I dont Know whats happening to me ( Social Phobia?)

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.

I feel your story I was actually born in the Netherlands and I now reside in the U.S. Back in Europe I used to travel a lot too such as to England, Belgium, France, and Spain. There too I had several great friends Although it is not the same as over there I have grown accustomed. I know how it is being a teen don't be afraid to speak if possible try to find someone close to help.

Donuts, this sure seems like Generalized Anxiety and Social Anxiety that's been made worse by all the changes at this time in your life. This time is hard even for folks who haven't had all the chnages you've had in your young life. Think your parents will allow you to go to counseling? I'd start there. This sure does sound like anxiety to me, there is help out there and you are by NO means alone. I was anxious too in my teens. PM me any time. Alankay

Thank you alankay and 240sxMan for your support. I did try speaking to my parents but they didnt care and thought i was over reacting and saying ill grow out of it. I now know i do for sure have anxiety due to looking up symptoms and your advice. I came across this video series called anxiety revolution and it taught me about the difference between fear and anxiety and why we have fear and how it is so useful but anxiety is our fight or flight reaction when we dont need it. Then he talked about something called your neuro story, which is how you perceive things and not what reality actually is. In our mind, we perceive things as either dangerous, good etc. but our minds have gotten used to anxiety so we perceive something as dangerous when it really isn't. At the end of the series was a big scam like the rest where you have to buy a dvd so i took his information about getting out of your neuro story and realize that nothing around you is dangerous. I have taught myself to learn these things and it is helping immensely. Even though i still have troubles speaking and get nervous when around "popular" people in my school,i realized i am only scared when i think about it. Sometimes i think about other things and talk to people normally but there are specific people in my school that intimidate me. I know this may be not a problem for a regular person but i have had this issue that i developed recently that I get jealous when other people talk and have fun when i dont. Thats when my anxiety really kicks in and I have this problem with wanting to be popular and center of attention even though i know ill freak out. Thank you for listening, and I know i am healing a bit.

You may indeed get over it. You should get better as you learn and grow more.
Of course we feel envious of those with a social grace and ease we admire. See, from our perspective we assume they have that quality and all other swell qualities but that's not so. We make the mistake of putting these people on a pedestal since they seem to handle the social aspects of life so easily. Trust me they struggle in some other area be it academics, sports, looks, physical health, money issues, family issues, we all suffer somehow...all of us, at some point. We just assume we only suffer in our special way and think it's worse that others sufferings. We beat ourselves up and should not. To them their issues are nasty too. Heck they might assume you got it on the ball and all they have going for themselves is the "gift of gabb". PM me anytime. Anyway

I'm glad you've been able to share your story with us "Donuts123"
It does help to talk to someone, even if it is just us forum members from time to time.

First of all, you're not going crazy, you're not going to die, and nothing can actually hurt you!
I am not a Dr. But from living with anxiety for 18 years (before overcoming everything) I can tell you, that what you have is Social Anxiety and GAD (General anxiety) Just like the people who have told you below.

I have a technique I'd love for you to try as best as you can, and if you can, let me know how this works after a couple of days of applying it.

The techniques called change your physiology, change your psychology. It's from my book I've written recently (it's a free book, if you want it, click on my page, go to my website and download it. 156 pages of pure techniques i used to overcome my anxiety)
The technique I'm going to give you, should work wonders for your situation, because I've gone through it all, and I know this technique worked best for your situations(friends, schools people and other)

And this is just copied from my book word for word just FYI


Change Your Physiology - Change You Psychology

Studies have shown, many times, that when you change your physiology (your appearance, body movement, body language) you change your psychology (your thoughts and emotions) this is done by tricking your brain into thinking, if we are physically appearing confident, happy, or other positive emotion we must emotionally match that state.
Just as when you are emotionally feeling weak, your outer appearance is changed to a state resembling weakness.
It is much easier to control our body, than it is our emotions, so this technique is another top technique to get us feeling better when facing rising emotions, difficult challenges or any time you wish to feel a positive emotion, which should be 24/7.
This technique I use every possible moment of every day. I have reminders everywhere around my house, reminders and alarms on my phone and people reminding me to do this. When I change my physiology, I am instantly a much, much better person, and I instantly feel fantastic! No matter what is going on around me, or what I am faced with; with this technique, I can change my emotions to anything I please as fast as I can blink.

