Posted by radish on February 20, 2019, at 17:33:51
living with severe social phobia is hell. people/docs don't realize how deeply it diminishes your quality of life. i have no quality of life. i cannot live. it has eroded my self esteem, self-worth, ability to connect with people and form and maintain any relationship, perform in even basic jobs. it affects every aspect of life. its effect on self-loathing bleeds over into other aspects of my life by leaving me unable to actually live and do anything because i just hate myself to my core from the second i wake up to the second i fall asleep. because i cannot talk to anyone. there's a bottle stop in my throat or the part of my brain responsible for sociality is badly damaged.
it makes me unable to think clearly or write. i couldn't persue a writing career because i literally cannot think, write, and talk with colleagues to a normal degree. i think writing uses the same brain processes as talking so that may be why i can;t write, or when i do i take twice as long as other people to produce complete thoughts. i feel i have an intellectual disability. for all intents and purposes i do have one. i can't cognate. i have no mental bandwidth. i can say "hi" "ok" and other very simple, short things but i cannot complete anything more taxing. i cannot explain how to do anything or explain anything with any slight complexity. every minute is pain. feeling stupid and incompetent further erodes my self worth.
i always wonder what i could have become or what i could have accomplished if i were more normal. or what kind of relationships i could have. the feeling of freedom. the ability to live. i feel hints of this person, deep within me. they whisper to me every once in a while. i can hear it if i'm lucky, and then it fades away, consumed by fear.
i go to work and have negative interaction after negative, panic-ridden interaction just to leave me feeling more self-hatred every day. i always hope i will get better. like when i was a teenager i believed that surely by my early twenties i would be better. i am in my late twenties and it's no better. i am getting worse every year. i've been at my current job for 9 months and i do not grow more comfortable with the people there i've known for months. i like these people a lot and want very much to connect and interact with them. but even after months of trying i still stutter and jumble up my words and fail to explain a simple thought to their confused looking faces. it's because i feel sub-human around them and full of fear and panic and just want to run away. during basic friendly work interactions, not confrontations with a bear. this is pathological, not garden-variety shyness.
there's something wrong with me. there is no logical reason for feeling and behaving this way, and i know that, yet it's hard-wired within me. nothing has ever helped except benzodiazepines, for a few hours, to a small degree, in certain circumstances. i feel like i need MDMA or opiods just to be live, breathe, feel normal. but those are obviously not smart options for my daily life.
CBT and exposure therapy are condescending shams for me. exposure therapy can only help if you're equipped to start making positive reinforcing experiences. not further negative, shameful ones. CBT is a one-on-one interaction where you share deeply personal, shameful-feeling thoughts. remember, i cannot function in situations like this, much less one of this intensity. so i feel so sick with intense fear and pain during CBT that I cannot really benefit from it. i generally leave feeling worse than i did going in. therapists/doctors: its stupid, negligent to tell poor people that $100 an hour therapy with a under-qualified social worker will help alleviate a chronic, genetic/endogenous, severe, all-encompassing mental illness. i know all about my negative though patterns, and the idea that i should be trying to train myself from having them is a cruel fucking condescending joke. it perpetuates the idea that its your fault and your full responsibility to brute-force fix alone. which sets people up to feel even worse when it fails. mind over matter isn't a thing in severe mental illness.
one therapist advised i carry a box full of items i enjoy, in the idea that i could open the box whenever i'm stressed. that's a fucking joke. coping mechanisms are a fucking joke. do you know how it feels to finally break all barriers you've built up to access help, and then the help offers you that stellar idea? there's no point in trying to cope when you're genes are so shit that you're better off just dead.i try explaining this to doctors but remember, this requires me to explain something, which i simply am unable to do, cognitively. i cannot get my point across so i cannot get the care or treatment i need. life withers away.
hey thanks for reading, folks!SP/SA
AvPD
TRD
Maybe GA
poster:radish
thread:1103314
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20190206/msgs/1103314.html