I Have Social Anxiety — I’m Afraid Everyone I Meet Will Hate Me
Published in
5 min readMar 20, 2019
I’m afraid of meeting new people.
Actually, I’m afraid of meeting people period, even if I know them or they’re my friends.
It’s not because I hate people — it’s actually because I think they’ll hate me.
Today I realized I probably have something called social anxiety disorder.
It’s defined as “Intense anxiety or fear of being judged, negatively evaluated, or rejected in a social or performance situation.”
Nobody really diagnosed me, but I had one of those intense, anxiety-ridden moments today reading all of the symptoms, nodding my head to pretty much every one, and realizing this is actually probably me.
Apparently all these things are a little harder to do for people with SAD (Social Anxiety Disorder)
- Interacting with unfamiliar people or strangers
- Starting conversations
- Making eye contact
- Returning items to a store
- Eating in front of others
- And so on.
