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heya, just as a personal message, and not knowing your situation at all, I just want to encourage you to be creative and practice going from social anxiety to typical amounts of social comfort without meds... There are dozens of techniques out there, so give them all a try, from meditation to exercise, encouraging youtube videos, to diet changes, etc. Above all, don't be afraid to make mistakes... it's rather a trap for many of us to cease taking the small risks that lead to mistakes once we attain a niveau of success, but small mistakes are the propulsion that maintains that success. For example, I've been huffing and puffing about learning Javascript since it first came out, mocking it, only seeing the bad sides. Then I got stuck in the loop of hoping it would go away and trying to rationalize not knowing it. When I started to come around, I felt embarrassed because I knew my code would be baby code and I would do lots of dumb things. But I'm pressing forward, trying to modify mapHighlight to do what I need it to do and I no longer give a shit about haters. Yes, maybe someday people will make fun of me, but by that time, I'll be skilled enough that I'll have thicker skin. When you take the long view, you see that people mocking you is just a test to see where you are. In the case of bullying, it goes too far, but in general, testing one another to see if we're still emotionally sensitive to our failures from long ago is part of how human social bonding works. And fear of not being able to stand up to the test can motivate us to take those chances, write that crappy JS code, embarrass ourselves a little bit in front of our co-workers or potential mates. And finally, most people are astonishingly forgiving and forgetful. Much more than we deserve. Every now and then you'll have that psycho (a trope the media and movies love to push to keep everyone in fear and anxiety) who remembers some slight for his entire life and uses it to levy revenge on someone, but in actual life, no one simply has the energy and desire to sustain a revenge campaign. They're too busy living their own lives. No one cares if I wrote some sloppy C code in 2004 and in 2024, no one will care if my JS is crummy now. And even if someone says anything to me then, it will just be a big joke in the past to me. So that's my spiel, friend. If you want any more encouragement, it's $400/hour :) |