Social Anxiety?

[nicole123x]

I'm not too sure if this is social anxiety or not.. When I am near a lot of people as such as in town etc i feel a lot worse, for example I went to a fair with my friends a few days ago and when I got into the fair I was getting skipped heart beats one after another, very dizzy and I get Asif everyone was looking at me! I feel these symptoms everyday but they seem to get worse when I'm in crowds etc

[nicole123x]

Also when someone that is not close to me speaks to me I randomly go dizzy and very sweaty

[jhunter89]

I go bright red when someone I don't know speaks to me. It's so humiliating!

[nicole123x]

I'm very shy as it is! But I daren't even talk to some people! And when I do, I don't take it anything in that they say I'm just worrying about what to say back to them! It's weird lol x

[jhunter89]

Same!! I stutter some times and mix up my words and I can't keep eye contact. ***cringe***

[nicole123x]

Me neither !! Yeah the exact same as me it's abolutely horrible, when I'm going into town one Saturday afternoon as soon as I get there I get the skipped beats , sweaty and just paranoid!!

[Mr Anxious]

I tend to look like a traffic light on stop when im put on the spot around strange people, im OK with familiar people, to some extent people most probably think Ive just stepped off the sun beds :) , gota laugh about it or I'll cry!!

[laura84]

I have a stutter problem too and I also forget what people have said to me easily because of paying so much attention to what im saying and not listening properly, even though I want to be able to listen.

I tend to avoid situations where I might have to speak with people I dont know. even though I would love to make some new friends. A few of my current friends didnt think I liked them when we first met. People dont assume anxiety is the problem, I think they tend to think Im ignorant or something?

[laura84]

I should say i dont have much of a stutter normally, i just stumble on words a lot when put on the spot. either that or my mind goes completely blank and i just look stupid.

[jhunter89]

Yeah I think people think I'm rude and ignorant too but I'm not really I just feel sort of stunned when people talk to me and I feel uneasy.

[drmills]

Sounds a lot like social anxiety to me. Possibly generalized anxiety disorder. Please seek help from a psychologist or psychiatrist in your area who specializes in anxiety treatment.

[laura84]

me too, I dont understand why people would want to speak to me. and when they do its like I have to try and prove that im worth speaking to.

[donuts123]

