Surviving the School Gates: Why Social Anxiety Doesn’t End After Graduation

How motherhood brings playground politics back into our lives — and how empathy can change it

Image By Pressmaster at Envato Elements

My mother always told me that my school days would be the easiest time I’d ever had.

Back then, I thought my mother had gone mad. I was convinced she’d had too much white wine at lunch that day.

I couldn’t understand how my mum couldn’t see that, for most teenagers, school was pure torture. If it wasn’t the subjects and homework causing stress, it was the early mornings, the lack of autonomy, and the daily anxiety of being forced to spend six hours around people who could be your best friends one day and your worst nightmare the next.

In the ’90s, we didn’t have the term “social anxiety” to describe the stress associated with being forced to sit among large groups of people who provoked intense emotions.

One misunderstood look from a girl who seemed more confident than you could trigger a week-long rumination about what possible personal imperfection you had that might have been deemed offensive.

Another person’s flippant remark could leave you obsessively reflecting on everything you said or did that day, occupying your brain in a way…