How to Appear Human When You Have Social Anxiety
No one needs to know you’re freaking out inside
On the outside, I look like a normal human being.
By all appearances, I’m just an average woman in her early 30s with purple hair and thick rimmed glasses. Depending on how you look at it, I’m either a watered down hipster or a mom who’s trying too hard.
On the inside, though, I feel more like a robot whose battery is draining more quickly than it should.
When people find out I have social anxiety, they usually seem surprised. They’ll say something like, “But you don’t seem shy” and I’ll have to think of something nice to say while I mentally unpack the 8 to 15 false assumptions packed into that little statement.
Then I pat myself on the back because my robot tricks have clearly worked — another human fooled!
And that’s a real relief, because I’d hate to put that much work into pleasantries and small exchanges for nothing.
I wish I could say I can keep it together because I have some kind of willpower or mental strength, or because I have some natural social graces. But no. I just have a set of rules I follow in every social interaction. Kind of like a…
