Not too long ago I discovered something about myself that made me reevaluate my entire childhood experience. I somehow found myself reading about selective mutism (an unfamiliar term) and the further and further I read the wider and wider my eyes got. It was as if someone had watched me as a child, written it all down, and come up with a name for my behavior. The thing is, I usually don’t spend tons of time on the internet researching my problems, past or present — so I never discover these things until I’m nearing the end of the third decade of my life and wasting time in the wee hours of the morning. (I’m realizing that this whole research thing is pretty awesome and I should probably do it more often when it pertains to things like this in my life.)

If you are like I was, thinking, “what the heck is selective mutism?” I will share with you. It is when someone feels such extreme anxiety in social situations that they barely speak or don’t speak at all. They will act like a different person at home or in situations in which they are comfortable, but otherwise they are extremely hard (or impossible) to worm words out of. This goes beyond simple shyness to where the person often feels like a deer-in-the-headlights when forced to interact socially. Basically: me as a child.

Let me help you understand why this is so significant. The social aspect of childhood was UNBEARABLY painful for me.

At home I was unrestrainedly myself: hyperactive, loud, goofy. I would run around the yard singing at the top of my lungs imagining that I had magic powers and making up all kinds of fun stories. I would harass my brother, chase my dog, and dress up in outrageous outfits and jump on the trampoline. My close friends would come over and we would play and have fun. that’s why it never occurred to my mom that I was anything other than extremely shy around new people. I really don’t blame her.

Shy, I was though. So painfully shy in fact, that whenever a stranger introduced themselves to me I would not say a word, just literally run and hide. At school, I was a SILENT little mouse. If I talked to anyone, it was only to the few close friends I had, and usually only at recess or lunch — and those were only during the years when I wasn’t a loner. The other years I would sit by myself and not talk to anyone at all, or run off to some quiet corner of the field at recess where I could be in my own little world. Teachers learned not to call on me because I couldn’t speak up in class, even though I usually knew the answer; I don’t remember a time, even in elementary school, when I didn’t get really good grades. I talked really, really quietly, too. I remember constantly hearing people telling me to speak up because they couldn’t hear me. Unless I felt really comfortable with someone, I never had any confidence in my words and was terrified of saying anything at all.

All of this was exacerbated by the fact that no one seemed to recognize the pain I was going through. And I was too young to realize anything more than the simple fact that I was incredibly afraid and that made me very different from everyone else. But I didn’t want anyone to know there was something wrong with me, so I never spoke up.

Selective mutism seriously sucks. I recall feeling an intense pain whenever I was forced to speak out loud in front of anyone I wasn’t very comfortable with. I remember going over to my best friend’s house to play all the time and struggling with it. She and I were two peas in a pod but I was less familiar with the rest of her family. Anytime her brother or parents were around I reverted back to fear and silence, and as you can imagine, this made it really difficult for them as well as me. But I didn’t know HOW to speak to them. I was so young that all I knew was it felt next to impossible. It was like everyone could fly and they kept telling me to join them but I could never flap my arms fast enough to get any lift. I felt helpless.

So guess what my solution was? I discovered that if I whispered in Brooke’s ear, I could still talk. And no, this never went over very well. Because no one, including me, realized that I had a freaking disorder, it was just assumed that I was being a bad kid and trying to stir up mischief. I recall being frequently chastised: “we don’t whisper in this house, Tien. There are no secrets. You need to TALK.” So I stopped whispering, and I stopped talking, and I remember feeling absolutely AWFUL all the time because I knew they didn’t understand. They couldn’t see what I was going through. I hated being the way I was.

My mom vividly recalls going to a parent-teacher conference one time and the teacher sat down across from her and proceeded to tell my mom that I was a stuck up little brat and that I needed to stop acting like I was too good to talk to the other kids.

Yeah.

When my mom explained to her how painfully shy I was, the teacher was blown away. It wouldn’t be the last time I would be labeled a snob simply because I had no idea how to talk to people.

So just FYI: that person who actually acts like they are better than everyone else? Probably an actual snob. That person who just plain never talks to anyone? Might just have severe social anxiety and is agonizing over the prospect of interacting with other people.

Do with that information what you will.

I got over my selective mutism, thankfully, though it took many years. All of the way until I graduated from high school I was still a really quiet person and rarely talked to anyone unless they approached me first. But I got better over time. Looking back I just feel incredibly thankful that I can finally put a name to something that I thought was terribly wrong with me for most of my young life. I take so much comfort in realizing that there are other people out there who had or still have the same problem. Even if I’ve long moved past it, there is still so much relief in simply being able to acknowledge that there never was anything horribly wrong with me (like it always felt growing up.) I was just a child with a different set of problems than most, trying to cope in a world that didn’t understand me and didn’t know there was a name for my behavior either. I may have been alone then, but I am definitely not alone now… even if it feels that way sometimes.