What is it that makes one person so much more innately comfortable than the next? Is there a genetic makeup that results in some folks being simply comfortable in there skin? Maybe genes have nothing to do with it and the anxious trait is engineered by the stimuli one is subject to throughout their formative years. Regardless of the cause, we’ve all met people who can’t be bothered by any unfortunate circumstance and those whose world comes crashing down because they heard a fly hiccup in the corner of the room. Gun to my head, I’d say I lean toward the latter option.
Recognition
To be completely honest, I have no clue when I realized that I was usually more anxious than my peers. I first admitted it out loud shortly after graduating high school, but I’m certain I became self aware before this. In high school, I can recall anxiety surrounding entering an already full classroom or standing up to leave a classroom when everybody is seated. I recall similar fears during junior high and I am semi confident they were there during elementary school, but to a lesser extent. Maybe I had to give some sort of traumatizing third-grade presentation that I’ve completely forgotten about. Left untreated, the anxiety could have festered and multiplied like cancer for the next twenty years. Given enough time to build strength, at age 31, that anxiety is strong enough to make me fear just about any social situation where the collective focus isn’t aimed at some other event. Regardless of the root cause, there is immense power in the simple statement: “I have social anxiety”. Upon admission, one can begin to determine why certain situations are difficult and how to improve this disposition.
Potential Accelerants
Despite my inability to track down what kicked things off, I have some hunches as to what may have helped my anxiety build strength. Caffeine is a drug that I’ve used regularly since age seventeen. I absolutely love caffeine. From the physical energy to the cognitive creativity, caffeine is a miracle drug. I started fairly slowly, just using it to jump start exercise when I needed some outside inspiration. The addiction picked up when I realized it was an amazing study aid when one is running on less than ideal sleep. Eventually, I made it to the point where I was taking in a minimum of 500mg of caffeine per day. When I began supplementing caffeine, my anxiety was not strong enough to notice that the energy came at a price. However, back in August, during a sleepless night filled with existential dread, it dawned on me that what I thought was my best friend, was actually my enemy. I thought caffeine gave me the energy to be fun at gatherings, but it was actually making me dread leaving my house. I thought caffeine was improving my career, but it was actually causing me to spend more time worrying about the things I wasn’t working on than the tasks I was currently tackling. Since August, I’ve reduced my intake to a maximum of 100mg per day and the results are significant. Gatherings aren’t as fear inducing and I feel like I haven’t had any sleepless worry-filled nights.
A couple other potential accelerants are testosterone and alcohol. When I first began drinking alcohol, all I noticed was the way it completely eradicated any sense of anxiety. I’m not kidding, when I’d been drinking, I didn’t care about anything. Social gathering? Great, give me a chance to catch a buzz and I’ll be there no problem. Similar to caffeine, there was a period of reckoning. Early on, I didn’t really experience hangovers as described by adults. Sure, my energy levels might be a little low, but that is to be expected when you stayed up late and woke up early. However, in my mid-twenties, I started getting psychological hangovers. These hangovers could last several days and they were incredibly depression and anxiety-inducing. Prior to this, I didn’t even know what depression felt like – not a fun thing to learn while you’re nursing a hangover. Oddly enough, when Wednesday rolled around, the depression would disappear and the anxiety was again reduced to a dull roar. As you might expect, I’ve responded by significantly reducing the frequency and quantity with which I consume alcohol. I have realized that there is no such thing as a free lunch and all fun nights come at a price. Testosterone is a less explored avenue, but one I plan to investigate thoroughly upon landing a job with health insurance. I had my testosterone levels tested and they much lower than they should be for my age. It is no mystery that a deficiency in a hormone like testosterone can have all sorts of negative impacts on mood. One could hypothesize that my exponential increase in anxiety could have gone hand-in-hand with my similarly exponential increase in anxiety. More to come on this frontier.
The Miracle Cure
Did I trick you there? As you probably expect, there will never be a miracle cure for anxiety. That said, there are several steps I am taking to better live with it. As I said above, I am dramatically decreasing my intake of anxiety-inducing drugs (with much success). Similarly, I plan to discuss potentially supplementing hormones that can lead to anxiety when one is deficient. Finally, I am doing my best to subject myself to some self-administered exposure therapy. In other words, when the thought of an event gives me anxiety, I am doing my best to commit to being there. Most of these events turn out to be rather fun and I figure I can use them as an opportunity to grow. Moreover, when I feel anxious at an event, I am doing my best to be “comfortable being uncomfortable”. In most cases, this just means learning to not feel like I have to talk to look like I am acting normal. Just sit there, shut up, listen, and nobody is going to think you are being weird!
