âitâs alright once youâre inâ - freedom from 2021 social anxiety (even for an extrovert!) Grace Burney
M
e? social anxiety? surely not!
If you know me, youâll know I love people. Mainly I love talking with â or at â them. Last Trinity term, no word of a lie, I probably went for 15476849 covid walks with 14745748530 people. People are great. But sometimes people scare me. I think it was due to being stuck in my room at home for so long, with few responsibilities other than: sit behind a Zoom screen, eat, go for a walk, watch some Netflix, try not to go crazy (my family didnât help with this one). Oh, and a law degree, but we donât talk about that. Now all of a sudden I have to meet new people? Go to parties where thereâs 100 people and I only know 1 person? That used to be my dream; now it feels slightly more like a nightmare. But, do you know what? Thatâs not just because Iâll have to make small talk face to face. Itâs because Iâm worried they wonât like me. Or I wonât fit in. So I realised there actually WAS something I could do about it: stop feeling pressure. Let it go. Just be yourself. Remind yourself that God loves you unconditionally, and so do your loved ones. Just smile and wave â I promise it wonât be as bad as your brain tells you beforehand it will be. Itâs not just transitioning post-plague that makes this a bit tricky, itâs cool people.
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âWait, but Grace, youâre really cool!â I hear you say. I know, Iâm cool. I literally own Yeezys (theyâre fake, but you wouldnât know). I mean, the bar of being âcoolâ is set pretty low at Oxford (apparently brains are the new dress sense), so at least for Oxford Uni standards, Iâm cool⊠But I donât often feel like Iâm cool: I feel like Iâm pretending. In tutorials, I pretend I did the reading and know about my subject. In social situations, I pretend Iâm feeling fine and I love life and I wasnât crying as I put my makeup on that morning. Not with my closest friends - they see me at my worst and at my best, and (hopefully) love me at all points on the spectrum, or at least tolerate me. But sometimes you have to pretend the water isnât cold and just keep moving until you warm up. âItâs alright once youâre inâ. Your brain might tell you that you should stay in bed all day, and you might need a rest, but also you might need to just cross the pain barrier and go for a walk or call a friend or do the thing youâre scared of doing. We need to get the balance right between âjust pull your socks up and get on with it â think less, do moreâ and âIâm not judging you for being scared, is there anything I can do to help?â I was going to title this âjust keep swimmingâ but that felt a bit clichĂ©. Another thing we donât talk about: anxiety.