Nature, relaxing, movie marathons with snacks



Your Personality Is Like Marijuana




You're laid back and easy going, so much so that taking a shower is often too much trouble for you!

Nevertheless, you're quite popular, and many people enjoy your company. You're rarely turned down.

You're prone to giggle fits, paranoia, and forgetting where you are exactly.

Stand By Me, City of God, Shawshank Redemption

Dying of embarrassment: Help for social anxiety and phobia

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Humor, understanding, genuinely good people.

Arrogance, conceited-ness, close minded people

Hello!

I'm new to this whole thing. I'm originally from San Francisco but am attending school in Arcata, Northern California studying Psychology. I live in a super isolated area which was cool at first but now I'm beginning to regret it a little...

I have had Social Anxiety since I was in 6th grade, though I just had no idea that I had it until a couple years ago. I thought it was pretty normal to completely overanalyze and be anxious all the time and dread social events to an extreme and think everyone hates you... I am slowly trying to work on this! At times in my life I don't feel like this at all and it's great, but it's getting back to the point where I don't even want to go outside and breifly greet my neighbors. Ugghh I hate that. I've never gone to therapy about it but I'm thinking about starting soon. Not being able to manage this sucks. I'm studying developmental psychopathology to help kids before they develop disorders, but I realize I need help for myself before I can even begin to think that I can help anyone else.

I am really getting into Evolutionary Psychology because it's the only way that any sort of "illness" make sense to me and makes me not feel crazy (after taking into account genetic vulnerability, etc.)

Evolutionary Psychology basically holds the idea that illnesses
are of a result from a modern society discord/mis-match with how we are designed to live/have lived as we evolved. It puts the idea of fear of crowds into a whole new perspective to me because "back in the day" we are supposed to be weary of strangers, we weren't supposed to have large social groups (stayed close to kin, those that are like us) ect. It also explains for why people are prejudice against people they are unfamiliar with. IT'S SO INTERESTING.

There are other discords with today's lifestyle, compared to when we evolved, that have resulted in other problems that aren't related to disorders that can elaborate as an example. Like the idea that people need reading glasses when they get older. It has been studied with tribes today (people still living in the fashion in which we evolved, ie: hunter-gatherer style) having nearly perfect eye sight throughout their lives. Reading is apart of our lifestyle, we didn't evolve with literature and night lamps and the ability to read in the dark naturally, so our eye sight starts to deteriorate. In the same way, we didn't evolve encountering so many people in one day and having such large social networks. The idea of this helps me to realize that I am able to recognize this discord and proceed with trying to adjust to it rather then feeling hopeless. I'm just sharing this in case this helps any of you, though I might just be rambling and not making any sense.

There's a book called Darwinian Happiness that talks about all the different ways you can adjust your life in modern times to fit into the old days without being a hippie who doesn't wear shoes and lives in the forrest.

I'm excited about finding this network, it's exactly what I was looking for. I've never known anyone else who had SA so knowing there are others out there in itself is comforting already.

I like to see myself as pretty easy going and open minded. If anyone is in the CA area, we should chat! I see people on here who start social support groups and that would be cool to do with local people.

AIM = blkheartvalntine