I honestly don’t now what the hell is happening to me, I don’t know if I have anxiety or am I going crazy, sorry If this is long but I feel that I need to say this. To start off with Im a guy and I am half way through year 8, I am originally from Canada and I have been moving my whole life. Me and my parents have travelled to many places and I have seen different cultures. The past months have been terrible, I have been scared of my friends, my school and my life in the future and the worst part is that I dont know why I am. I just started in this school at the beinning of the school year but I didn't know anyone, in fact, I lived in a completely different country. Before living in England, I lived on a really small island in the Caribbean called St. Kitts where I went to an extremely small school. My classroom was a mix of three different year groups (year 7,8 and 9). In total, there was 6 people that I was really good friends with. I made friends with lower and higher years too. I remember when I lived there that I was the class clown, i always had fun and was myself. My school was great, it made me smarter, it made me see the world as a better place and we did so many fun things such as snorkeling trips, boat trips, beach trips, water parks and zip lining. It honestly was a great life and I never ever worried about anything ( I guess thats why they call it island life). One of the unique things about the school was the relationship between students and teachers, we talked to them out of school like they were our friends, we also visited their houses many times. (Im sorry if already this is too long I just want to make sure I get every detail). Even though life was really different on St. Kitts, me and my friends still did the same things teenagers would do, use facebook, take pictures and go to the cinemas etc. (there was actually a really small cinema there). We never had to worry about dating, relationships and girl drama. Living on the island for two years has made me a better person and made me more like an adult (went to the supermarket myself all the time, call a taxi when i needed one and did what i want, with my parent's permission of course). When I got the news that we were moving to Barnsley (a city in South Yorkshire), I was happy to leave the island for some reason ( I regret it now). My dad told me I was going to go to a massive school where you dont stay in one classroom the whole day like I did. Which meant I would be in the same year with 300 other kids i didnt know, have a lesson plan and since its england, I get to wear a uniform! I thought it would be fun and I wasnt scared at all, in fact I was confident. This is when the bad luck started to happen. Three weeks before school, I started to think about random things such as what if I die from not being able to swallow food. Then suddenly during dinner, I wasn't able to swallow and I started to have panic attacks. I still wasnt scared for school so I didnt know what was happening. I told my parents and they said it was probably anxiety. We went to a GP and he said it was normal anxiety caused from the anticipation of moving from my small school in St. Kitts to this massive school in England. It turns out, I didnt have anxiety and it was this thing called gastro reflux. It soon faded away slowly right before school started. When I got to school (my dad drove me while the other kids took the bus), I was so nervous, the school was huge! The head teacher introduced me to another new student who looked like a nerd (no offence to him) I hung out with him for the first hour of school before people started to know that I was from Canada. Everyone liked me and started inviting me to parties and to their houses. I was a bit nervous because the only party I went to was a beach one. I was still shy because thats me so I was afraid to go to these things but I did. (One thing I forgot to mention was is that before school started, I was always saying to myself that I needed to be popular and I was always concentrating on that) Anyways, the first two weeks went by in fear of people inviting me over, but this happened only because I was shy. Suddenly, I got into my first fight with my friend for no reason (i wasnt used to falling out with my friends because i never did), it made me feel like shit and thats when things started to go downhill. After the fight (2 days), i wasnt able to talk to him properly, whenever i wanted to talk to him my mind went blank. I wasnt able to think and when i wanted to say something, i felt like i wasnt allowed to. Thats when my talking problem started. I started to concentrate on what I was going to say and when i did say something to him, my voice sounded quiet and he never understood me so i would just say never mind. (I didnt know about social anxiety) Soon I wasnt able to talk to anyone properly even the people I got close with and I started to think that no one really like me anymore. At night I would think of all the bad possible things that would happen the next day. I started counting down days to half term break. It was the worst I've ever felt in my life, I have told my parents about it but they didn’t care. Finally it was the last day before our one week break and it was free dress day so I didn’t have to wear my uniform. It was the best day I have had since I moved here. I talked to my friends, I went out to eat pizza and I was the class clown for one day. During the break, all I thought about was all the good memories I had living on the island and I went into depression. I avoided social situations and I started thinking of the parties I went to at the beginning of the year and why no one invited me anymore. My fell out with the same friend again and I started saying I was going to die which got my parent’s attention. Of course I didn’t really mean it, I would never commit suicide or hurt myself on purpose. That was one of the worst moments of my life. Since the person I fell out with was the only person I really hung out with even though I was really quiet around him. Halloween came and we made up and he invited me to his house to scare people. We dressed up as Jason and Freddie and scared people that walked by, it was freezing cold and I was too afraid to tell him. He did all the scary and I just sat there which sucked. When school started again, I felt rubbish. November had to be the worst month. Ironic thing is, my talking problem became a little better because this new kid came to our school and I showed him around so I got practice. I then started hanging out with more people, I hung out with different people all the time but I was so scared to talk to the popular group. One of my friends always took me to the area where they hang out and somedays it was good, somedays it was bad. I still walked to class on my own. My talking problem got a bit better but I still need to think of what I am going to say. I researched on the internet a lot about what my problem could be, I thought I might have been social anxiety but I try hard not to avoid social situations, in fact, sometimes I go up to people and talk but they never hear me because of my American accent so I just stand there and look like a retard. The reason why Novemeber might have been my worst month was because my sister, who has a disability started to act weird (my sister is 9 and she goes to a normal school, in St. Kitts she was in year 2 but they moved her up to year 5). She started to make up words and act crazy and hyper. I started to get really worried and that’s when my parents told me her school wanted to get rid of her and move her to another school. And that’s one of the many reasons why I hate this town I live in. Now at night I start wondering why I am scared of school and my friends and now the fear is starting to get worse. It’s a weird fear, I started to get extremely strange emotions of the world ending combined with fear and confusion. I started thinking about my accent and why people couldn’t understand me. I was scared/confused/sad, it was the strangest I have ever felt in a while. This feeling has caused me to start disobeying my parents, fearing my future and if this fear will stay with me my whole life. Christmas came and I was scared the whole time, while opening presents, while having dinner and while visiting London. I am writing this the day before school starts and I am so scared and I have the weird emotion and I fear the worst of what might happen the next day. I have no seen any of my friends all of Christmas break so I am worried that they don’t like me. I’m thinking about who I will go to talk to in the morning at school and I am thinking that my life will always be like this. I’m scared. I need help and this is the only comfortable way of expressing it, answer as quick as possible. Please.