Having social anxiety in a world that demands you to be outgoing isn't easy. Being this way is hard enough and people expect you to be outspoken or at least speak up when they think it is necessary and it is hard. If you don't speak or keep to yourself you are labeled rude or stuck up when you aren't. Simple things like talking to a new person or someone you don't really know is hard. You get nervous and shaky. It is hard to hold a conversation and after you feel like an idiot because all you can think is "did I really say that?" even if they don't really care or you it wasn't that bad. You know you will go over it over and over in your head a thousand times that week.
Knowing you are going to have to stand in front of a crowd makes keeping anything down almost impossible. You have to go up there and speak in front of all of those people. The anxiety is overwhelming and you know no matter how much you practice you are going to stumble and babble. When you get up there your voice shake and your mind is hazy and you stumble over your words. You babble and feel like an idiot. You can feel your face getting red and that embarrasses you even more. You feel trapped because you know that you can't back out of it. The relief when it is over is amazing but you will start going back over it and scrutinize the things you didn't say or shouldn't have said or the things you did like fidget or not look at the crowd or smile. You relive how your face turned red and get embarrassed about it all over again.
It isn't just about talking either. It goes into every little thing you do when you are in public. Simply stumbling or standing waiting for a class or on an appointment will make you self conscience about what you are doing. So you bury yourself in your phone and act like you are doing something or in a book just so you don't feel like an idiot just standing there.
All of those things affect your everyday life when you have social anxiety. You wish you were different everyday because you can imagine all of these scenarios in which you have more friends or an actual life. At the end of the day you can't change who you are. You have to just roll with it. You learn to cope with it and you know maybe this is for the best because if you were more outgoing maybe you would have more drama in your life than you do. You know that it has probably saved you from some heartbreaks and painful times. So at the end of the day you are content with the way your life is even if it is a hassle to have social anxiety.
