Hiding Under a Rock Forever; Anxiety and hanging out with friends
Anxiety makes me think that no one likes me and
everyone has better things to do than spend time with me in person. So I’m
terrified of asking anyone to hang out.
When I was in the third or fourth grade, the
mother of a girl in my class babysat me. I was never really friends with this
girl, but we both had the same best friend. At recess, this girl would tell our
best friend that she didn’t want to play with me. I was at her house every day
after school, and she was tired of me being around. So, my best friend would
apologize to me and say she’d play with me another day. That “other day”
rarely came.
In the seventh grade, I went to my first slumber
party at my new best friend’s house. I didn’t know any of the other girls
there, so I was very nervous. I tried not to be her shadow, but it was hard.
She went back and forth from the living room - where our sleeping bags were -
to her bedroom where some of the girls were hanging out. At one point I was
just outside her bedroom door when I heard one of the girls ask my friend why I
kept following her around. I was mortified and stayed in my sleeping bag the
rest of the night.
These are just two examples - out of many - of
incidents that made me believe my anxiety was right. No one wanted to be around
me.
Anxiety has always made having a social life
incredibly difficult. Until the last few years, the vast majority of the time I
was with people it was because they invited me. I have such a fear of rejection
- combined with social anxiety - that inviting people to spend time with me is
absolutely terrifying. What if they say no?! Then it will confirm that they
definitely don’t like me and have no interest in spending time with me.
Then there’s the other scary possibility – What
if they say yes?! If they say yes, I’ll have to actually go and try to
think of things to say to make them want to continue to like me. Anxiety makes
my brain do this terrible thing where I try to think of something to say, then
I think about thinking of something to say, then I think about thinking about
thinking of something to say, and next thing you know I’ve been mute for half
an hour and the person thinks I’ve gone into a catatonic state.
If you need me (which you won’t, you obviously
don’t like me) I’ll be hiding under a rock – forever.
That sounds like complete nonsense, right? Try
telling my brain that. This is the stuff that has kept me from asking friends
to hang out for most of my life.
It has gotten better, and I credit a lot of that
to my best friend. When you meet her you don’t think of her as being someone
who suffers from anxiety. She’s confident, opinionated, loud, and incredibly
generous. She has at times literally shaken sense into me. She’s done a lot to
help me learn to love myself the way I am.
I have kids, so it can be a bit more difficult
for me to go out. Most of the time when she and I hang out, she comes to my
house. The problem is, she doesn’t like inviting herself over – she feels like
it’s rude. And I’m afraid of asking her to hang out, because what if she
says no?!
We’ve both gotten so much better about this, but
it still happens. She doesn’t want to cut into time with my significant others,
I don’t want to find out that she doesn’t really like being in my presence.
But, she’s one of the few people that I actually feel completely comfortable
with, so I’m not afraid of actually being around her. I never have a problem
thinking of something to say to her. It’s refreshing.
These days I don’t have a lot of social time. I
have, for the most part, mastered asking people to spend time with me. Okay, so
it’s only the people that I’m 100% comfortable with, but it’s a start. I try
not to think so hard about what to say to people and try to embrace the comfortable
silence.
It’s not been an easy road, but it certainly has
been a rewarding one.
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