Inside the Mind of the Socially Anxious
Feb. 27th, 2008 10:11 amSometimes, I look at my journal, and I feel like it's pretty content-light. A lot of my friends post about things going on in their life, providing interesting observations and insights. Meanwhile, I tend to post infrequently at best, and a good number of those tend to either be memes or little blurbs about something I've noticed. I don't open up about myself very often, and I don't tend to talk with any sort of authority about topics of interest to me.
There's two reasons for this. The first, and more easily dealt-with, is that I suffer from Shiny Object Quick Movement Syndrome, something that I just made up. While not as crippling as real disorders like ADHD, SOQMS (pronounced sok-əms, like the robots) means I get easily distracted and constantly craving new kinds of input. It's why I'm a trivia whore, and why I have a stack of unfinished video games, and why I haven't yet renewed my WoW account (besides the threat of death by![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_z ). Fortunately, there's a simple solution - sit my ass down and focus on fewer things at once. It can be done, and sometimes the best treatment is to just revisit something after a couple of weeks and see if it still holds interest.
The second, and more insidious, reason is that I have some form of social anxiety. I'm hesitant to actually define it as any official doctor-diagnosed anxiety issue, because I don't think it's as paralyzing as that. Mine's more mild, as most of the time, it's a non-issue. When it does pop up, though, it's maddening. It becomes an obstacle to work against, and more often than not my response is to retreat from that obstacle. In fact, just writing this is a challenge; there's part of me that's screaming, "Turn back! Turn back!" from the corners of my mind. It's also not one simple issue, but rather one composed of multiple components and layers, and some of those components are deeply ingrained into my psyche.
There's two reasons for this. The first, and more easily dealt-with, is that I suffer from Shiny Object Quick Movement Syndrome, something that I just made up. While not as crippling as real disorders like ADHD, SOQMS (pronounced sok-əms, like the robots) means I get easily distracted and constantly craving new kinds of input. It's why I'm a trivia whore, and why I have a stack of unfinished video games, and why I haven't yet renewed my WoW account (besides the threat of death by
the_z ). Fortunately, there's a simple solution - sit my ass down and focus on fewer things at once. It can be done, and sometimes the best treatment is to just revisit something after a couple of weeks and see if it still holds interest.The second, and more insidious, reason is that I have some form of social anxiety. I'm hesitant to actually define it as any official doctor-diagnosed anxiety issue, because I don't think it's as paralyzing as that. Mine's more mild, as most of the time, it's a non-issue. When it does pop up, though, it's maddening. It becomes an obstacle to work against, and more often than not my response is to retreat from that obstacle. In fact, just writing this is a challenge; there's part of me that's screaming, "Turn back! Turn back!" from the corners of my mind. It's also not one simple issue, but rather one composed of multiple components and layers, and some of those components are deeply ingrained into my psyche.
