In my last post, I made a distinction between everyday anxiety and what qualifies as a disorder. I suspect that I bordered on disorder when I was young, but I mostly grew out of it. Now, the residuals are all things I can live with. For me, that’s the difference. Can I live with it or is it getting in the way of the life I want?
I went to a different high school than the kids with whom I’d spent the last decade in elementary and middle school – including the extra year I took after I recovered from meningitis. They called it Reading Readiness, but it was basically a repeat of kindergarten. Going into ninth grade, I was totally intimidated by being surrounded by strangers. I knew an upperclassman or two, but that didn’t count. It wasn’t as if we had access to the same classes.
At least in class, I could focus on the work. But lunch was excruciating. After both being in a wheelchair when I was younger as well as being diagnosed with diabetes and having to carry around all the attendant equipment – I rarely bothered to go to the bathroom to use it – it felt like people were watching. Watching what I did. Watching what I ate. Watching me without friends. So, I took advantage of a relationship with a teacher I’d had in middle school and who was now at my high school. She had a service period during my lunch period, so I hid in there and ate. It was a band-aid, but it worked for two years until I had made friends in my own grade.
I’m not sure my parents knew this was happening. It was limited to lunch at school, so unless someone other than me told them, they would have had no way of knowing. Maybe. Now that I have the benefit of hindsight, I can see that it came up in other things like camp participation, parties and extra-curriculars where I knew no one or very few others. This is a fairly common phenomenon, and I mostly grew out of it, but I still don’t like doing things alone. I won’t go to a movie alone, or to a restaurant, and if I am waiting for others, I wait outside.
I get the same sensation of being judged every time I go to a gym, even the one in my building, which rarely has more than a half dozen people using it at one time. In the gym situation, I do push myself. I tell myself that I need to get over it, and that no one is paying attention to me. Even if they are, the impacts of not exercising are worse than being judged by a stranger. If I can get myself onto the elevator to go downstairs, it works. If not, that’s one more day I don’t exercise. Which is bad because nothing does more to control blood sugars than exercise.
I know these feelings stem from the combination of the paralysis and accompanying wheelchair that made me the center of attention when I was young (not in a good way), and the body dysmorphia that came with quick weight gain after being diagnosed with diabetes (undiagnosed Type 1s are essentially starving to death no matter how much they eat because our bodies can’t use the food properly).
I never recognized it as social anxiety when it was happening. It was specific and situational, so once it was done, it was done. I was actually an outgoing kid in most situations. When I was 16, I started practicing the “fake it ‘til you make it” technique when I felt intimidated by adults who were in positions of power. The effectiveness of this approach did not spill over into interactions with my peers. I don’t think it ever occurred to me to apply it. For some reason, feeling judged by my peers, whether true or not, was much more traumatic than feeling judged by people I felt were so much higher than I was on the social/economic ladder.
As an adult, it’s easier. The child’s sense of inferiority is gone, and I am more confident of my own value, so even if I am judged, I either don’t care or I am more comfortable with the conclusions that will be drawn. I don’t have mandatory lunch periods, and I can mostly avoid situations that make me uncomfortable. It’s not the healthiest solution, but I can live with it.