Is SA just a symptom of a crappy life?

[dave81uk]

For me personally SA is just 1 issue I've had in life. Life has always been a struggle which I think has lead to various anxiety and depression issues which SA is just 1.

When as a kid 11 of us lined up for 5 a side I was the one left out, or if i was 1 of 2 in for a job I was the unlucky one. I think unlucky sums up my life. I don't say this to get pity or feel sorry for myself I am just stating how it is. Life isn't supposed to be a struggle but for me it is.

Anyone else like this?

[Mr. Nobody]

Personally, I was often extremely thankful about being left out of 5 a side,

I was seriously convinced I was God for such a long time too,
Meh, I guess most Syrians and refugees must have SA if it's just a symptom of a shit life?

[flumpsy]

Not for me, I had what most people would consider a reasonable life despite struggling to do the things 'normal' folks found easy. Then when I realised that not all people were silently struggling I started giving in to SA and depression more and more and it feels like all the good has been ripped away from me by it.

I do see how it could be in some cases though, I think there are just as many causes as there are sufferers to be honest.

[newbs16]

To be honest I couldn't really say my life has been rubbish and I still suffer with anxiety. I think people presume that there should be an underlying cause but I don't think that's the case.

[Orchid2016]

Hi. Yeh I know how you are feeling. That feeling left out at school isn***8217;t helpful if the seeds are set for SA. I was always really shy and things weren***8217;t great at home. So the mixture of the two set the seeds for me feeling a little awkward in social situations. I was so shy that I got name calling ect because of it. It made me feel self conscious then when my SA symptoms kicked in, I felt self conscious of those and made me think about my symptoms every time I had to speak with anyone. To this day I***8217;ve never been able to shake it off. For me school has been the failure of me. I***8217;m still trying to take steps to improve my life. CBT and would be nice to make some friends but it***8217;s impossible online. I think some of the people on this site don***8217;t even have SA. If two people have the same levels of SA as each other they make good friends. If I had more time I would go to some groups through meetup but impossible for me. I think it***8217;s better to worry less on what caused your SA and take positive steps to improve it. For me it***8217;s a deep rooted part of me that I can only improve on. If I don***8217;t want to do presentations, then I don***8217;t need to. If people don***8217;t like me, then good luck to them as I can***8217;t be liked by everyone. If I***8217;m not perfect, then so what. Us with SA need to spend more time thinking about the here and now, which is where meditation may be useful. Take more notice of other people rather than listening to our silly inner chatter and stop caring of what others think.

[gregarious_introvert]

Have you considered that SA may be one of the primary causes of a crappy life? Being the one excluded from 5-a-side (something to which I can relate) is just as likely to be because you had difficulty forming relationships with the other children as it is to be connected to your football skills; being the one who misses out on the job may be the result of coming across more awkwardly in the interview.

You say that life isn't supposed to be a struggle, but if you asked most people, they would say that they are struggling in some way - be it emotionally, professionally, financially, practically, time management or whatever; flumpsy says that he realised not all people were silently struggling, but I think that most are - it's the illusion that people aren't struggling which makes us feel inadequate because we are. My life has always been a struggle, but despite that it's been (for the most part) a struggle with rewards; anxiety and related issues have held me back from achieving certain things in life, but I've managed to channel my energies into things I can do and now life is much less of a struggle than it has been in the past, which has presented new opportunities.

[Ajax Amsterdam]

Originally Posted by gregarious_introvert

Have you considered that SA may be one of the primary causes of a crappy life? Being the one excluded from 5-a-side (something to which I can relate) is just as likely to be because you had difficulty forming relationships with the other children as it is to be connected to your football skills; being the one who misses out on the job may be the result of coming across more awkwardly in the interview.

You say that life isn't supposed to be a struggle, but if you asked most people, they would say that they are struggling in some way - be it emotionally, professionally, financially, practically, time management or whatever; flumpsy says that he realised not all people were silently struggling, but I think that most are - it's the illusion that people aren't struggling which makes us feel inadequate because we are. My life has always been a struggle, but despite that it's been (for the most part) a struggle with rewards; anxiety and related issues have held me back from achieving certain things in life, but I've managed to channel my energies into things I can do and now life is much less of a struggle than it has been in the past, which has presented new opportunities.

I was going to reply pretty much the same earlier.
For me at least, what I considered to be an endless, upward slog of a crappy life was mostly a direct result of severe SA, which impacted on virtually every aspect of my life, stunting growth, development and potential.

