My Background

     "Bill, I have a great idea on how to get out of this blog thing that your positive voice has gotten you into. Tell everyone that your identity was stolen and you are just now finding out about this blog and you intend to shut it down" says Bill's negative inner voice. Bill's positive inner voice replies "Shut up and let the man speak for once".

     Before you can really understand the person writing this blog you will need a high level overview of my background. I am who I am today because I was who I was in the past. Well that didn't come out as cleverly philosophical as what it sounded like in my head. By writing about my background I can more effectively relate my life experiences to SAD/SM in future blogs and not have to repeat my background over and over, story after story after story. Future blogs would sound as if I'm repetitiously repeating myself over and over and over, again and again and again if I didn't start with some background information. In conclusion, below is my background information so that I don't have to keep repeating myself over and over and over again and again and again.

     The earlier years of my life look and seem more like shyness than social anxiety. I had many friends and participated in neighborhood softball, football and basketball games. I had no problem going to a friend's house and knocking on the door. I was fairly talkative with my friends. In class however I rarely talked, never volunteered information nor raised my hand to ask or answer questions. My second grade teacher, who was also my brother's second grade teacher a couple of year earlier, told my mom that when Bob was in her class she knew everything that was happening at our house including what days were laundry days. Now with Bill in her class she never hears anything about what happens at our house. As I think back to those early years and knowing now what social anxiety is I can definitively say that I had social anxiety then. It was definitely less intense than it would get a few years later.

     I recall a conversation my dad had with me toward the end of my sixth grade year (I was 12 years old). I had missed several days of school because of illness or I came home early because of illness. My dad sat down with me, he was not at all angry, and he explained that I was missing too much school. He told me that I needed to tough it out when I felt "sick" because if I run away from problems they will only get worse. I know that my parents didn't know or understand what I was going through as I honestly didn't know either. I knew I wasn't sick in the sense that I had a cold or the flu but I knew something different was happening. In looking back I realize now that this was the beginning of the intense anxiety I would begin facing daily starting in another year.

     By the summer of the year I was 13 I didn't want to leave my house. I remember that summer a close friend and neighbor came over to tell me that a neighborhood softball game was starting up. I told him that I didn't want to play (I had played in these games for years). I remember him telling me "you're going to end up losing your friends because you never want to do anything anymore". I don't remember my response but I didn't play. It wasn't because I wanted to lose my friends, I just couldn't face leaving the house right then.

     In the fall of that same year my parents got me involved in competitive swimming at the YMCA. Swimming exposed me to a different social environment. Most of the other swimmers were from other schools. At swim meets I was performing in front of large crowds of people. I loved swimming because in the water there are no social interactions. It was like being in a social situation while at the same time being alone. There was still the anxiety out of the water, on the pool deck and in the locker room. But the water was a temporary escape from the anxiety. Swimming, even more than school, made me face my anxiety because I wanted to be there despite my anxiety.

     Most of what I will be sharing about my experiences with SAD and SM in future blogs start at this point in my life so I won't go into a lot more detail. I had several jobs throughout my teenage and early 20's including caddying, busboy, working on a production line and coaching swimming. I went on to attend college and graduate with a bachelors degree. I got married to my college sweetheart in 1980 and we have one child, a beautiful daughter. I have worked in the information technology industry for 30 years with two different employers.

     For those readers that have SAD and SM I would like to point a few things out about my background because it has a large impact on how I approached these disorders. I grew up at a time when SAD and SM were not yet named. I was considered to be "extremely" shy rather than just shy. I grew up without the internet so I never knew anyone who was like me and consequently felt as if I was the only person in the world that was like me. I had great support from friends and family even though they didn't really understand me any more than I did. I made it through my life with SAD and SM through trial and error as it wasn't until about ten years ago that I first heard of SAD and two years ago before I heard about SM. For the first time in over three decades I finally started to understand myself.

Peace,

Bill