I find myself frequently angry at my body for all the ways it’s still “broken” and even seems to functions separately from my brain. My struggle with social anxiety is a perfect example of this disconnect. Therapy has given me awareness of my internal chaos, and helped me calm this chaos, yet when I want to connect in groups I’m attacked out of nowhere with a racing heart, feeling lightheaded, and I can’t catch my breath. Panic and anxiety continue to disrupt my life in these situations.
Once or twice a month I meet with a group of girlfriends. We spend time together learning, growing, studying, inspiring each other, and providing one another with the support women need. I enjoy each of these women individually. None are judgmental or have shown any criticism of me. It is the perfect setup to move past my fears and anxieties.
So why, after 18 months of being part of this easygoing group do I continue to find myself triggered and feeling disconnected? I enjoy everyone for awhile and then get overwhelmed with no warning and desperately want to leave. I am often in a state of depression for several days after our evenings together, despite nothing going terribly wrong. It’s infuriating because I cannot make sense of it!
Panic Attacks
Sometimes I am able to dissociate, to feel disconnected from my body, which allows me to avoid the physical symptoms of emotional pain. But I have been able to do that less in this group, maybe because I’ve practicing being more vulnerable with them. However, if I can’t dissociate, then panic often sets in while forcing out words to others. These experiences happen frequently in social settings. Regardless of whether there is any logical reason, my body feels threatened, in danger. My thinking brain, along with my knowledge and logic, go completely offline.
I get dizzy. I lose my breath. And then it’s like being on a speeding train inside a black tunnel…I’m sure everything around me is moving fast yet is too dark to see. I must act as swiftly as possible (like pushing a couple sentences out of my mouth so that attention moves to the next person) in order to regain some control of my body”
Calming my body doesn’t come quickly. It’s hours of shakiness, feeling like I can’t catch my breath, and my heart racing. Eventually I’m left with just fatigue and a pounding headache. Sometimes it takes days of bewilderment, sadness, and frustrating at my lack of control over my body.
Social Anxiety is Rooted in the Past
My work in therapy has helped me understand the roots of my social anxiety. My abusive ex-husband yelled in my face and belittled me almost daily for 10 years. He often threatened and hurt me physically, and also loved making me the butt of his jokes. He not only made fun of me in English, but he did it with his friends in Arabic too, adding to my confusion with the language barrier. I knew the tone of voice. I’d hear my name spoken and then they’d all look at me and laugh. I couldn’t understand his language and yet I’d force a smile. When out with our co-workers he told them hilarious stories of the mistakes I often made. Incredibly intelligent and charming, he did it with such wit that others easily joined in at laughing at me. I learned early not to cross him. He told jokes about how uncultured and uneducated I was growing up poor on a dairy farm in the country. He made jokes about my entire family being as stupid as me. He did this often with our daughter, getting her to laugh at my stupidity. Over time I almost welcomed these jokes because they were the only moments of laughter in our house, breaks from the yelling and fighting.
Social Anxiety is Generalized to the Present
My life is good now. Safe. Yet year after year I cannot break free of my social anxiety.
It’s not just this group of women where I have this problem. I want to take part in the discussion in my graduate school class. It’s my last semester of the program and I’ve had hundreds of chances. I’ve spent hours preparing yet my social anxiety takes over with such a vengeance that I give one or two word responses to questions, sounding like a freaking moron.
I attend a meeting at work and want to speak up to help others in the office struggling with an issue. I have great input that might help but I clam up and hate myself for being unable to talk. Other meetings I attempt to speak only to say all of the wrong things and then hold back tears the rest of the meeting.
I have brunch with girlfriends and laugh at all their stories. Yet when I try to share one of my own, my heart races, my throat closes, my face is hot, and I sound like a child. I hide my shaking hands. I hate myself in those moments!
One of the Trauma Strategies My Nervous System Chose
I am obsessed with learning, an enneagram 5. I explain this by saying I simply love learning, but the truth is unless I become an expert on a topic, I cannot speak up. I want to be included in conversations and for others to enjoy what I have to say, but it never feels possible. I assume everyone knows more than me and I don’t know how to be “enough” to connect.
This is a strategy my nervous system created to find human connection. For others it might be people-pleasing, needing career success, needing public attention and creating a perfect image, being overly competitive, needing to argue and prove they are right, FOMO, or avoiding all conflict. For me it’s finding a way to become an expert so that I have a means to connect with others, yet knowing I can never learn enough to BE ENOUGH.
When I’m with others, I mostly stay quiet. But I usually reach a point where I get excited that I have some detail that will add to the conversation. I feel the urge to speak, a rush of excitement to feel involved. I know enough that I will not look stupid and speaking will make me part of the group. This in turn will give me the human connection I crave.
