Social anxiety isn’t “omg I hate people lol I wish I was sleeping and watching netflix!” It’s “I want desperately to be able to hang out with people but I hate the feeling of sheer panic and fear I get around them so I don’t / can’t and it eats away at me every day so I end up just staying home and say I’m sleeping or watching something”
this needs to be more well known.
that and the constant feeling of “Should I talk to them? No they don’t want me to.” and “they haven’t responded in a while, should I say something else? No, they’re busy, they’ll respond when ready, they don’t want me bugging them.” to the point where social interaction only feels safe if someone else initiates it, but the people we talk to have the same problem, so eventually they stop talking.
my favorite thing i’ve learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like “the eight winds cannot move me” blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes “FART” (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and he was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says “wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake”
synnatra 