Humm, what to say... this might be too long sorry.
I knew there was something wrong with me since I was child but had no idea except that people always said I was the "shy type" (I always felt really awkward) and that bothered me especially starting high school, so I decided to make up a group of loner type friends like myself and that worked out pretty well. I even got involved with a girl who would become my very first girlfriend despite my shyness (damn she was pretty hot!... sorry...) 9 months into my steamy relationship with my first girlfriend, I experienced panic attacks for the first time and I thought I was going crazy (you have to understand I had a schizophrenic dad so I thought it was a genetic thing passed onto me and just then was manifesting itself) Man was I ever depressed (being the hopeless romantic that I was/am, I really didn't want to let go of my first girlfriend who I thought was the only person who really understood me (I can hear people reading this going AWWWWW! ;) but I felt I had to, so I did, and so I went into a deep depression...) anyway, while this was happening, as you can guess, I had made many many visits to the emergency room of my local hospital and back then they really knew very little about anxiety disorders, so they just sent me home each time.
Yeah, this is really getting longish geez...Ok, lets try to save some time... flash forward... I was kicked out of high school when this happened, finally was sent to a psychiatrist who said I had some kind of anxiety disorder but had no idea what to do except ask me things like "how many times per day do you masturbate?" (like WTF!!!)which mad me very uncomfortable. He gave me a medication called Ativan. Ativan actually helped a lot (not that I love chemicals) so I was able to finish high school through alternative schools. Along the way I was misdiagnosed as an Agoraphobic and put on Xanax, one of the best medications I was taking back then that allowed me to go to College and finish a 4 year program (although I did go around living like a mouse trying hard to not be noticed etc) Xanax was not the answer to social phobia but it did help very much at the time. I found out that after I went to live on my own, that I needed to take more and more Xanax to be able to even go out at night just to go to the late night corner store and get some provisions for the next few days.
Finally I was taking too much of this medication even to be able to bare the thought of going outside of my 1.5 apartment, and I knew I had to do something to change this or else my depressed feelings would take over and well... it would have ended not too well... So as a boxed-in person, just not able to go out anymore, I decided to pick up my phone and call around to hospitals and CLSC's and ask if there were any places I could go for help. I found out about this one self help group called Recovery Incorporated, and after talking to the group leader (Francis)I took more medication and went to the groups although I was really terrified. There I met lots of amazing people with anxiety problems, and it did help me alot, but I just had this gut feeling that I should keep looking for something that targeted my problem. It was while watching something on TV that I first heard the term Social Phobic, so I looked into it on the net and sure enough it described me to a T. depressed again and not knowing who to turn to, I called one of my local hospitals and said that I was really depressed and that I thought I might be a social phobic. They asked me to come in and be assessed. I went, and sure enough I was told that I was a social phobic. They rated me into the 90% range of social phobia and that did not surprise me actually, I knew that all along. Anyway, trying to make a really long story shorter (and that's not working lol!) they set me up with a female CBT therapist (really hot if you don`t me saying!) and I would later learn that she was one of the best CBT therapists at the Allen Memorial Hospital in Montreal Quebec. So 3 years later, after some very intense CBT therapy, I improved a lot but not enough for me and I was still getting depressed, so I asked her to put me on a Medication that she knew had a good record with social phobics called Remeron and I tried it. It did work very well, but it had some bad site effects for me so I had to go off it. In the end, I was able to get and keep a job that I am still at today in a local hospital and after seeing another therapist for PTSD (to do with my mentally ill dad) I am able to ``function`` and do many things I could not do in the past with the help of a small amount of Rivitril (an anxiety medication) that I hope to be able to stop completely sometime in the future.
Having said this, I still have lots of difficulties dealing with Social Anxiety. I wish I could do a lot more and that I could go to work parties etc, but I`m doing better, no one is perfect right.
I do what I can. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger right? :)
Anyway, enough for now, this is turning into a blog or something of an autobiography piece lol!
Thank you for reading this, I'll try to shorten it soon :)
Your Social Anxiety Level: 96%
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You have extreme social anxiety.
Your social phobia is a serious problem for you, and you definitely need help.
And while getting help may seem very scary, it's your only choice... except for hermitude!
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