I Suck At Updating My Social Anxiety Blog!

Hey guys.. as always, I'm sorry that I suck so bad at keeping this blog updated. I really really will try harder from now on. Whenever I've thought about updating the blog I've always been put off as I couldn't really see what benefits it had. I think my problem was that as I run quite a few websites with the aim of making money, I had plans to do the same on this site too - it just seems to be a natural thing to do with a blog in my eyes. But I realise that it shouldn't be about money when it comes to social anxiety disorder. I should be using this blog solely as a place to vent my feelings and to try and help out other anxiety sufferers, so this is really what I need to start doing from now on.

So its been about 9 months since my last post here... its been quite a busy time and generally with me thats a very good thing. I've discovered that whenever I have too much time on my hands, or am by myself for long periods, basically whenever I'm bored and such, I seem to always feel down and depressed. I find by keeping active and keeping busy this is the best way to stop myself from feeling depressed, and even with regards to some of the social anxiety if I don't have time to stop and think about things then all the better - I just get ahead and do them without worrying. Its when I have the time to worry and listen to the thoughts in my head that I start to over-think things and then feel anxious.

In the time since my last post on the blog I've managed to complete my first year of college - which I managed around mid July, and I later found out that I passed my first year which I was really pleased about. I had to take a few exams and I've never been keen on revising but I actually enjoyed a lot of it this time around, and still passed without doing loads of revision - definitely a plus! The revision and exams were all tough but it actually felt like I'd learned more in those 2 or 3 weeks then I'd learned in the whole year of college... I don't know if thats a good or bad thing, I know I enjoyed it, but I think I need to apply myself a lot more next year if I want to get a good grade. Its just a 2 year course after all, so I'm going to try my best to knuckle down. I need to sort myself out an agenda so I can balance my work and my study, with an emphasis on the study.

When college finished I was left with a gap from mid June up until around the 20th of September - about a 3 month gap, which caused a bit of a dilema as I pretty much had nothing at all planned for summer, and really didn't fancy the prospect of just hanging around for that whole time - I was going to get so bored, and therefore so depressed and fed up! Luckily my housemate was in the same situation as me, and we're both really good mates with similar interests and so we decided to take massive risks (well, massive in terms for us), and do a bit of travelling. So we ended up spending nearly 2 months in places around the mediterranean and had an amazing time! It was definitely one of the best things I've ever done, and at one place we went to we did some volunteering at a camp and met so many amazing people from all over the world - one of the best things about being away. I was still shy and awkward at times but I still loved it all and have definitely got the travel bug so will be looking at doing this again, maybe after I've finished college! I think this may be worthy of a blog post in itself so I'll consider writing up a bit about my travels in more detail later on...

Another Update To The Blog - April Onwards...

In my previous post on the blog I mentioned what I had been upto for the past year, or since posting on the blog, and I went up to April of 2010. I mentioned getting in trouble and receiving a curfew, which took up quite a chunk of time and was quite a negative thing that happened to me, although to be honest it didn't really affect me that much - I had an excuse not to go out so much, but I was still able to get on with things during the day and to carry on as usual. It was a bit stressful if I was out and I would be worried about getting home in time, and it also became a bit of a nuisance because of some of the plans I had made - I decided that I wanted to go to university to study something.

I'm not entirely sure why I wanted to get back into education... I'm 23 and most people went to university straight after sixth form, but back then I didn't feel like I wanted to down that route. It felt a lot like everyone was just going through the motions - they got told to go to school, to stay on at sixth form, and then to go off to university. I didn't really feel motivated to learn back then, hence getting a job then getting laid off then becoming self employed. I was self employed, and still am, making money from a network of websites that I created from scratch. But after about 2 years or doing this I started to get a bit bored, and I felt that I did want to learn things again, to meet new people and mainly to challenge myself. I was quite interested in conservation, and I've always liked most things related to the sea, so a marine conservation course was what had interested me.

So I started university in September and so far things are going well, but I do feel like its a bit of a struggle at times too. This is probably why I've come back to the blog to update it recently, as a way of venting my feelings in a way which (at least in my eyes) is more productive then just writing them down on paper for no-one else to see them. The content isn't too much of a struggle, well it is slightly as I've never done very well in Science related subjects at school and some of my modules can be quite involved, but mainly I feel a bit like I struggle with the social side of university. As I'm writing this my housemates are out drinking in town, and although I didn't go simply because of my anxiety, I feel a bit relieved at not having to go, which is annoying because I don't want to feel this way. I want to feel upset that I've not gone out, I really crave the enthusiasm that so many people on my course show when they talk about going out partying.

