Why I’m So ‘Loud’ Despite Depression and Social Anxiety

“She’s a very bright girl but needs to stop talking and needs to focus on her work.”

“Can you stop chatting and do your job?”

“You never stop talking do you?”

Why am I so loud? From having a conversation with me, you’d never guess I had depression and social anxiety. I chat to people, I always seem happy and you’d probably say I talk more than most people. So clearly, I can’t have social anxiety if I’m this sociable, right? Well, if you knew the reason I talk so much or what’s going through my head when I do talk, you’d realize why I do it.

First of all, what does depression and social anxiety mean to me? Let’s start with the depression. One of the main symptoms of my depression is thinking everyone either hates me or just doesn’t care enough about me to even like me. This ties into my social anxiety a lot because if I already believe everyone hates me, this makes me anxious about everything I do. I hate social situations with people I don’t know because I feel if I do the tiniest thing wrong, or say something they disagree with, they will hate me forever and I can never talk to them again. I also get scared everyone is watching everything I do so I have to try my hardest to appear as “normal” as possible when I’m anywhere outside my house, be this at work, the shops or even hanging out with my closest friends.

So, back to why I’m so loud. Humans are social creatures. To quote the 14th Dalai Lama, “We human beings are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others.” Humans are born with a predisposition to have social skills and an integral part of being sociable is talking. You chat to friends, co-workers or even just random strangers while you’re waiting in line at the store. So, when you struggle with being sociable (or have a fear of it, in my case) it can make you feel abnormal or like an outcast. This is the real reason I talk so much — to try and appear “normal,” and often, I unintentionally take this to the extreme. I try to join in conversations and without noticing I often ramble on because I’m too busy on focusing on everything I say to realize how much I’m actually saying. I only realize how much I’ve been talking when I finally stop and see the way people are looking at me. That look of shock that says, “what the hell is she on about?”

That look — or even worse, when someone actually points it out by saying something such as “are you finished?” — sends me into a downward spiral that makes me feel even more anxious than before. This then triggers my anxious and depressive thoughts again.

“You’re so annoying, you just took over their whole conversation, they’ll never want to talk you again,” and, “you should just leave and never come back.”

Even right now, while I’m writing, I keep looking at the character count to check I’m not typing too much. This then makes me just not want to talk at all and causes me to silence myself until I can muster up the courage to talk again. I feel like I’m being weird by not talking. This constant battle in my head of “you’re talking too much,” and “you’re being too quiet,” is exhausting. Having to relentlessly monitor everything I say and do just drains the energy from me. Having to do this for 12 hours at work makes me not want to go out the next day, as I don’t have the energy to do it all over again. So, I just avoid social situations so I don’t have to talk to people unless extremely necessary.

Deep down, I vaguely understand that people probably don’t despise me for talking, but when your anxiety and depression are having a battle in your brain, there’s no room for logic in there. I know it’s something I need to work on but people calling me out on it just makes it even harder. So please, if I am talking too much, please try to tolerate it for now and just understand, it’s not me talking; it’s my anxiety.