You can do this technique, absolutely any place, at any time. It takes seconds to do, and only a short time to learn the proper physiology to put you in a state of mind you wish to be in.

First, you need to understand what your physiology looks like with certain emotions.
In front of a full-length mirror, or with a partner, you need to go through all of these emotions, feeling them as best you can internally and physically acting/standing and interacting like somebody who resembles this emotion completely.
For example: If I said look and feel confident. You would go in front of a mirror or work with a partner, get your emotions into a full state of confidence and act exactly how this person would act. Your shoulders would be back, chest pushed up and out, head held high, arms by your side, eyebrows lowered, cheeky grin on your face, and a facial expression that would warn anybody “Don’t f'n mess with me!”.
Whatever you see in the mirror, or your partner sees, write it exactly down. Don’t miss a single detail!

Now, do this exercise for all of the following emotions.
Confidence
Happiness
Joy
Love
Kindness

*When doing this, really exaggerate your physiology and emotions into the highest state of this emotion possible.

Once you have learned exactly what these emotions physically look like, you need to learn and practice going from a relaxed state of body, to a state resembling the emotion. Do this by standing in front of a mirror, and with the snap of a finger go from neutral to confident, then relax, then go to happy, then relax and finally to love. Once you go through these emotions and learn how to get into the physiology in the snap of a finger it is time to start going through life and start changing your physiology into one resembling the emotion of choice.
This takes time and practice, but you with time, you will get so good at it, and you will remember this technique so well, that when you are faced with a difficult challenge, anxiety, or general mood less than you wish to feel, you will be able to change your physiology instantly by changing your physiology.

To know exactly how powerful this technique is, try practicing right now.
Wherever you are, change your physiology to the following:
Sadness – move really slow, curl your lips into an unhappy expression, cross your legs at the ankle, lower you head, grab your thumb with your other hand and breath shallow breaths while remaining focused on one point in the room. And let your facial expressions shrivel up into a sad face,,
Notice how you soon start to feel very sad..
Now, change your physiology to the following:
Excitement – Raise your chest, lift your head up, uncross your arms and legs, put a big smile on your face, keep looking around the room at all the things around and don’t stop smiling! Take a few deep breaths with a roaring sigh on the exhale, sit as comfortably as you can sit, make funny faces if you like. Whatever you would do if you felt excitement: jump up and down, scream, and shout?
Now notice how you feel from just changing your physiology.
Notice how quickly you got yourself out of the sadness, and made a complete shift into excitement!
This, overtime will really train you to increase the emotions and you will soon be able to shift yourself into complete euphoria!

Over time, when applying these physiology principals, you will begin to change your emotions, faster and faster.
At first, it may take a few minutes to change your emotions, after you have changed your physiology and held it to the state resembling the emotion you wish to feel.
After time and practice, when you change your physiology, your psychology changes almost instantaneously.

*When changing your state, make sure you hold this state! Don’t slip back into another state, or your emotions will follow.
Try to keep this state for as long as you can possibly hold it; over time this will become a constant state of being, and so will the positive emotions that come with it!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by johnmawson

I'm glad you've been able to share your story with us "Donuts123"
It does help to talk to someone, even if it is just us forum members from time to time.

First of all, you're not going crazy, you're not going to die, and nothing can actually hurt you!
I am not a Dr. But from living with anxiety for 18 years (before overcoming everything) I can tell you, that what you have is Social Anxiety and GAD (General anxiety) Just like the people who have told you below.

I have a technique I'd love for you to try as best as you can, and if you can, let me know how this works after a couple of days of applying it.

The techniques called change your physiology, change your psychology. It's from my book I've written recently (it's a free book, if you want it, click on my page, go to my website and download it. 156 pages of pure techniques i used to overcome my anxiety)
The technique I'm going to give you, should work wonders for your situation, because I've gone through it all, and I know this technique worked best for your situations(friends, schools people and other)

And this is just copied from my book word for word just FYI

Change Your Physiology - Change You Psychology

Studies have shown, many times, that when you change your physiology (your appearance, body movement, body language) you change your psychology (your thoughts and emotions) this is done by tricking your brain into thinking, if we are physically appearing confident, happy, or other positive emotion we must emotionally match that state.
Just as when you are emotionally feeling weak, your outer appearance is changed to a state resembling weakness.
It is much easier to control our body, than it is our emotions, so this technique is another top technique to get us feeling better when facing rising emotions, difficult challenges or any time you wish to feel a positive emotion, which should be 24/7.
This technique I use every possible moment of every day. I have reminders everywhere around my house, reminders and alarms on my phone and people reminding me to do this. When I change my physiology, I am instantly a much, much better person, and I instantly feel fantastic! No matter what is going on around me, or what I am faced with; with this technique, I can change my emotions to anything I please as fast as I can blink.

