Dealing with really bad social anxiety?

[Amelia]

I don't know what's the cause of my social anxiety. Basically, I interact terribly with people.
Sorry, I know I write a lot. But I usually have a lot on my mind.

This is going to be hard to explain, so just read as much as you can until your attention-span expires...

My brain seems to not work at all under stress. If someone I am not closely acquainted with were to ask me a question, even if I know them, I would feel under pressure and typically I would not even be able to process what they ask me. Even if it's a simple question. Most of the times, I ask them to repeat themselves and act as if I didn't hear them to give me more time to process their question to  come up with an answer.

Even if the person is someone I am around a lot and am very familiar with, I still struggle with conveying my opinions. I am very self-critical to a harmful extent. I typically assume all of my opinions and ideas are no good, so I almost never speak about how I actually feel about an issue in public.

This also causes me to double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, etc, check my self.
I am so paranoid about doing something embarrassing in public that I take forever to do anything because I don't want to mess it up.
For example, as mentioned before, when people ask me a question, even when I formulate the response, I go over it several times in my head to make sure it makes sense. Or in class, sometimes we'll get assignments and the teacher will later ask us to write the answer on the board. I usually feel like I did the problem right, until I am asked to write it on the board, then I begin to second-guess myself and redo the problem and run over it again in my head to make sure I don't write something stupid. Several times have I done this and actually gave a wrong answer verbally despite what was written on my paper being correct.

This social anxiety also gets in the way of when I need help on something. I am typically too shy to ask for help and couple times I actually failed homework assignments at school because I didn't understand the directions and couldn't ask anyone.

This is also why I'm posting this on a public forum and not seeing a psychiatrist or something...

Today, I had a test, and I didn't understand the directions on how to fill out the answer sheet. It took me like 10 minutes to build up the courage to ask the teacher how to do it, and I didn't do it until someone else asked a question (so it wasn't breaking the silence).

Back to being self-critical...
I criticize and hate nearly everything I do. Even if I did something right, I'll still somehow come up with a way to how it "could have been better". I have no pride at all in any of my work.
This self-criticism also applies to me as a person. If someone makes a compliment, I somehow twist it in my head into an insult, and compliments always make me feel worse. And then when someone actually insults me, I practically have mental breakdowns. I'll usually go completely silent and practically lose the ability to speak, until I get to somewhere private, then I'll just start crying. Even if it wasn't that bad of an insult.

Typically, even if I try to accept a compliment or feel good about something, I only end up feeling guilty for it.
Like, I'm not worthy and don't deserve to be happy. So I, in turn, disregard the compliment or regard my "something" as bad and lose all confidence in it.

I had a job once and I ended up quitting. I was so paranoid about doing orders wrong that a couple people complained that I wasn't fast enough (quintuple-checked if the order was right). And every time I did mess something up, I felt really freaking bad about it and I don't know why. Usually the people there were nice, so even though I felt bad, I could somewhat deal with it. Until this one manager came along, and he hated me, kept on criticizing me, and was saying I wasn't a good employee and stuff. I got so depressed that I had to quit the job.

All of this makes me feel really helpless all the time.
If I am having a problem, I can't communicate it at all and so I feel helpless to it.
Like a sad little fish in a room full of people, but a glass wall separates it from communicating with everyone else.
Even if I want to ask for help, I'm paranoid of everyone being judgemental and looking down upon me for asking a silly question.
I've asked silly questions before, and it makes me feel really stupid.

I wasn't always like this. All the way back in elementary school when I was just a wee little kid, one of my teachers referred to me as his "eager beaver" because I was always happy to participate in everything in the class, answer all the questions, etc.
Aways back in middle school, I was much less eager but I was nowhere near like I am now. I was silent a lot and distanced myself from people, but I still had a group of friends and I still participated in things like drama class and stuff.

I don't know where it went downhill. I've been in high school for awhile now, and my social anxiety is really bad, as bad as I described above. I only have like 1 friend at this school. The only other person I talk to is one of my friends from back in middle school, but he goes to a different school, so it's like on Skype and stuff. There's a couple people, who I don't really describe as friends, but I typically feel comfortable enough with them to ask them basic questions (such as: how do you do this assignment?).

My main problem with my social anxiety is that it makes me depressed. It makes functioning in society extremely difficult and painful. It makes simply existing a pain.

It's really weird to explain. But my social anxiety has been getting really bad, and it's almost as if these little mental breakdowns are now lasting. I find it difficult to speak even if I didn't do anything particularly silly that day. I hate all the work I produce and everything I do.

Once, we had a class project that required us to choose the essay we're most proud of that we have written throughout the year.
I tried my best to explain to my teacher that I wasn't proud of any of them. She got mad at me and told me that I "wasn't thinking hard enough" (which made me feel worse). So I ended up just picking the one that would be easiest to complete the project with.

I also have a tendency to desperately avoid art class. I've always hated art class because it requires self-expression, and I hate and am really embarrassed about everything about myself. Typically, if I am required to do something art-related, I avoid it by opting for something goofy or generic. I try to think of an idea that reflects as little upon my character as possible.


