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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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That’s me. I recently got injured and was forced to be sedentary and homebound for months. That put me in deep depression and some sort of quarter life crisis. I’ve realized I’ve been living a pretty shitty life ruled by social anxiety. Sitting home all the time, turning down experiences, friendships and relationships left and right, while lying to myself about doing it not because of my condition, but because ‘I’m grinding.’ Now I’m feeling I’ve missed out on so much of my youth. I fucking regret it, but it’s not helpful to lament about the past because I can’t change shit, and at least instead of being a useless slob I did something with my time. Now what the hell do I do now? I’m thinking of going all in on treating the root cause of the problem - my social anxiety. Therapy (CBT), although I’m not too hopeful on its helpfulness, some light meds/supplements (no SSRIs, Propranolol, Selank, vitamins), exercise. And of course exposure therapy. Not sure how to go about it - get some type of public facing job, volunteer or maybe solo travel and live in hostels? Once that’s unfucked, I will move onto other things like my (non-existent) career and relationships. Any advice, thoughts, input on my plan?
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.
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