1. Never answering the phone, ever. Letting the ansafone pick up (or using fax).

monitor calls with answer-phone and sometimes answer

2. Hardly ever answering the door. (I disconnected the doorbell long since.)

usually answer as i can see them come up the drive

3. Deeply resenting being called a ‘loner’ when by natural inclination that’s the last thing I am. But what can I do about it?

yeah

4. Last had friends and a social life in 1981.

apart from sa meets can’t remember

5. Going red over the slightest little complication (especially in shops) or if someone tries to strike up a conversation. I end up being brusque just to get rid of people, then feel bad about it. Or I ignore people as if they were thin air.

not so bad now

6. Being considered gay by neighbours etc., just because they never see me with any women. I mean, for God’s sake, they never see me with any men either - so why gay? (People just love to say unkind things about other people.)

make it obvious that I’m a raving hetro

7. Being unable even to think about using communal changing rooms of any kind.

nah, just whip me kit off and stand around starkers, less conspicuous

8. Spending most of my life unemployed, in spite of (in theory) having a lot to offer.

spent most of it employed but have been out for a while now

9. When in work, dreading staff meetings / training sessions / any context where one is singled out or expected to speak up. (Then being thought ill of for not ‘contributing’.)

I don’t do meetings

10. Being entirely incapable of talking about anything ‘personal’ to anyone, including doctors.

not incapable, it has to be prized out of me

11. Longing to be elderly, so that people wouldn’t think I was weird for being unattached and wouldn’t think I was a nutter for being content to (for instance) sit alone on a seafront bench watching the waves come in. (If you do that when you’re of working age, people think you’re off your head.)

I’m off me head then because I do it all summer

12. Dropped out of two universities because I couldn’t face tutorials, dining rooms etc.

never been to uni, spent year at college and never went in the canteen

13. Suffering from chronic peptic ulcers and agonising haemorrhoids, plus other stress-related digestive problems.

no, I get plenty of exercise

14. Desperately wary of conversations, for fear of where they might lead subject-wise.

mine dry up after a couple of minutes

15. Sick to death of lying to other people for years, purely as a defence mechanism to protect myself and to try to conceal the utter uselessness of my life from view. I still lie all the time and hate myself for doing it. I suppose it’s because I want people to perceive me as the person I am inside, not the useless dummy that SA has made me. So I claim to have achieved things that I wish I’d achieved but never have.

put on a brave face and have achieved some things to fall back on

16. Planning my suicide in very careful detail - but finding that pulling it off is hard, because like most of us what I actually want is to have a long and happy life, not die. Trouble is, I have no life at all and only the prospect of year after year of misery to look forward to, which leaves me contemplating suicide not so much as a desperate act but as a constructive step. The issue won’t go away, but how long the faint optimism will preserve me is unclear.

yeah, although I don’t plan it as I have attempted it before

17. Worrying that because I go red in almost every situation, people will think I’m guilty of anything and everything I might be suspected of.

used to but got a bit of attitude now

18. Being utterly penniless and trapped in really bad housing in a terrible area. People say How can you go on living there? Why don’t you move out? They don’t comprehend that there’s nothing I can do, because taking life by the horns means taking people by the horns, and SA leaves me feeling hopeless and beaten to a pulp.

trapped in a good house in a good area, would love to move though

19. Trembling sometimes, out of a feeling of total desperation.

get angered and frustrated

20. Filling in hundreds of job application forms because I know I should be working, but deliberately sabotaging them in various ways so that I won’t get offered an interview.

no, focussed on recovery before returning to employment

21. Wishing I could spontaneously contract leukaemia and be dead inside two months.

had cancer and survived unfortunately

22. Being devastated by seeing girls and women in the street and not being able to do anything about it. It’s like being a ghost. To rub salt in the wound, I see really unattractive men with nice-looking women and I’m left dazed by my own situation: a reasonable-looking, intelligent, kindly, humorous, sensitive man who’s never had a relationship ever. What the hell is the matter with me? Sometimes just seeing a pretty girl hurts so much, it leaves me wanting to blow my brains out on the spot.

