Living with social anxiety,
Is like living in survival mode every single day,
Like trying to dodge loads of obstacles in a video game,
It's like standing on the edge of a cliff,
While your heart pounds out of your chest,
While you sweat & you overthink,
And you take shallow breaths.
You don't like crowded places,
Because when you're in one,
The panic attacks are overwhelming,
Self conciousness is not at all fun.
Try being around people,
While you awkwardly stand there,
And your mind is racing even though you don't want to care,
People start to notice, then people start to stare,
So then you end up stuck back in your house,
And depression takes a chair.
It's a storm in a teacup,
That goes round and round,
And you don't know what to do,
How to try and get back out.
I wrote this poem because social anxiety disorder is a condition that can be really debilitating to live with.
It causes extreme anxiety when going out to a point where you're overly self concious, and people do notice. But you don't want them to notice.
It can make you feel like you're constantly being scrutinised & judged, or seen as 'strange' People may give you ***** looks like as if you're some ******, stare, laugh or say hurtful things, and that affects the person suffering with this condition.
So they end up having an issue with going out, and being social, & then become depressed & feel they can't change, because every time they do make an effort to change or try, society can be quite cruel. That's what makes it difficult.
I think this condition needs to spoken about more, as it's not understood.