The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
You mention here that a year or so ago you were on propranolol, with encouraging results. To what degree (not much?) have medications aided you?
I've traveled solo quite often, but I'm not particularly good at it. Unless you're approached by someone else, would you be the type to initiate an interaction? Nor am I all that social most of the time, though I can fake it. But I don't have the type of anxiety you're describing. You also mentioned before having hobbies and interacting with people in those hobbies--has this not been an effective strategy? If you're an introvert that's one thing, but if you're an extravert trapped in a situation where being extraverted is stressful, that's another.
It helps just a bit, but at the time I was in a completely different headspace. I've had social anxiety for as long as I can remember, so I've been treating it like it was a completely normal way of life for the longest time. After all, while I'm a social recluse in some ways - I still have some friends, had some relationships, and so on. That assured me that I'm just an extreme introvert that prefers being alone for most of the time (a lie I told myself). Propranolol was helpful to turn down some physical symptoms, but I found that I've already managed to lower my stress baseline in social situations to where propranolol brought me down to back then, so it's not that useful to me anymore. I haven't tested it in an extreme situation like a presentation because I haven't had the chance, but I still have some and will use it once an opportunity presents itself.
Default me, before I started making a conscious observation about my social anxiety, absolutely not. Whenever I can't find something at the store, I would always walk through the whole place on my own instead of asking an employee. But now I'm always doing my best catching myself when my brain tries to 'protect' me from social interactions like this. This alone is big progress, in the past anything social would instantly get vetoed by my amygdala.
Yes, but once again, those posts were made when I was still in my old ways before I got put in this mental hole and had to face my reality. I was on some sort of autopilot, feeling something is wrong but not fully understanding it.
I'd say I'm an extraverted introvert. I do value my alone time, but I'm completely fine in extraverted situations when surrounded by close friends and family. Biggest triggers are unfamiliar people, being put on the spot, etc. I remember having 120 bpm heartrate, muscle spasms and heat flashes 2 hours before doing a presentation in college.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link