Anyways, that was a lot of typing. But I'm not sure how to sum up how I feel in a paragraph or two. :I

I hope you can understand why the solution "just ask for help" isn't viable for me.
I am really unsure of how to deal with this social anxiety because it's so bad that I can't ask for help, except for anonymously online.
I've always been more social online, because it's not linked to who I am in real life.

I really need some sort of suggestions that could help me get some courage back.
I need at least an ounce of it to ever hope for asking for help.

[Vicky]

I am now old enough to be your grandmother, but I was very much like you in your earliest years although I never quite got to the point of anxiety you seem to have.  You do not say what it is and may not know, but you have a low tolerance for shame in any form.  This does go with our GD for a large number of us.  We know the person we present to the world is not our true self, the self that feels right and secure with other people around.

As a child I was expected to be PERFECT as far as school work went too, and it was better not done than imperfect!!  At first when I was the eager one who was actually a couple of grades ahead on reading and math skills, it was fun and I was happy to challenge the work itself, but it instead turned into a challenging of my classmates because they gave me hell for being ahead, even though I really did not consider myself better and wanted them to be at my level.  If I was EVER told I was wrong by a teacher, I would probably be sick the next day rather than face the teacher.

I endured school rather than enjoyed it.  Another problem I had was that I could get answers right, but could never puzzle out HOW I got the answer or show my work, which got me in more trouble than you (well maybe you can) can imagine.  I finally got a break when a counselor realized I was near a full psychotic breakdown, I had gone in to discuss a failing grade with her and actually went into a special dream world I had while I was with her, and she saw it and pulled me out in time. She got me out of the failing class and into the one class where I could be different and do strange things without fear.  The class was a Drama / Acting class, and it had people who could let me out of my skin for a while and be someone else even for a short time.  It was not ridgid and the teacher there had an intuition of my mental fragility.  It was then that I first understood how much of my real life was an act and how much role playing I did every day.  When I played a role of a vulnerable person, I was able to let MY vulnerability out without risk, because while the teacher suspected I was being myself, the others saw the character I was afraid to be.

Until I did get help for my GD at 60 years old, I never felt like I did anything that was good or right, and I held a good job for 40 years by then, and there was evidence I had done some wonderful things, including my children, but I never could feel any joy in it, and I know it kept me from doing as good a job as I might have.

The toughest thing I ever have had to do was admit I needed help, to me in particular, but finding a way to give yourself permission to be less than perfect was the thing I had to do.  I give "me" permission to screw up that homework assignment.  I give me permission to  have made an error.

Give yourself permission to be human. "I allow me to ___________."  Say that in a mirror with a proud look on your face and you can make it.  In time others will see you looking calmer, and in time you can laugh at some less than perfect things, and go on again.

[Sephirah]

Okay, I have a suggestion for you, hon. An exercise for you to try.

It sounds like you're suffering from very, very low self-esteem. This is affecting the voice you have inside yourself. The one telling you what sort of a person you are and what you can and can't do. The exercise I'm going to suggest... well, it may not be easy to do. I make no bones about that. But it is something which may help with identifying the way you think, and maybe replacing some of those negative thought patterns with more positive ones.

What I want you do to is to think of something you don't think you can do. An interaction which is possible in everyday life but you absolutely don't think you are capable of making.

Make a table in either a word processing document, or a blank sheet of paper. Three columns.

In the first column, write down what you want to do. For example "Asked a stranger for the time." Title it "Situation".

In the second column, write down EVERYTHING you feel will happen when you do that. And be honest with yourself. About what you think their reaction will be, how you think they, and you will feel, and what you expect the outcome to be. Title this column "What I think will happen."

Leave the third column blank. But title it. "What actually happened."

Now, this is the hard part. You have to actually put yourself in the situation. Trust me, I know how scary that prospect is. It can feel terrifying. But if you hold on to the thoughts in your mind that you WANT to get past this, and that for now you're treating the whole thing as an exercise, and experiment, that may make it somewhat easier.

So, to use the example above, go and ask a stranger for the time. And when you do so, observe the situation like you're watching the outcome of a deliberate exercise. What they say, what you say, how that makes you feel. And once you've done that, go back to your table and write all that down in the third column.

The point of this is to illustrate the differences between how we think things will go, and how they actually go. And how different they can sometimes be. Telling someone how to get over something is nowhere near as effective as the person actively doing it themselves. And if you can see in black and white that the way you think you are, and the way you think you express yourself, is different to how it actually is, this will go a long way to both raising your self-esteem and lessening the criticising tone of that voice inside yourself. Replacing it with a voice which says "You CAN do this, you've done it before, see? And the world didn't implode. You're a better person than you think you are!"

Keep doing this, hon. Once a day, or once a week if that makes you feel more comfortable. Little things that you feel you can handle at a push. One step at a time. And write down how you feel about a situation, and then how the situation unfolds. To see the differences in your thought patterns in relation to how it actually is.

After a few weeks you may start noticing a distinct difference in yourself. *hugs*

Also... maybe have a look at this thread, and see if there's anything in there which might help.