I know my social anxiety is irrational. I’ve always known that it’s irrational, but that doesn’t stop it from being there. There. In my head. I don’t want it there. I don’t want to be socially anxious all the time every day and to have a procedure already there in case I start to feel a panic attack coming on, but I can’t control it. Social anxiety is there whether I want it or not. And believe me, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get rid of it for years.

I’ve always been a people-person. I love talking to people and making people laugh and having people in my life that I’m close enough with that we can be everything around each other. From so happy we’re having and creating inside jokes to so devastatingly hurt that we can cry and talk through our pain together. I mean, it could also be due to the fact that I don’t really ever like being by myself, but that’s a whole other lack-of-self-love can of worms that I’ll wait to get into later. Either way, I really like spending time with my friends as much as I can.

As the cherry-on-top, I’ll be the first one to admit that my general way of working and being is always having a concrete plan. As a result, I usually end up coordinating or planning a lot of the hangouts with my friends. So, add social anxiety to the mix and what ends up happening are a couple super fun symptoms…

First, I literally cannot handle when plans fall through or change at the last minute. I’ve learned that the best way to control and minimize my social anxiety is to know when, where, and who hangouts are happening with. So when the universe takes a wrecking ball to these plans for whatever reason, I freak out. I feel a dichotomy of panic and happiness, because part of me doesn’t know what I’m going to do with the free time previously allotted to hanging out with friends and also just panics irrationally that that person didn’t want to hang out with me, and the other part is overjoyed that I don’t have to fight my social awkwardness once again (a fight I so tragically always seem to lose).

Second, I’m really, really bad at hanging with people that I’m not super close with. You see, somehow, by some miracle, I actually have a really amazing group of close friends who know about my social anxiety and tolerate my anxiety-fueled actions or thoughts, and help to calm me down. Basically, they’re amazing human beings that are too pure for this world and I don’t deserve them. Anyways, to me, hanging out with people that I’m not that close with who don’t know about my social anxiety is like a nightmare to me. Whenever it does happen (albeit, very rarely), I freak out beforehand and during about what we’re going to talk about, if we’ll have enough to talk about or what if we run out, what do I do when it runs out because I’m a pretty crappy conversationalist, how do I act because honestly I’m a pretty weird person and like I said earlier I don’t know how I found people who tolerate that weirdness and what if I scare this somewhat good friend away with my weirdness, etc. I could go on and on, but I don’t think anyone wants to know that much of what I’m thinking.

Living with both social anxiety and a desire to be around other people who make you feel happy is hard. Really, really, hard. You’re always having an internal battle with yourself about do you really want to hang out, of course you do cause you don’t want to be alone, but what if you’re an especially shitty socializer and end up making things awkward, but you have to tell yourself that these people understand your awkwardness and love you anyways, except maybe they’re not that close to you and then they don’t know or understand and you’re all the way back at square one. It’s hard and it sucks, but it’s doable. I’ve made it work by forcing myself to hang out with close and not-as-close friends because I know it’s going to benefit and make me happy in the long run. Whatever you decide could be different, just try and make sure you choose whatever makes you happiest because that’s the most important thing in the end.