NEWNESS

For any of you that have visited this blog before, and God forbid, if there are any regular readers, then you'll notice a new layout. But it's not just a pretty picture...

Besides the layout, you’ll notice a few additions, beginning with the Amazon advertisements. Just to set the record straight, it’s not my intention to make money from this blog. The ads are there for the sake of curiosity more than anything else. Neither do I intend to lure anyone into any bum deals. There’s currently two books listed there (which may or may not change in the future) that you will find recommended throughout the socially anxious world. Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness is what you’d expect from a CBT based self-help book and is definitely worth a read. Diagonally Parked in a Parallel Universe I have not read yet, but in the extremely unlikely event that I make enough money from those ads to buy it, then that is what I’ll do and I’ll review it right here for you. How’s that for fairness?

You will also find the addition of RSS, so you can now subscribe to this blog rather than checking back everyday for the next three months only to find I haven’t posted anything. Considering my somewhat sparse and intermittent approach to writing here recently, I thought that would be a good idea. I’ve got no idea if it actually works properly, I’m just clicking a few buttons and hoping for the best. But hey, it’s the effort that counts, give me a gold star.

Other than that, partly because I don’t post here much and partly because information on social anxiety, especially blogs, can be impossibly difficult to find, I’m trying to generate a worthy list of links, to sites, blogs, articles, etc. Much of the stuff linked up there I haven’t read yet but I have had a quick flick through and some of them look half decent. I don’t want to discriminate against tastes either, if it doesn’t suit me, then that’s not to say it won’t suit you. I’d love to hear of anymore stuff out there, so long as the entire thing is not one long whinge, let me know.

As always, feedback is appreciated.

IT'S ONLY A LABEL

When I suffered from acute anxiety, I would blame my avoidance tendencies and growing agoraphobia on one thing only – nausea.

See, if I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up at any instant while standing at the checkout in the local supermarket or simply talking to a neighbor, there would be nothing to fear, surely? So what if I get a little flustered, I can handle that. But knowing that at any moment I could erupt, forcing a violent projectile of carrot-based matter not only onto a freshly cleaned floor, but into the minds of everyone present, I just could not deal with that kind of embarrassment.

It took me a long time to learn the truth. Eventually I dealt with my fears and overcame the agoraphobia and it was all good. Until I relapsed. This time my anxiety manifested itself in every way possible, as if aware of my increased strength and subsequent immunity to what had plagued me for several years. The sickness didn’t hold any great presence anymore. But what remained was a passionate fear that could disable some of my most powerful efforts. It sucked. However, I came to realize that the only fear I ever had, was not of the nausea, but of fear itself.

We’re always looking for something, or someone, to blame. If you didn’t have x, y or z, then everything would be just fine. Or maybe if you did have x, y or z, then everything would be just fine. So many times I’ve heard the same of social anxiety. If you didn’t have social anxiety you’d wake up to the smell of roses every morning. Riiiight.

The truth - everything is just fine as it is. We use blame as a means of control, or justification for our weak efforts. It allows us to play the victim and throw the towel in to something we believe has a hold over us. But SA is not an entity in itself and you are certainly not owned by it. And you are not unique.

Your difficulties come down to the same fundamental issues that everyone on this earth experiences.

We all fear and we all struggle. The manifestation of our fear varies but it is there in each one of us. Regardless of how it presents itself, whether we have SA or not, we have fundamental needs and must make noble efforts each day to attain a contented life. What I am saying is, we have struggles outside of social anxiety, which may well appear to be part of social anxiety, but social anxiety is merely a term for a specific combination of manifested fears. The fundamental fears behind this are natural throughout humankind.

There is a starting ground, which is no different from the one each one of us walks. The way you talk to yourself, pro-action…getting things done! Without which, the words of a million books are of no use. You don’t need to think about social anxiety to get started and we all know roughly what we need to do on a day to day basis. Are you doing it?

Exactly.

No excuses.