rather than looking to treat the symptoms of your ‘condition,’ maybe turn your focus to why this anxiety happens. if you get very anxious then you perceive the success of any social situation as important. there is a gap between the way you’d like to behave with people and the way you are behaving. its a complicated topic, but regardless, if you reduce the amount that you perceive social outcomes as important, the more relaxed you’ll be when they dont meet your hopes/expectations. i have a book called ‘the inner game of music’ and it trains performers how to combat their nerves. one of its key ideas is that you learn to accept all consequences. what is the worst thing that can happen?…; worst case scenario. in this case i suppose it would be falling on and off the stage, being unable to play well, having a really harsh audience and having to know that people will remember this. but ok, this happens, time passes, people actually were not too bothered and actually it didnt change anything significantly. then once you are comfortable with the worst you can become comfortable with anything that happens better than that, and so you become less nervous as you have trained yourself to accept all potential consequences.
every social moment is 2 part, 1/2 is you (derp), but also consider the energy of the other person. i think of it as everyone has a type of energy and in social situations you can put them in one of 2 categories. are they giving or taking? considerate or brash? passive or competitive? interested primarily in you or themselves? if they fall into the second category, then their energy will look to absorb yours. they like it if you exude anxiety as it highlights the social gap between the both of you and gives them a temporary warmth for being ‘better’ than someone at something that is important to them (however fickle that may be)… its hard when your teenage as everything seems important and relevant, but as soon as you see these encounters as less significant parts of your day, you’l feel better about yourself and in these situations you wont be nervous, as actually you’ll no longer care about the outcome… i think thats what getting old(er) is by the way; slowly relinquishing your perceived importance of everything (except love of course, that goes the other way).
also consider that when you’re growing up, your personality is changing fast. as you learn/realise things, you feel like developing them into part of your person. older people have gone through some moments like this already, made their decisions of how they want to behave and have practiced their parts, often to the point where they’re unable to learn any new parts, but regardless they will seem confident, at least in general communication and their practiced routines. for this reason, it can be difficult when your personality is developing to integrate with older people, even just in menial day to day situations.
as you learn and your personality grows you’re continually finding yourself, but to do that you need to somewhat lose yourself as well and it can be challenging interacting with people whilst going through transitions. i think the most simple and enojable way is just to be ‘you‘… anything else is a bit like building a bigger house than you can afford on the edge of a cliff; it looks good but from far but takes too much struggle to maintain and comes with the burden of potential collapse at any moment
…lastly this kind of perceived mental illness with institutionalised conceptual labelling ready at hand seems to infer that the majority of people are sane, society is normal, integration is natural and being like everyone else is a good thing. perhaps your behaviour is just a reaction to the realisation that we live in a beautiful world thats currently being refurbished by a bunch of fuck ups all declaring they know they’re thumb from their dick who are ready ridicule anyone that doesn’t want to fall in the abyss with them… or maybe thats a bit of a stretch :rolleyes:
good luck 🙂
