously flirting with me but I had such a defeatist attitude that it went right over my head. Or I would have so much self doubt that it would turn into a self-fulfilling prophesy.


I have missed opportunities that will never come again, but luckily I finally fixed it from now onwards. I'm not dying anytime soon and the world is my oyster.

Things are still not 100% perfect. At a job meeting, my heart will sometimes noticibly beat harder and faster when I am about to talk. But I go with it anyway. I notice that if I don't talk much in public for awhile I get a bit rusty. Life is an accumulation of habits.

It reminds me of what someone who is really talkative told me as advice when he saw how quiet I was: talk louder, just say something. It doesn't matter if it is wrong, no one really cares.

Having SA makes a person have a bad habit of being very negative. It's borderline delusional to think that everyone is quietly judging you. Honestly, 5 seconds later, even if you make a mistake, most people won't even remember it. Even if you said something quite wrong/awkward, if you are better next time, they won't even remember the first mistake at all. Honestly, people don't think about you as much as you think they do. Their lives are busy and are not focused on yours.

Anyway I was thinking about how genes are related to personality. I wonder how much genes and dna are related to a person with anxiety?

Social Anxiety in 10 Words (or short phrases)

I sometimes go on social anxiety forums and it occurs to me a commonality with how everyone thinks and how I used to always think, in no particular order:

1. Self-Conscious
2. Inferiority-Complex
3. Timidity
4. Sensitive
5. Low Self-worth
6. Paranoia of being negatively evaluated
7. Caring about how others judge them more than their own opinion
8. Beat themselves up, leading to depression
9. Habit of continuously avoiding social activities (irrational fear)
10. Not getting enough experience talking and learning from socialized people (think of what would happen to a toddler who never gets to witness how people talk properly)

Looking at those, which ones would you say you have?

It seems like a mighty long list, but really if you take care of one problem, many others will go away with it. If you become reasonably comfortable with yourself, you've atleast taken care of #1, 2, and 3. If you develop perspective in your life and further your confidence just a bit, you've taken care of #4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. If you just force yourself to hang out with people who like to talk (learning through observation, and then interaction with them) #9 and 10 are taken care of. It doesn't have to be in order, you can start by talking to people etc, as long as you gradually gain perspective, comfort with yourself, and social skills.

Positivity and a willingness to learn have something to do with helping the process. And when I say something, I mean they are VERY big factors.

That's it.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

G'nite

Alienation is Bad

Love this song. Gwen's hair looks really nice...

Everyone probably has a different catalyst that put their social anxiety in gear. For me, there were a whole sort of things: I was born kind of sensitive to criticism, I became quiet, I didn't have a lot of relationships, but one of the big reasons was probably the feeling of alienation.

Feeling like a loner never made me feel happy. We are humans and we are social creatures. Having some sense of acceptance is quite important, and when during my teenage years I felt completely isolated, it made me have a very negative view of the world.

Sometimes that feeling will still creep up. It's like a chip on my shoulder where I feel that everyone in the world is against me. I look at "them", meaning "normal people" as the enemy. I have a natural competitiveness in me, so that doesn't help the problem.

One thing that helped me away from this problem was over the summer I got invited to someone's b-day party out of the blue. I went, didn't know anyone there except for the birthday girl, and mingled with so many people. I was completely out of my comfort zone, but something amazing happened. Afterwards, my brain de-programmed from all that me-vs-the-world attitude into acceptance. I realized that people were not out to get me. That feeling of alienation was from me, not from them.

It wasn't personal. If they weren't hanging out with me, either I didn't make the effort or they were busy with thier own lives. But certainly, they were not against me, per se.

Friendships are important, and it's the way our brain is wired--finding happiness by liking the people around us.
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Anyway, for lyrics of the song:

Waking up to find another day
The moon got lost again last night
But now the sun has finally had its say
I guess I feel alright

But it hurts when I think
When I let it sink in
It's all over me
I'm lying here in the dark
I'm watching you sleep, it hurts a lot
And all I know is
You've got to give me everything
Nothing less cause
You know I give you all of me

[CHORUS]
I give you everything that I am
I'm handin' over everything that I've got
Cause I wanna have a really true love
Don't ever wanna have to go and give you up
Stay up till Four In The Morning and the tears are pouring
And I want to make it worth the fight
What have we been doing for all this time?
Baby if we're gonna do it, come on do it right