I started the Social Anxiety At Home series of blog posts almost a month ago. It all started from a comment made on the marriage episode on the Your Social Anxiety Bestie podcast. Sadie’s husband pointed out how he had to be careful how he worded observations to prevent being interpreted as critical towards his wife. It got me to thinking about how my anxiety impacts my husband and family. From there, my imagination took off and I pictured an entire house of Social Anxiety.
I began writing this post in the midst of writing the others, as a way to track my anxiety about the series itself. These anxieties don’t necessarily impact my family, but I felt it was important to document that even the cathartic practice of writing out my anxiety and reflecting on the cognitive distortions brings it’s own anxiety as well. Below you will read snippets of time spread throughout the process. Each section represents a separate session at the keyboard, though they may or may not be separated by days.
I’m not done writing all of my “rooms” of Social Anxiety At Home yet, but a lot of feelings are popping up as each one goes live that I think might make a useful post. So I’m starting this now and will continue it as I post each of the rooms.
At the time of starting write this, I have posted the intro and three of the rooms. Just three out of eight. Not even halfway there. I’ve actually written five rooms already, but I’m anxious about publishing them too close together and I’m trying to space them out. As I have written each one, I’ve become more and more aware of where anxiety shows up every single day in my life, even when I don’t leave my house. That’s a good thing. I’m more aware, which helps me to recognize cognitive distortions and triggers and try to head them off at the pass.
However, the publishing of each post brings me anxiety. The writing of them is very therapeutic. But after I hit “publish” my anxiety goes into overdrive and I feel like an imposter. I check how many views I’ve gotten multiple times throughout the day. If there are none, I wonder why. If there are one or two, but no “likes” or comments, I fear what I’ve written is no good. But I really start to feel the physical signs of anxiety (tightening of my chest, shallow breathing, sweating, etc) when I see the views jump to 30 (like yesterday) or when someone tells me what I’ve written has impacted them.
A friend asked me if she could post a link to my series on IG and I’m so very torn. On the one hand, I’d love for what I write to mean something. I’d love for there to be even one person that sees what I’ve written and realize they are not alone. But on the other hand, the thought of more people seeing what I’ve written feels like so much exposure and I feel like a fraud. When I expressed this struggle she gave me three suggestions for mantras to tell myself:
- My writing is powerful because it’s real and imperfect.
- I’m not trying to save the world with each post; I just want to add to the conversation.
- I’m the only person who can share my story.
Fifteen years ago I started a blog that I kept private. It was simply my space to journal my feelings as my husband and I contemplated if an how to become parents. Eventually it evolved into a chronicle of our surrogacy journey and then my life as a mom to young twins attempting to educated them at home. About halfway into the surrogacy journey, I opened it up to the public. I realized that as I struggled with the decision to use a surrogate, I needed to know the stories of those that went before me. And if telling my story could help one person through theirs, then how could I keep it to myself?
That blog still gets traffic today. I’ve left it up even though I haven’t posted on it in years. So maybe my story is important. Maybe it won’t reach a million viewers, but maybe it will reach one. The one that needs it. And maybe that should be enough. I’ll report back as I work my way through the rest of the posts as to how I’m handling the imposter syndrome.
I just got off a zoom call with the Social Anxiety Besties Club. When my blog came up and more than one person mentioned that my writing was good and suggested that I should write a book, I physically tried to shrink myself. I could see myself because it was a zoom call and I noticed that my head dropped and my voice became quieter as I mumbled out a quick “Thank you” and hoped the conversation would move on. I don’t understand why I have such a hard time accepting the complements as they are intended. My knee jerk reaction is to disqualify the positive. Why do I have an instinct to take up less space? Why can’t I take pride in what I’ve written and accept that their words are genuine? They have no reason to lie to me.
Yesterday I had some extra time to kill and decided to make a reel on IG, just to figure out how it works. I’d never made one before and I’ve always known that the best way for me to learn something new is to just try it. I fumbled with it a couple of times because of the time limit and whatnot, but I finally had something I thought was okay enough to post. I figured the usual 2-3 people would see it. But when I looked at the insights a couple of hours later, there were over 1,000 plays! I don’t know how that data is actually acquired, but seeing that number was terrifying. I even got several new followers (which is also intimidating). I don’t know if I would have posted if I’d known that many people might watch it. But now I almost want to do another one and see what happens. Surely it wouldn’t happen again.
Also, on our date last night, I ended up telling my husband about this blog series and that I’d signed up for the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest. I had not planned to. I wanted to keep them both a secret from him because the anxiety of him knowing is so high. We were waiting on our food and he asked me “So do you want to do the Flash Fiction contest?” I started to panic. I signed up last week in a moment of spontaneity when I was riding a high from complements on my writing. But I did not plan to tell him about it. I wanted to keep it to myself so that if I failed I would be the only one to know. But I also don’t feel comfortable lying to him. So I said “Actually, I already signed up. But I hadn’t planned to tell you.” He said “Well, there goes that Mother’s Day idea!” Then we talked a bit more about my not wanting to tell him. And that’s when I opened up about the blog series I’ve been writing. I told him that I want people to read what I write, but I have an overpowering fear of rejection. And if he were to reject my writing, that would be even worse. I told him about noticing myself physically shrink when someone complemented me on my writing and he noted that it’s the complete opposite for him. He said that when he gets compliments, it puffs him up and he sits taller. Which should be the case, probably. I mean, isn’t that the point of complements? To give encouragement? The thing is, I crave the complements, but when I get them it means I’m seen and then I’m scared they will figure out I’m a fraud. He promised me he wouldn’t go looking for my blog or ask to read what I write for the Flash Fiction contest unless I want him to. But he said he was proud of me for writing, even if I never share it with him.