Regarding struggle, I agree there too. I'm 55 now and I can't recall meeting a single person in all that time who has not been struggling with at least some aspect of living, if not many aspects. I don't think it makes our own issues any easier just because we know others are going through their own stuff too, but it may help us gain some perspective. Often, we can feel that we are the only ones who feel this way, but in reality we aren't.

It's ironic really. Our popular culture these days tells us to put on a false front where all in our world is perfect (check social media). Yet, all I see everywhere are incredibly insecure people with a truly fragile sense of who and what they are. It's all show, but is mostly without any substance. Get behind the mask and you often see extremely brittle, insecure people desperately trying to maintain the illusion that life is perfect. If we buy the illusion, we are going to feel horribly inadequate as a consequence.

Having said all that, I do also agree that, for some people, their SA can develop because of their experiences early on in life. For me, the SA came first and the 'crappy life' was the fall-out from that, but I'm sure it can be the other way around for some others.

[gregarious_introvert]

Originally Posted by Ajax Amsterdam

Having said all that, I do also agree that, for some people, their SA can develop because of their experiences early on in life. For me, the SA came first and the 'crappy life' was the fall-out from that, but I'm sure it can be the other way around for some others.

I do believe that, for most of us, there are experiences which cause the anxiety disorder (although I am not discounting that there may be a genetic predisposition, or that it is something we learn by observing the behaviour of a parent during infancy), even if it happened sufficiently early in life that we can't remember. In my case, I don't recall a time when I didn't have social anxiety, but I do have a memory (pre-school) of getting a good hiding from my mother for asking too many questions, which suggests that at some time I must have been an outgoing and inquisitive child (of course, what neither my parents nor I could have known at that time was that I had Asperger's, so the questions I was asking were probably too direct, as I would have had no "filter"); hence, by the time I started school I was afraid to talk to people and then the daily bullying reinforced my social withdrawal.

I'm not convinced that anyone is born with social anxiety, but they may be born with a condition which leads to an event which leads to social anxiety; that event may be something which happened so early in life that we don't remember, or may have been so trivial in the grand scheme of things that we can't recall the event itself, only its effects. Of course, this has no scientific basis and is just a personal theory.

[Ajax Amsterdam]

Originally Posted by gregarious_introvert

...I'm not convinced that anyone is born with social anxiety, but they may be born with a condition which leads to an event which leads to social anxiety; that event may be something which happened so early in life that we don't remember, or may have been so trivial in the grand scheme of things that we can't recall the event itself, only its effects. Of course, this has no scientific basis and is just a personal theory.

I'd probably go with that theory too. I used to think I was born with it, but maybe only because I've never known a time when I wasn't incredibly anxious, particularly around people. Even my earliest memories see me truly phobic of people. Who knows though, I could be completely unaware of what triggered me, when or why. I think I somehow had a definite predisposition to developing what became SA, but I don't think we are born with a phobia. My trigger was probably so early in my life that it's well out of my awareness now.

For some reason, I was always highly over-sensitive and got overwhelmed very quickly by simply too much external stimulus. Even now in later life, if I come off meds I'm absolutely overwhelmed by noise, colour, taste, smell and emotion. It's like my head is not big enough to cope with what I see, hear and feel. In some ways, that kind of sensitivity to my environment can be mindblowingly good, but in other ways it's horrifically overwhelming.

Ah, I'm going off on one there...

[Marco]

I'm quite certain that some people are predisposed to anxiety from birth. There could be a genetic component to this or possibly the foetus had been subject to high levels of stress hormones in the womb, or something else had gone on - I can only speculate like everyone else here. My point is though that for some of us the path to social anxiety was an unremarkable one and it's very difficult to pinpoint any particular cause. In my case it certainly wasn't the result of a crappy life or trauma or abuse that I developed SA. My mum probably suffered SA so I probably picked up on her anxiety around other adults when I was young, but my guess is that this kind of early influence that I experienced would not alone be enough to turn everyone socially anxious, only those of us already primed to be this way. I don't believe anyone is born specifically with social anxiety, but some of us are born sensitive or anxious, or at least highly predisposed to anxiety that may develop into SA.

