I had this experience all my life struggling with being gay and also having social anxiety. I could only open up to those who were my close friend and they were not so accepting of gay people which forced me to keep it all a secret. At least after high school most of them did not even care about me being gay when I came out so I just got over their homophobia. The thing was with having social anxiety i could not make the effort to talk with anyone who I thought would accept my sexuality and how I wish someone would who was open minded would just came up and talked to me. My point is most people see a kid sitting alone in crowded room or alone at lunch and they assume he is a loner or does not like to talk to people or can't talk at all for that matter. Also with having a disability it make people assume even worse things about me. For anyone out there don't dismiss that shy kid as a loner or a unfriendly person. Some people just have natural social anxiety when meeting new people and when you get to know them all that shyness goes away. Which is true for me.
So true. I could have written that myself, iv had social anxiety for most of my life and people have assumed that im shy or a loner. It sucks and I know how you feel.
Yeah I graduated four years ago but it is something that people really need to know because it is a very big stereotype and teachers can do the same thing when to comes to their student and poke fun at them because their shy or something like that. It gets better as you get older but I know that high school is a pain in the ass.
Thank you someone finally gets that i am like that also, have been called a loner, anti-social that most of all annoys me but sometimes feel like if people came up to me it would help more instead of the opposite
Exactly. What made it worse was when teachers would openly say oh your a loner or your not a friendly person something like that. Especially when your gay and afraid of rejection or homophobia and that just adds a lot to it.
oh god yes thank you dude but it hurt worse if strange do it as they have no right to judge even if they dont know they are judging you
I can fully empathise. I'm gay and somewhat socially inept, so when I was at school, most people assumed that I was a shy guy who just didn't have the balls to chat to girls. Social anxiety is a massive bugger really because you just can't do the things that come naturally to so many people.
True. Assumptions and passing judgements on all people is the root of all evil. It runs like crazy everywhere you go.
Speaking as someone who used to be very shy, I definitely get where you're coming from and wish people were more open-minded about people who aren't outgoing and talkative. I used to hate how some people could be rude or have nothing of value to say and still be noticed while I struggled. Speaking as someone who's more comfortable approaching others now, it can be hard to tell who's just shy and who actually wants to be left alone.
That has been my situation my whole life, I've always envied outgoing people that can socialize effortlessly with other. I've found that there are a few (very few) outgoing and open minded people that I've encountered that I can actually easily talk to the first time I meet them but it's very uncommon. I can see how others may think its rude how I don't talk much upon first meeting them but people need to understand what it's like to have social anxiety. It truly is a burden that I struggle with every day. There are many things I've missed out on in life just because of it but as I get older it gets a little better and hopefully one day will be gone.
This resonates strongly with me. I know how you feel. A couple days ago, I was beating myself up over my social anxiety. Growing up, I was the kid that always kept to himself unless people that I knew started talking to me. For me, it was quite a bother going up to people and start talking out of the blue. Doing that just seems so foreign to me. Well to random people at least, I always thought to myself: "No don't do that, you'll possibly end up annoying them;" making small talk, to me, is always just plain awkward. There are sometimes I wish social anxiety in me didn't exist and sometimes I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for it because it has given me the ability to observe people and they're behaviors from a distance. I'm not grateful for it because by not approaching new people, I felt like I missed out on some great friendships. I just hope sometime soon, I can break out of my shell
I used to be really shy and a lot of people were sort of standoffish towards me. Now whenever I see someone sitting alone I'll go up and talk to them, you never know what they're going through.
I really do think that what "made" my Avoidant Personality Disorder is because I was bullied as a kid for appearing to be "feminine" and so my instinct was that I tried to isolate myself from people until my personality have changed in a way that people see me as this quiet and shy guy. Though I'm still the "quiet" type person, I've started to know more of myself and it's not because I have anxiety that I'm timid but because I was also introverted. So whenever some annoying people ask me why am I so quiet, I usually answer back with why do you talk all the time or The usual "are you ok?" and I throw the question back with , "yes, are you? "
For me, I'm ..afraid to go up to people so I just try to look like I'm doing fine on my own. So it might look like I'm not very friendly and don't want to talk. I do! It's just that social anxiety gets in the way.
I hated that feeling. Overtime I've been able to overcome some of my shyness, it's still there but not half as bad as it used to be. I'm still working on it by making myself be more outspoken. And now if I see someone sitting alone or looking a little lonely I'll walk over and talk to them because I know exactly how it feels.
I have social anxiety, too. I'm also very introverted. It's really hard for me to make friends, and I've learned that if I want to keep the ones I have I need to push through and make the effort to approach them sometimes. I've come close to losing friends or losing touch with them because I was often too anxious to hang out or participate in social activities. I do my best now not to disappear, because people get the wrong idea and think you're just not interested. You're right, people need to try to be more aware of the fact that some of us want to interact but can't or don't know how. But at the same time we need to work on expending the effort on our end, too. I think learning to do so has helped me a lot. I still have my moments and bow out last minute and beat myself up for it, but far far less often than I used to.