It is the strategy my nervous system chose to ensure I will not be alone, abandoned, despite the intense loneliness I feel. In theory, it’s perfect. If it could only play out that way. But ironically, social anxiety is a separate strategy of my nervous system – coming from the hurt part of me that cannot handle being seen as an idiot or the butt of a joke. It’s an internal battle of the different parts of me…internal chaos.
My Social Anxiety Option # 1
Attending these get-togethers is a no-win situation for me. If I leave the group without ever speaking up…
I feel weak, pathetic, scared….and then depressed for days for giving in to my weakness.
My Social Anxiety Option # 2
If I do speak, I will immediately suffer. First, in the moments before speaking: my heart races, I am dizzy, the room begins spinning, faces get fuzzy.
Sometimes I give up at that point. Other times I feel a bit more courageous and am sure this time it will be different. It rarely ever is. All these symptoms intensify the moment I open my mouth to talk. With every bit of focus and energy I can muster, I push out a couple sentences so as to at least not sound like a complete idiot. It is the bare minimum despite having so much in me to say…the words are gone. The sentence or two I get out sounds all wrong. Stupid. I am drained and ashamed of who I am, and of how I look and sound…
…and again I am depressed for days afterwards.
My Social Anxiety Option # 3
The 3rd option is to not even meet with the group – which I’ve done many times. This choice feels right in the moment….
…yet again I’m left with depression for days feeling pathetic and weak.
There’s no damn good option and that pushes me into hopelessness!
But to others I look pretty normal and composed. My internal chaos, my panic doesn’t show on the outside. Nobody knows much difference. Yet I feel so alone.
I wish I wanted to stay quiet, not share what I know, not reach out to others. I wish this didn’t hurt so much.
Looking For Help
Once in a while I confide in my close friend…but usually only after staying isolated and sad, trying to resolve it alone…annoyed with my body…tired of trying. I don’t want to be a pain in the ass complaining or begging for help again and again.
Finally I text my friend that I’ve been struggling. She immediately responded with: “Maybe just stop going for awhile. Take a break. Don’t force yourself if it just makes you this activated.”
I was so angry that I whipped my phone across the room!
The anger lasted a few minutes and then turned to complete despair. The tears began. I knew my friend meant her words in the most loving way. She looks out for me and tries to protect me like no friend has ever done before. I felt guilty for being angry at her. I felt crazy. Hopeless.
Where Did the Anger Come From???
Feeling angry at my closest friend felt wrong and scary. She simply wants me to feel better! I grappled with this new dilemma for a week before I made any sense of it. I was angry that my friend cannot understand what this brokenness feels like…the desperation within me that makes me need this group to “fix my social anxiety”. Right or wrong, I’m convinced there is no better place for me to “fix” this huge problem in my life. I can’t stop trying. I want to fight.
My body feels that if I can’t get past my problem in this particular group, there is ZERO hope for me! If my friend cannot understand what this desperation feels like, nobody can. There's nobody left. My body has a pattern of reaching conclusions like this one with no conscious awareness and I'm left in despair.
Through the somatic body work of Bioenergetics therapy, I gained the insight that my friend’s words were equivalent in my body to the many experiences of abuse I’ve experienced since childhood. In too many situations my body learned to freeze, shutdown, collapse into total despair.
MY BODY LEARNED LONG AGO THAT IT IS SAFER TO STOP TRYING. All my work in therapy, finding safety inside me, is working to reverse this pattern. Thus to stop putting myself out there with this group of other women, even temporarily, felt like the same collapse or shutdown. I’ve come so far, but all the fight, all the anger, all the fire I’ve been working to access within me – I felt it would be gone.
It doesn’t matter what is logical, rational when my body is experiencing a different story. But finding my anger within, even if it’s directed at my closest friend, helps me find the energy to keep fighting.
Finding Self-Compassion
More awareness. More insight. Like a thousand other learnings in this journey. It doesn’t magically make my body respond differently but it gives me an opening to understand myself.
It’s not about what counseling technique will make this change happen for me. There’s nothing I can do to force it or make me move through it faster. But I have an opportunity to be kind to myself for all the difficult things I experienced. My body is still reacting to what felt like too much in my past. I continue reacting to what overwhelmed my nervous system in the first place. The body’s emotional learning is part of our biology to ensure survival.
With much self-compassion I occasionally can slow down now in the moments of social anxiety to breathe, find my thoughts, be patient with myself. Once in awhile it all goes right when I’m in a group. Maybe just once every few months…but that is progress. If I can notice that, take it in, and feel when it’s good…there will be more of those moments without the despair. My social anxiety will lessen in time.
My body had to adapt and create rigid strategies to move through life...and maintain difficult relationships. Once again I am reminded that I can hate my body and add more shame or I can lean into this discomfort while I am triggered in a social setting, giving myself compassion for what my body is experiencing. No human can love me or understand me better than me.
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