[Ajax Amsterdam]

Originally Posted by Marco

I'm quite certain that some people are predisposed to anxiety from birth. There could be a genetic component to this or possibly the foetus had been subject to high levels of stress hormones in the womb, or something else had gone on - I can only speculate like everyone else here. My point is though that for some of us the path to social anxiety was an unremarkable one and it's very difficult to pinpoint any particular cause. In my case it certainly wasn't the result of a crappy life or trauma or abuse that I developed SA. My mum probably suffered SA so I probably picked up on her anxiety around other adults when I was young, but my guess is that this kind of early influence that I experienced would not alone be enough to turn everyone socially anxious, only those of us already primed to be this way. I don't believe anyone is born specifically with social anxiety, but some of us are born sensitive or anxious, or at least highly predisposed to anxiety that may develop into SA.

I remember mentioning the part in bold on here a few times in the past after I saw articles on the subject. It made a lot of sense to me. I know the study this was taken from was small and further study is needed, but it sort of rings true for me.

This is just one of a number of links on the internet to the findings-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...epression.html

[neilm]

Originally Posted by gregarious_introvert

I do believe that, for most of us, there are experiences which cause the anxiety disorder (although I am not discounting that there may be a genetic predisposition, or that it is something we learn by observing the behaviour of a parent during infancy), even if it happened sufficiently early in life that we can't remember. In my case, I don't recall a time when I didn't have social anxiety, but I do have a memory (pre-school) of getting a good hiding from my mother for asking too many questions, which suggests that at some time I must have been an outgoing and inquisitive child (of course, what neither my parents nor I could have known at that time was that I had Asperger's, so the questions I was asking were probably too direct, as I would have had no "filter"); hence, by the time I started school I was afraid to talk to people and then the daily bullying reinforced my social withdrawal.

I'm not convinced that anyone is born with social anxiety, but they may be born with a condition which leads to an event which leads to social anxiety; that event may be something which happened so early in life that we don't remember, or may have been so trivial in the grand scheme of things that we can't recall the event itself, only its effects. Of course, this has no scientific basis and is just a personal theory.

Yes, Ime inclined to agree with that.

Whilst SA only became a serious problem for me around the age of 12/13, Ime pretty sure the seeds were sown when I was much younger probably around 4/5 years old.

I do remember a lot of conflict in the household (arguments/shouting matches, threats etc) regarding my fathers heavy drinking and my mothers constant worry about neighbors/friends "finding out about it".

And I can remember my parents seeming to be uncomfortable at times in certain social situations, so it seems likely that there was a degree of learned behavior going on on my part too.

I also recall, at around the age of 5, a teacher informing my mother that I was suffering from an "Inferiority Complex" at a Parent/Teacher meeting. Whilst the teacher concerned was presumably correct, she was very indelicate in the way she handled it, and my parents took it as a direct criticism of themselves (so didnt handle it very well). This was more than 40 years ago mind, so I imagine such things would be handled better nowadays.

Again, Id agree that genetic predisposition probably played a fair part too.

[Marco]

Originally Posted by Ajax Amsterdam

I remember mentioning the part in bold on here a few times in the past after I saw articles on the subject. It made a lot of sense to me. I know the study this was taken from was small and further study is needed, but it sort of rings true for me.

This is just one of a number of links on the internet to the findings-

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...epression.html

It might well be one of your posts that I got this from, Ajax. Interesting article - thanks for the link.

[choirgirl]

For me the social anxiety came first, then the crappy life. But I have/had other intractable problems affecting quality of life also so hard to disentangle everything. I would give social anxiety quite a big weighting though, because it can potentially interfere with everything, work, higher education, money and thus independence/other goals, social life, relationships/sex life and so on and so on. I expect for some of us, like the not getting picked scenario, we are somehow giving off the wrong vibes.

[alpha]

For me it was the symptom of a crappy life, although I think a more accurate way of describing it would be that stressful factors in my life caused me to develop SA (which I now can't completely get rid of obviously). However I think like a lot of mental conditions, some people develop the condition after undergoing stressful event(s) and some people just, well, develop it!

[FightWithin]

I was always left out too, I dreaded those line ups... The thing is I was one of the best football players by far, but because I was very quiet and to myself, nobody saw me of value, even though we were playing football which I was damn good at.

I think having a crappy life makes it worse but there's probably more to it than that. I used to be a happy kid but gaming/caffeine/porn from 13-25 totally ruined my life, giving me social anxiety and a crappy life.

[ynwa247]

i think most of the time yes, there will be people naturally anxious but if you didn't feel like you'd be rejected the odds of sa are much lower