You can do this technique, absolutely any place, at any time. It takes seconds to do, and only a short time to learn the proper physiology to put you in a state of mind you wish to be in.

First, you need to understand what your physiology looks like with certain emotions.
In front of a full-length mirror, or with a partner, you need to go through all of these emotions, feeling them as best you can internally and physically acting/standing and interacting like somebody who resembles this emotion completely.
For example: If I said look and feel confident. You would go in front of a mirror or work with a partner, get your emotions into a full state of confidence and act exactly how this person would act. Your shoulders would be back, chest pushed up and out, head held high, arms by your side, eyebrows lowered, cheeky grin on your face, and a facial expression that would warn anybody “Don’t f'n mess with me!”.
Whatever you see in the mirror, or your partner sees, write it exactly down. Don’t miss a single detail!

Now, do this exercise for all of the following emotions.
Confidence
Happiness
Joy
Love
Kindness

*When doing this, really exaggerate your physiology and emotions into the highest state of this emotion possible.

Once you have learned exactly what these emotions physically look like, you need to learn and practice going from a relaxed state of body, to a state resembling the emotion. Do this by standing in front of a mirror, and with the snap of a finger go from neutral to confident, then relax, then go to happy, then relax and finally to love. Once you go through these emotions and learn how to get into the physiology in the snap of a finger it is time to start going through life and start changing your physiology into one resembling the emotion of choice.
This takes time and practice, but you with time, you will get so good at it, and you will remember this technique so well, that when you are faced with a difficult challenge, anxiety, or general mood less than you wish to feel, you will be able to change your physiology instantly by changing your physiology.

To know exactly how powerful this technique is, try practicing right now.
Wherever you are, change your physiology to the following:
Sadness – move really slow, curl your lips into an unhappy expression, cross your legs at the ankle, lower you head, grab your thumb with your other hand and breath shallow breaths while remaining focused on one point in the room. And let your facial expressions shrivel up into a sad face,,
Notice how you soon start to feel very sad..
Now, change your physiology to the following:
Excitement – Raise your chest, lift your head up, uncross your arms and legs, put a big smile on your face, keep looking around the room at all the things around and don’t stop smiling! Take a few deep breaths with a roaring sigh on the exhale, sit as comfortably as you can sit, make funny faces if you like. Whatever you would do if you felt excitement: jump up and down, scream, and shout?
Now notice how you feel from just changing your physiology.
Notice how quickly you got yourself out of the sadness, and made a complete shift into excitement!
This, overtime will really train you to increase the emotions and you will soon be able to shift yourself into complete euphoria!

Over time, when applying these physiology principals, you will begin to change your emotions, faster and faster.
At first, it may take a few minutes to change your emotions, after you have changed your physiology and held it to the state resembling the emotion you wish to feel.
After time and practice, when you change your physiology, your psychology changes almost instantaneously.

*When changing your state, make sure you hold this state! Don’t slip back into another state, or your emotions will follow.
Try to keep this state for as long as you can possibly hold it; over time this will become a constant state of being, and so will the positive emotions that come with it!

---

This is such great advice! I actually do some of this. When I am feeling down I will say to myself in the mirror ok, I am going to get a shower, put on my make up and get all pretty and change my thinking today. And it truly helps instead of staying in my pj's all day sitting or laying around. Now I can say I don't do that enough so I do have bad days. But never thought of making it a daily thing and to actually practice this often through out the day. I have heard that you should pick someone that you really like there attitude and try to act like them. In the way of, ok. There always so happy and cheerful, why can't I be that way? Well that's when you start to mimic them at home and get that happy attitude going even if your not feeling it, it will eventually creap in on you if you practice it enough.

