Social anxiety isn’t “OMG I hate everyone, I wish I was watching Netflix in my room” it’s “I want desperately to be able to hangout with people but I hate the feeling of panic and fear I get around them. So, I don’t or can’t hangout with them and I end up staying home alone.

I personally hate having social anxiety because I had to mentally prepare myself for ten minutes just to say “present” during attendance in school. It sometimes happens now as well. The pitch of my voice either goes too high that I grab everyone’s attention or too low that I’m marked as absent.

Anxiety is weird, it can come in any form at any time. Many people experience anxiety at some point in their lives. In fact, anxiety is a very normal response to stressful life events but sometimes it can turn into a disorder. While most of the symptoms of anxiety can be common, individual experiences are subjective. Some of the common symptoms of anxiety disorder are excessive worrying, restlessness, fatigue, agitation, phobias, imbalanced diet and sleep routin. Among these phobia is a type of disorder that is severe enough to interfere with our ability to function normally.

I’ve experienced social anxiety or social phobia when I was in high school. I feared public humiliation and being singled out or judged by others in a social situation. I’ve missed out on a lot of great opportunities just because of this inescapable irrational fear of being humiliated.

Fear drove me away from reaching to my highest potential, my greatest lessons. But it also helped me understand that change can beautiful, and full of opportunity. When I joined college I decided to help myself recover. In a moment of fear I asked myself if I was ready to embrace the opportunity or am I going to stay in my comfort zone? Change doesn’t happen if nothing changes.

I thought of all those things that can cause public humiliation and I figured how to fix or modify my opinions and behaviour that are incorrect or socially undesirable. I educated myself and learned about human behaviour. I realised that there’s nothing wrong with me and all those fears I had were irrational and unrealistic. I didn’t get any professional help to recover and nobody but me knew about it because I didn’t exactly knew what I was going through. Sometimes when you fall, your faith can really help you stand up and walk again. That little light in your heart will comfort you. Nobody but you can heal yourself better.

It’s okay to push away people sometimes. But it’s not okay to pull your fears instead.