yeah, life’s just one long tease, not bothered by the ugly guy scenario

23. Constantly telling myself that I don’t really have SA and that my life’s simply how it is because I’m an idiot, a coward, a weakling, a fantasist, a creep or whatever else.

sometimes dismissive of sa, it’s hard not to be negative

24. Knowing that I’d be totally freaked out if I knew that someone fancied me. I’d probably want to run and hide, in spite of the fact that part of me would love to have a partner.

it’s a 50/50 thing arousal/anxiety with the latter winning

25. Being haunted by memories of past humiliations from teens onwards - and expecting more of the same at any moment, like the world’s about to collapse on my head.

yeah, good at remembering the bad

26. Blaming myself for being too sensitive. Perhaps you only get on in life by being insensitive - and the most insensitive people are the most successful. They just go at life like a pig with its head in a trough, with no finer feelings to hamper them.

yeah, but I can’t change that

27. Steering well clear of my neighbours (and fearing them as an explosive commodity).

yeah, on one side but the other is a nice pensioner so alright

28. Losing what few shreds of mindless irrational optimism I might ever have had, now that I’m 44. After all, if I never had a relationship when I was younger, what chance do I stand now that I’ve begun to deteriorate physically? I must be a complete write-off now.

had some relationships but no optimism

29. Worrying that if (hypothetically) I ever did commence a relationship, the years of solitude will have rendered me incapable of living in the same unit of accommodation as another person, let alone sharing a bathroom. And as for having to fulfil someone else’s expectations of what a partner should be like........

yeah, solitude does have an effect regarding sharing and expectations equals pressure

30. Still wasting time wishing I were an actor, even though I’m utterly psychologically incapable of it. (Auditions? I’d sooner die.)

no, never wanted to act

31. Thinking I’m stupid for wanting a relationship. I mean, I’m a complete nothingness, just a worthless waste of space and a sad failure - so who with any self-respect would ever want me? They’d have to be either insane or be a person with very, very low standards and low self-esteem - and it’d be idiotic to involve myself with someone like that purely to be able to say I was in a relationship. The person I’d be compatible with probably doesn’t exist.

it’s only natural to want a relationship regardless of circumstances

32. Terrified of having to introduce myself in any context or ask a question in front of other people. (My heart hammers, I turn crimson, my whole body shakes, I have difficulty breathing, etc.)

yeah

33. Having nobody who can act as a character reference (for jobs or any other context), because I don’t know anyone, let alone any respectable members of society. God help me if I ever get into trouble and need someone to speak up for me.

sounds familiar

34. Never seeing a doctor about my SA, because I don’t want to discuss personal stuff or be perceived as someone weak. I know this is crazy, but I can’t help it.

I’ve always seen them but they never told me about my condition

35. Distrusting everyone. People are volatile, mean, moody, closed-minded and primitive. Trust them and you throw yourself wide open. The damage could be irreparable.

yeah, mistrust everyone and myself

36. I’ve applied to go back to University in the hope of changing my life - but I’m told that students these days have to do ‘presentations’ in front of other students etc. and the concept petrifies me. I’m scared I’ll quit the course because of it, digging myself into an even deeper hole.

haven’t done one since school and would never do a presentation now for whatever reason

37. SA support groups seem to meet up in pubs. I could never attend such a meeting (not least because my insides are so ulcerated that I can’t drink alcohol, tea, coffee, fruit juice etc.). I’d like to meet other sufferers, but I fear that no context exists that I could handle. If we met in a restaurant or cafe, I wouldn’t want to be watched eating.

been to meets, pubs are very difficult for me but eating in public is no problem

38. The thought that there’s another day to live through tomorrow makes me wish I didn’t exist. And everything in life seems like pointless, worthless garbage.

yeah