What Social Distancing Has Taught Me About My Social Anxiety

Historically, my mind has not been a kind place or somewhere I wanted to be for prolonged periods of time. Of all the ways in which I pictured a global lockdown impacting my mental health, the least expected was a positive outcome: for once in my life, I’ve been forced to slow down and sit uncomfortably with my thoughts. This is what I came up with.

My depression and social anxiety were triggered when I was 16. Almost seven years later, I don’t remember much of what happened other than being intentionally excluded and somewhat bullied by two close friends. Looking back now, I know that I started a habit of placing blame on myself and thought that if I was treated poorly by the people I cared about, I must have done something to deserve it. (In reality, one of the girls just liked the dude who liked me.) My reaction influenced the way I’ve learned to think, which has resulted in years of self-criticism and doubt that have permeated throughout nearly every social interaction I’ve had since.

Perhaps the thing that stuck with me most was a lack of external validation or justice. I felt like people could get away with being unkind and no one would call them out for their treatment of others. Now I acknowledge that my relationships with people are separate from their relationships with other people, but at the time, I wanted someone to stand up for me and validate that my feelings of hurt and upset were not dramatic or an overreaction.

Since then, I’ve subconsciously sought validation from others about how I should feel in given situations. If I was wronged, knowing that I felt hurt wasn’t enough — someone needed to tell me that I was wronged and that being hurt was reasonable. I told myself that I was too sensitive any time I felt hurt and thought that expressing upset would drive other people away or make them think I was high maintenance. At my worst, I could sit in a room with friends, family, or even just other students for a group project, and spend a lot of that time worried at the back of my mind that they preferred each other over me or that they found me annoying, different, or simply too much or not enough in one way or another. I almost always felt disconnected from those around me.

Overthinking felt self-absorbed and silly, but these kinds of thoughts were intrusive. No matter how many times I told myself that people had other things to concern themselves with or that their opinions of me really didn’t matter, I’d still catch my stomach sinking any time I was around others and find myself numb by the end of the day. My immediate reaction to a subtle change in disposition became to pull away and censor myself. If I walked away, I took away their chance to reject me. Going extended periods of time without a setback was like waiting for the other shoe to drop and when you’re waiting for it to drop, it always does.

At the end of my fourth year, I put myself in a vulnerable position and the shoe dropped. After spending nearly a year anxiety-free (-ish), I ended a four-and-a-half-year relationship and experienced some unexpected side effects from the antidepressants I was taking. I was doing relatively well despite this, but I relied heavily on the acceptance and support that my friends offered. I was happy because it felt like my friendship and presence was valued and wanted.

The thing with external validation is that the more I relied on it, the less I got it. The less I got it, the more I noticed it and the more I became a person I really disliked. The more I became that person, the more I pushed people away and myself down. I had never been a person to share my anxieties or even everyday thoughts — I’d always stayed relatively quiet and kept to myself — but I started feeling incredibly alone after getting accustomed to having friends I never felt anxious around. I didn’t feel valued anymore by people who said they cared for me. I felt worthless. I pushed hurt and bitterness down so much that they spilled out in ways that made me feel embarrassed and exposed. I let myself get hurt over and over by relying too heavily on that need for validation, and the hurt I felt when I didn’t get it was amplified by every other instance I felt used and disregarded or in which I dismissed my own feelings. Every time I wasn’t invited or wasn’t acknowledged added to the ripples of self-doubt that started when I was 16.

After years of relentless self-criticism, the coronavirus (COVID-19) forced me into the time and space I needed to self-evaluate. It’s been a lot. I had to re-experience many of the things that had caused me a lot of hurt over the past six years and hold myself accountable for my own reactions and coping. I went through phases of being really supportive of myself to phases of feeling like there was something innately wrong with me and that I was just being dramatic, back to knowing that no one but me would be able to fully understand my feelings because no one but me has had the experiences I’ve had.

Being upset and reacting when something hurts you, regardless of intentions, does not make you a person unworthy of kindness or friends or self-love. In reality, I’d argue my anxiety and depression have made me a more empathetic person and a better friend. Despite being able to acknowledge how my anxiety has benefitted me, I still struggle not to be overwhelmed by other people’s potential perceptions of me. I think that social anxiety can be a really difficult phenomenon to grasp unless it’s something you’ve directly experienced yourself. Many people are just not going to get it. Despite there being a lot more people that actively talk about mental health, there’s still a lot of stigma around it. There will always be people who vocalize their support and acceptance of mental health issues but struggle not to judge or dislike someone on the basis of how their coping presents.

I’m learning to accept that some people will simply see me as a lot because they’ve seen me at my most anxious and that other people’s judgments or perceptions of me not lining up with who I really am is something that inevitably happens. For whatever reason, it is OK to be disliked. It’s also OK to not want to be around people around which your anxiety is heightened. It’s OK to distance yourself from people you don’t feel value you or make you feel like a worse version of yourself. You don’t need to sacrifice your comfort to make other people comfortable.

At the start of lockdown, I held a lot of resentment toward myself and arguably others. I know now that feeling negative emotions has never been the issue. The issue has always lied in how I question and judge myself when I feel those emotions or in how I try to shove down or dismiss them. Whatever the emotion, whatever the situation, it’s OK for you to feel the way you feel. Someone doesn’t need to have objectively wronged you for you to feel hurt. Emotions demand to be felt. Either you can push them down and let them consume you, or you can experience them and let them pass through.

By no means has lockdown cured my anxiety and I know it will never be something that magically disappears. I’ve had times before where my anxiety has dissipated (hi, fourth year, you were lovely), but I know now that my valuing of external validation has always been there, even if it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. Having fewer social interactions has really shown me this. I’m exhausted from the rumination and I’m from not being able to let go of not being wanted. I’m done downplaying my symptoms to make myself more “lovable” and I’m done letting my anxiety dictate who I am outside of it. I am so goddamn sick and tired of how I treat myself and the control I’ve let others have over my life and my personality, especially in the past year. I’m not the same person I was going into this lockdown and honestly, thank fuck for that.