Anyway, think I've digressed again. Since the curfew ended in April, and up into university started in September, I don't think I was up to too much. I was carrying on working on my own websites, occasionally seeing friends, playing football, and so on. When I was on the curfew I tried giving some new things a go, I ended up going on an introductory sea kayaking course which I really enjoyed (kayaking is definitely something I want to get into) and this was quite awkward to do as my electronic tag wasn't allowed to get in contact with sea water as it can corrode it (was told I would be breaking the law if I did this) but I did it and it was fine as it didn't end up getting wet. I also went on an introduction to bee-keeping course which was interesting, but a bit boring and I felt a bit awkward as I was by far the youngest person there and didn't really feel comfortable going up to older strangers to make small talk. I don't really think I did too much else before starting university, I guess I was just quite busy preparing to move and so on.

The curfew was also annoying because when it came to the university open days, the curfew wouldn't allow me to go because as they were quite far away I wouldn't be able to travel there and back in time - so I ended up having to have about 2 other seperate court hearings (specifically just for me) to allow me to have special permission to break my curfew by attending these open days. Again, I really think this was pretty pointless and a waste of the courts time/my time. Sometimes I had to wait hours to get into court (if it was on a Monday apparently there are lots of arrests during the weekend which get pushed in ahead of me) and I would only in court for a minute or 2. I also had to travel to the court to get a form to fill in in order for them to review my request to break the curfew, which meant having to travel there etc. This may sound a bit moany, especially considering I did break the law, but just feel the whole system is a bit rubbish. Other people on curfew may have been put off even applying for university and attending these open days when they are aware of the amount of extra effort they had to put in to allow them to break the curfew.

Anyways, apologies again if I have sidetracked a fair bit in this post. Just trying to cram in as much info for the past few months as possible, hope it wasn't too boring! As I've updated the gaps for the past few months I'll now be able to add more social anxiety relevent posts, which will be shorter and more to the point (hopefully!). Thanks for reading :)

Social Anxiety Disorder Blog - Update

Sorry about the poor blog title, not really in a very intelligent mood and am unable to think what to write about really, so this is just an update for the past few days. Apologies again for the lack of activity on the blog too, I guess the blog could be suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder too ;)

The reason I’ve not really posted much is simply that I’ve been a bit busy. Either with football, work, and seeing my girlfriend :) Have spent quite a few evenings with her and I usually only update the blog in the evening so its hard to find time to post. I find it hard updating the blog during the day because I find it hard to get in the right mood to post – at night time I can just go on my laptop in bed and am in a more comfortable and relaxed setting.

I don’t really have too much else to report, Social Anxiety related anyway. It was my birthday a few days ago and I didn’t really do anything to celebrate, don’t see why I should bother going out with my friends because I never go out with them so I don’t see why it should make a difference just because its my birthday.

I’ve been out places a few times recently but nothing major, most the time when I see my girlfriend she comes here which is fine by me and she’s fine with it too but hopefully I’ll be able to go more places with her now, and I’ll have some motivation to actually go somewhere – I might drive to meet her somewhere when usually I wouldn’t have had a reason to go to that place, or anyplace either, and so I probably wouldn’t have bothered/would have been scared to.

Will hopefully start posting more often and some more interesting news on the blog soon!

Me and my social anxiety blog

Thanks for taking a look at my blog, hopefully you will find it interesting or helpful, maybe at times entertaining although I doubt it :-p

I’ll try and explain a bit about me and my social anxiety disorder, and the reason that I’ve set up this blog.

I was watching a TV program on BBC1 called Horizon – How Mad Are You? It was basically a kind of “big-brother” but with some people who have a mental illness and some “normal” people. The people in the TV show would have to perform tasks, and there would be 3 experienced psychologists who would watch the footage and try and decide which ones showed signs of mental illness and which ones seemed to not show any signs of being mentally ill.

Anyway in one of these tasks the people had to one-at-a-time stand up in front of a small group of strangers in a pub and perform stand-up comedy for about 10 minutes. It was said that this task was to establish if any of the people showed signs of social anxiety disorder. The people that had SAD might show signs of extreme nervousness and might really dread the performance. I kind of knew that it was very likely that this was something I had, after they went into a bit more detail about social anxiety disorder (disliking talking in front of people, feeling very self-conscious, etc).

I went on to a few websites to do a little research and found some interesting and useful sites, one of which is a forum which many people who suffer from SAD currently use. It’s really nice to be able to talk to people who suffer from the same thing, and its quite re-assuring to hear stories of other people who have social anxiety disorder. It makes me feel less silly, if that makes sense. The forum can be located here: Social Anxiety Discussion

I decided that it might be good for me to create a blog about my dealings with social anxiety disorder, and just generally about my life. Not because I think of myself as an interesting or glamour-seeking person, but I just feel that it might help to keep a kind of diary and it might be helpful to fellow SAD sufferers :)