How I Beat Social Anxiety
By: Chandrayan Gupta
Tags: Self Improvement, Advice, Mental Health, This Happened To Me, Psychology

Well, Maybe There’s Hope After All

What ultimately helped was a combination of two things. One was a technique (more like a program), and the other the single worst experience I’ve ever had. They meshed to help me get rid of my fear of people.

Will You Commit to This Program?

2017 was also the year I started therapy. My therapist and I discussed a plethora of issues, but after the college incident, we focused our attention on my social anxiety. A “staircase” program was proposed. Of course, I refused at first. But eventually I had to agree for my own good.

It was simple. We laid out a number of social situations in increasing order of trepidation, and I had to complete one each week. The one at the very top was going to a movie theater and watching a movie alone. The ones at the bottom were much easier — talk to a friend on the phone for half an hour, visit a friend in person and have a day out with them, be more active on social media, talk to a relative, and so on. A cakewalk to me now, insurmountable demons to me then.

I recommend drawing something like this up with the consultation of a mental health professional. Put the least daunting challenges at the bottom, and increase the level of difficulty as you progress. But don’t do one every day. Give yourself a reasonable amount of time to recover from each challenge. I’d recommend completing one challenge every four to seven days. If need be, do the same challenge twice or thrice before proceeding.

This is a more long-term process intended to desensitize you to social situations. The more you do it, the less afraid you’ll get. As to the number of steps, spend some time and come up with every social situation that frightens you. Each and every last one of them. Then, rank them in increasing order of difficulty. There. Now you have your own staircase program.

The Scariest Experience I’ve Had

It happened in 2018. I’d gotten admission once again into the same law school, and this time I’d made some friends (courtesy of the confidence I gained from the program). But things were still incredibly bad.

For a whole week, my blood pressure had spiked. The college infirmary told me it was something like 140/100, both levels twenty points above normal. I had fever and cold, had panic attacks every day, slept only three to four hours every night, and was still very, very alone.

It all came to a head when, one evening, I began feeling something was off. Something primal and fundamental. What followed was the longest, scariest, and most vicious panic attack I’ve ever had. It lasted three whole hours, and only ended when I took strong sleeping pills. Immediately upon waking the next morning, it began again. By the time it ultimately stopped, my mind and body were frayed and severely weakened.

That night, I was convinced I’d die. It wasn’t a thought, nor a possibility. Just like you know the sun will come up tomorrow morning, I knew I was going to die. I even hugged my mother and told her I loved her. Which is, trust me, rarer than a dancing unicorn.

How did this experience help me, you ask? Well, it gave me perspective. I now knew what it was like to be afraid for your life. I’d faced something I shudder to think of even today, and I’d come out alive and (in another week) well. Compared to that, social situations are nothing, laughably benign. I now knew what to be afraid of and what to disregard.

That experience drove away quite a few of my fears, actually. I was no longer afraid of social gatherings or strict professors, no longer bothered by examinations or low grades; I no longer cared what people thought of me, and I no longer doubted my capabilities.

Once you face something truly traumatic and genuinely believe you’re going to die, and then you survive somehow, it gives you a fresh perspective on life. You now have a yardstick to compare dangers to. And social interactions aren’t even a blip on that scale.

I’m still terrified of lizards, though. Wonder what’ll fix that.