Oh wow, I really like that idea/concept of trying to mimic someone! That's a great visualization technique too!
I can already see how that would help out both increase the positive physiology of the person, through seeing such exaggerated postures depicted in say a movie or TV show (Like James Bond's confidence, or Zach Effron's cheery attitude) And also how that would help people detach from themselves in this current situation and in some way escape reality.
Great advice! I'll be sure to include that on the website.

I'm so glad that this technique works for you! It really helped me out a great deal, especially when I was facing my biggest fears. "As your body changes, your mind follows"
A good way possibly to get you into a routine would be set reminders/alarms on your phone to go off every so often.

And yes, the PJ's all day routine is something very hard to break. Even when we know what we could do to snap ourselves out of it, it's often hard to do. But when we do it, it does truly help like you said. Practicing this is like building a muscle; with repetition it gets stronger and easier over time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by johnmawson

Oh wow, I really like that idea/concept of trying to mimic someone! That's a great visualization technique too!
I can already see how that would help out both increase the positive physiology of the person, through seeing such exaggerated postures depicted in say a movie or TV show (Like James Bond's confidence, or Zach Effron's cheery attitude) And also how that would help people detach from themselves in this current situation and in some way escape reality.
Great advice! I'll be sure to include that on the website.

I'm so glad that this technique works for you! It really helped me out a great deal, especially when I was facing my biggest fears. "As your body changes, your mind follows"
A good way possibly to get you into a routine would be set reminders/alarms on your phone to go off every so often.

And yes, the PJ's all day routine is something very hard to break. Even when we know what we could do to snap ourselves out of it, it's often hard to do. But when we do it, it does truly help like you said. Practicing this is like building a muscle; with repetition it gets stronger and easier over time.

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Yes it does help. But it makes me feel strange sometimes when I start acting all happy and sassy. Lol. But it does up lift you but since I don't do that everyday and get in to that routine then I slip back is what I am thinking of why I can't always be like that. When I go to work and have to put on the happy face I do feel better and do not have attacks because I work with my own patients so I have to keep control and I do. It's strange how we can keep our anxiety under control when we really need to. But once I am off work and at home I have more time to dwell:( it's a vicious cycle. I don't take any med except for klonopan and only when needed and have not had any in a week. I am determined to do this without because all the meds before made me worse, like Zoloft and the others. I have tried all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sandyrdh1

When I go to work and have to put on the happy face I do feel better and do not have attacks because I work with my own patients so I have to keep control and I do. It's strange how we can keep our anxiety under control when we really need to. But once I am off work and at home I have more time to dwell:( it's a vicious cycle.

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You've laid out all of the puzzle pieces right there, in perfect order! All you need to do is put them together :)

You say you're fine at work, when busy and around people
You know that we can overcome anxiety when we "need" too.
You are bad when you're at home with down-time.
*And anxiety meds have made it worse in the past, plus you don't want to be on them.

What I suggest, and I have a big long section in my book on it, is that you make a schedule.
You DON'T need to be working all day and night through following a schedule, and you can even schedule plenty of things for relaxation, fun and enjoyment.

This is what I personally would do, and it may be of help to you.

Get a piece of paper and pen and write out all the things you NEED to do in a day, and what times you need to do them.
(Wake up, eat, go to work, come home, shower etc etc etc.) Be thorough with it.
Where you see gaps of time, fill these gaps in with something: Watching TV, go on a walk, cook, read, socialize (whatever you would like. But try get yourself doing things that you know will occupy yourself enough to stop the anxiety.)
When you've got a schedule ready, follow it as best as you can each day, and see how that goes.
If your schedule is too hard and rigorous, simply take out a few things and replace them with easier to do activities/chores, such as instead of going on a 8 mile walk each day, go on a 30minute walk and use the remaining time to stretch or have a snack etc.

I personally found that when I was occupied throughout the day, even facing my fears when I was facing them, that anxiety simply didn't have enough room to occupy my mind!
It's impossible to think of two things at the same time, or feel 2 (opposite) emotions at the same time. (* try picturing the statue of liberty and then in detail remember what you ate last night for dinner) You'll find you can only go between the two (even if it is fast enough to seem like their the same time) but you can never truly think of both...Well if you can, you're a super savant and I envy you :p

It sounds to me like this could help you. Let me know if you need ideas to fill your downtime with.
I have a massive list of things I do and did