Oh my goodness, I published the bedroom post and I’m freaking out. I feel so very exposed in that one. I almost posted it and didn’t publicize anywhere. Then I put the link on IG, but thought about not telling the Social Anxiety Besties FB group. Then I finally posted the link and immediately posted the link to my Mother’s Day post to hopefully distract people from the fact that the bedroom link was there. I don’t think it worked and I’m freaking out. I see that at least 2 people have clicked the link to the bedroom post on FB. Which means they read what I wrote. Or will read it. Or are currently reading it. And I don’t know if I want them to comment or to pretend they didn’t see it. Because I am horrified that people I’ve talked to on Zoom are reading such personal information about me. And now I’m afraid it will influence my ability to show up on Zoom for our weekly meet ups. How can I show my face when I wrote about something so personal?! Are they horrified? Do they think it was too much? Here I go trying to mind read, and of course the only possible reaction I can come up with would be negative. I’m trying to turn around my “what ifs” into something positive, but I can’t even finish the sentence.
***Deep breath and try again.***
What if they like it? What if they can relate? What if they are glad someone wrote what they experience themselves? What if….
But that feels so unlikely. It feels much more likely that they will decide they never want to read anything I wrote again and be embarrassed for me to even show up. I know that probably isn’t true and I’m simply catastrophizing, but I’m panicked here. I should be writing my next room, but instead I keep refreshing the stats page to see if anyone else has read my most vulnerable post. My whole body is tensed up and my breath is shallow. It takes effort to stop and take deep breaths to calm down. Sometimes writing helps, but right now I think it’s keeping me fixated on these what ifs and I really should distract myself in some way. Writing the Yard post should do it, if I can focus.
Well, that was overwhelming. I had so many people in the FB group comment about the bedroom post, saying I’m brave. How can I be brave when I feel so terrified? I guess that’s what bravery is? Doing something even when you are scared. But I also can’t help feeling like them saying “brave” is just a nice way of saying “Wow. You went there?” I also got comments trying to reassure me that romance novels and movies are not realistic for comparison. Which I totally know. And I feel like I have to defend myself and remind people that this is just a post about how anxiety impacts me in the bedroom, not a reflection of what happens every time. I don’t want people to think that I never enjoy sex or that my husband is oblivious (I’m pretty sure he’s not). It’s interesting that this particular post received more interaction than any other in the series.
I’m about to get on a zoom call for an interview for Sadie’s Your Social Anxiety Bestie Podcast. I’m a nervous wreck. I know it will be fine. We’ve talked before and I’m totally comfortable with her. She sent me questions beforehand so I won’t be put on the spot, but I don’t want to write out the answers and then sound canned. I’m trying to just have a vague sense of what I think I should answer and let it just flow naturally. But then I worry that I’ll ramble on and on and be totally boring.
One of the questions is about my blog, particularly the At Home series. Which makes sense, as it’s Social Anxiety related. But thinking about the exposure that it will get and possibly the uptick in traffic to my blog has my anxiety going up in anticipation. I mean, I wrote it so others would see it. But others seeing it gives me anxiety. It’s dumb. I’m trying to keep myself from getting onto zoom too early. I’ve got a million worries going through my head, but I don’t have time to list them all out here. I’m sure it will go fine. It’s just going to be a little chat. That’s all. And Sadie is super nice and supportive, so I have no doubt this will be easy as pie. I hope.
OMG! I feel like an idiot. I got on at 11:00 on the dot because I thought that was what time we had set. But she hadn’t started the zoom, which made me worry. So I pulled up the messages we’d sent and we had changed it to 11:30 when we postponed (she was sick) because I thought I was going to be busy this morning and that got cancelled. Now I’m worried that she saw that I’d tried to get into the meeting at 11:00 and will worry that she got it wrong. I’ve got 26 minutes now to figure out how to NOT worry! Which never, ever works.
I chose to listen to the podcast interview Sadie did with another one of the Bestie members while I waited for the right time to get on zoom. I think that was helpful because it gave me a bit of an idea of what to expect. When we did get on, Sadie mentioned getting a notification that I’d gotten on zoom and worrying that she got the time wrong, which is totally what I was afraid she’d think! But thankfully we were able to have a good socially anxious laugh about it and it even made a small appearance in the interview.
We talked for over an hour. It was really very comfortable and while I could probably ruminate about all the things I should or shouldn’t have said, I’m choosing not to. Because I am happy with how things went. I may have had a few moments of anxiety while we talked, but mostly it was just a comfortable conversation between two friends. And I do feel like we are friends on some level at least. Maybe not actual besties, but we have enough in common that we even talked for awhile after the interview was over. I do tend to go on and on. Sadie said she would trim it down, so hopefully I won’t sound too wordy. But overall, I think it went well. And I’m glad I did it. Because showing up is good therapy too.
Through the course of writing the series, I became more and more aware of how I can never completely escape my anxiety, even in the safety of my own home. I began recognizing where anxiety was impacting not just me, but my family as well. This awareness has led to some interesting conversations with my husband and children. I’m not sure that I’m any better than I was a month ago, but I do think I’m more reflective and can see where cognitive distortions are rearing their ugly heads.
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