Timeline of Social Anxiety
Dec. 14th, 2023 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogA thing that happened today made me think about the timeline of my social anxiety. It's been a little over 4 years now that I've had a serious problem with it.
I was pretty bad as a kid, and I didn't get very much better until the end of my relationship with my ex wife. After we broke up though, I swiftly got so much better! I realized that I could do things on my own and didn't need someone else's permission, and that people could be really fun and I wanted more of them in my life. That's when I started my anthro degree.
When I moved to Syracuse for grad school, it got pretty bad again. I really wanted to be more *myself*, but I wasn't sure what that meant. I also was not as well-read as most of the people in my seminars and I felt inadequate. Classes ended up making me deeply depressed, and I left.
Back in Evanston with Miriam, it took a while for me to recover from that experience, but I mostly did. I started working at the medical school library in Chicago. I was dating Erik and started dressing fem (though I still thought I was agender) and slowly meeting people and developing a larger social circle.
The hardest part of dressing up for me was entering or leaving our condo building where neighbors would see me, but I got past that and was really proud of myself! I was pretty happy and was enjoying actively seeking social things.
Then we moved to the Netherlands for two years. Originally, I'd thought to get a fresh start in a new place and just dressing fem the whole time I was there. Instead, I felt significant anxiety every time I interacted with a Dutch person, primarily for not speaking Dutch. 99% of the people around Amsterdam where we lived spoke English: I only once had to talk to someone where it was a problem the whole 2 years. But I constantly felt like an intruder in another culture who didn't care enough to learn the language she should know to not be a nuisance. I was scared every time I checked out at a grocery store that the cashier would try to talk to me. I started avoiding going to stores unless I really had to: there was a cheese shop near our apartment and Miriam and I would have really liked some nice cheddar or something, but I was too scared to go there. Staying out of indoor spaces because of Covid didn't help.
We've been in Canada for two years now, and it's been just as bad for different reasons. Now, it's the combination of being a non-passing trans woman and wearing a respirator when the vast majority of people aren't even wearing simple disposables. Every time I go into an indoor space, I have fear that people are staring at me or are going to criticize me. I'm avoiding going to stores unless I really have to again.
This is part of the enforcing of boundaries and being willing to take up metaphorical social space that I'm starting to talk more about in therapy, but it's really hard to get past 4 years of this constant feeling of being a nuisance or spectacle to everyone around me.
I was pretty bad as a kid, and I didn't get very much better until the end of my relationship with my ex wife. After we broke up though, I swiftly got so much better! I realized that I could do things on my own and didn't need someone else's permission, and that people could be really fun and I wanted more of them in my life. That's when I started my anthro degree.
When I moved to Syracuse for grad school, it got pretty bad again. I really wanted to be more *myself*, but I wasn't sure what that meant. I also was not as well-read as most of the people in my seminars and I felt inadequate. Classes ended up making me deeply depressed, and I left.
Back in Evanston with Miriam, it took a while for me to recover from that experience, but I mostly did. I started working at the medical school library in Chicago. I was dating Erik and started dressing fem (though I still thought I was agender) and slowly meeting people and developing a larger social circle.
The hardest part of dressing up for me was entering or leaving our condo building where neighbors would see me, but I got past that and was really proud of myself! I was pretty happy and was enjoying actively seeking social things.
Then we moved to the Netherlands for two years. Originally, I'd thought to get a fresh start in a new place and just dressing fem the whole time I was there. Instead, I felt significant anxiety every time I interacted with a Dutch person, primarily for not speaking Dutch. 99% of the people around Amsterdam where we lived spoke English: I only once had to talk to someone where it was a problem the whole 2 years. But I constantly felt like an intruder in another culture who didn't care enough to learn the language she should know to not be a nuisance. I was scared every time I checked out at a grocery store that the cashier would try to talk to me. I started avoiding going to stores unless I really had to: there was a cheese shop near our apartment and Miriam and I would have really liked some nice cheddar or something, but I was too scared to go there. Staying out of indoor spaces because of Covid didn't help.
We've been in Canada for two years now, and it's been just as bad for different reasons. Now, it's the combination of being a non-passing trans woman and wearing a respirator when the vast majority of people aren't even wearing simple disposables. Every time I go into an indoor space, I have fear that people are staring at me or are going to criticize me. I'm avoiding going to stores unless I really have to again.
This is part of the enforcing of boundaries and being willing to take up metaphorical social space that I'm starting to talk more about in therapy, but it's really hard to get past 4 years of this constant feeling of being a nuisance or spectacle to everyone around me.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-15 02:21 am (UTC)Should you need to become either for whatever reason(s), I'll see what I can do to assist.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-15 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-15 01:19 pm (UTC)Hugs
no subject
Date: 2023-12-15 04:21 pm (UTC)I look more like I want to in the pictures that I prepare for and take myself than I do when I'm actually out and around.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-15 06:46 pm (UTC)