March 10th, 2009

Last week, my town had its first-ever (as far as I know) Twitter meet-up. Both Jen and I attended. It was great. We met some cool people and had a lot of fun. But I was definitely nervous beforehand. I told this to Jen. She used to be much more sympathetic to these aspects of my personality. This time she simply said, “Get over it.” Guess sometimes what you really need in life is some tough love. But this blog entry isn’t about that. I’m going to write a bit here about the nature of my social anxiety, and try to find a better understanding of its source.

Like most things that are wrapped up in the psyche, the root is likely to be found in childhood. I was extremely shy as a kid. Not just around strangers, but also around extended family members or family friends. Of course, shyness isn’t unusual in children. But this trait persisted in me throughout my teenage years and is still present to this day. An easy explanation would be that I had edured some kind of abuse early in life, and that shyness was a natural defense mechanism to that abuse. But that’s not it. I have no recollection of my parents ever hitting or yelling (or worse). I stayed pretty busy as a kid and (not surprisingly), pretty much kept to myself. My mom showed some concern from time to time in my insistence on staying indoors and doing my own thing, instead of going outside to play with the neighborhood kids. Most of the time, I just found my own activities to be more interesting than what everyone else was doing. I would’ve rather spent my time building things with Legos than say, running around with a bunch of other kids in the street. And this self-made safety bubble worked really well. Until I started school.

I don’t recall being very excited about kindergarten. I guess most kids aren’t happy about having to begin school. I got over it, though. But I always had an innate feeling of awkwardness, even back then. I was made fun of for being overweight and having low vision, and I took a lot of that teasing to heart. I didn’t really know how to deal with it, so I internalized it. Luckily, I had a good home life. The bad stuff from school didn’t affect me too seriously until my adolescence. I stopped caring about my classes. I hated every school day. It caused me to withdraw even more. In spite of that, I remember attending an eighth-grade dance. Not surprisingly, the kids that took so much pleasure in making my life miserable kept it up at the dance. I went home early and never attended another social function through school. I didn’t attend many gatherings outside of school, either. A precedent had been set in my mind: Social situations = pain. I can’t say things improved much throughout my early adulthood. I suppose some of the shyness did eventually give away. And being able to drink alcohol helped some to alleviate the anxiety. But I certainly wasn’t cured.

I think it really boils down to two factors for me today. The first one is kinda stupid, but I’ve been uncovering a lot about this issue and its relation to me lately: Control. I have absolutely no control in a social situation. I mean, I can control myself. But not anyone else. And that’s where the problem lies. If anyone can do anything, then the potential for being hurt exists. I’m returned to being that awkward school kid, trying to escape my tormentors. I say this is stupid because, I’m 32 years old, and I don’t think I’ve been made fun of in public in a long, long time. The other factor is simply boredom. If I wind up in a situation where I’m just not connecting with anyone/anything, I tend to get bored. And then I’d rather just be at home, doing things that interest me. This is compounded by the fact that I can’t drive, and my ability to simply get out of a situation is dependent on others. So, if the person who drove me is in for the long haul, and I’m bored out of my mind, it means I’m in for a long night. This ties into what I typed earlier, about my self-reliance when it came to entertaining myself as a kid. And this one is kinda stupid, too. But this kind of garbage is what goes through my head.

And if you’ve read this far, then it’s gone through yours, too.

Tags: California, life, San Luis Obispo, Twitter
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