“In public places, such as work, meetings, or shopping, people with social anxiety feel that everyone is watching, staring, and judging them (even though rationally they know this isn't true). The socially anxious person can't relax, "take it easy", and enjoy themselves in public. In fact, they can never fully relax when other people are around. It always feels like others are evaluating them, being critical of them, or "judging" them in some way. The person with social anxiety knows that people don't do this openly, of course, but they still feel the self-consciousness and judgment while they are in the other person's presence. It's sometimes impossible to let go, relax, and focus on anything else except the anxiety and fear. Because the anxiety is so very painful, it's much easier just to stay away from social situations and avoid other people altogether.”
---Thomas A. Richards, Ph.D., Psychologist
Sunday February 24, 2002 was one of the most exhilarating days of my life. That day, while attending church with my family, was the first time in my life that I did not feel intense anxiety while in public. Everything looked the same but I felt so different that I wondered whether or not I was in an episode of the “Twilight Zone”. Luckily the priest did not look or sound like Rod Serling or I would have freaked out.
About eight weeks prior to February 24th I started taking Paxil to control the anxiety. I wasn’t sure after so many years of living with the anxiety whether it was really that bad anymore or I had just grown accustom to it. The Paxil was making me very sleepy throughout the day so my doctor and I decided to switch to another medication. I had to be weaned from the Paxil so I started taking half the dose. On February 24th the tiredness wasn’t too bad and I felt alert but I still had enough Paxil built up in my system that I didn’t have the intense anxiety.
After mass I told my wife that I just had one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. She said that the homily was good but she didn’t think it was exhilarating. So I went on to explain to her what Social Anxiety is like in a way I never could before. Using my own words I basically told her everything that is expressed in the quotation above. My wife, wanting to make sure she understood, gave me an analogy. When she first started teaching she was very self-conscious about things like her teaching style being well received, could she answer questions without stumbling, would she look awkward or make a fool of herself. She said that she read her lecture notes rather than using them as a guideline. She didn’t make eye contact while lecturing because she felt like she needed to read the lecture notes. She said that after a few days of lecturing her anxiety turned to nervousness which gradually got better with time. And then she said something I will never forget. She said “But for you every day of your life is like that first day of class”.
“Oh boo hoo, get me a tissue because my "wifey" understands me now. What is this drivel? Listen to yourself; you are making yourself look like a FOOL. This is what happens when you start listening to that annoying positive voice of yours” says the ever obnoxious negative voice.
“I’m sorry; did you say something negative voice? All I heard was “drivel” coming out of you” replies Bill’s actual voice.
Bill’s inner positive voice immediately responds with “Up top dude, that was an awesome comeback!”
A slightly paranoid Bill begins to think “I wonder if I have a new mental problem developing, the voices inside my head are calling me dude and want me to high five them.”
“Help” whispers Bill’s Selective Mutism voice.
From my perspective Selective Mutism did more to destroy my self-esteem than the anxiety did. I could manage to attend school, participate and even co-captain the swim team, go out with friends and even have small conversations with some of my friends. I was usually silent when it came to being with a group of people or participating in discussions in class. Despite the intense anxiety, being so quiet at those times didn’t bother me nearly as much as the Selective Mutism. For me my mutism kicked in whenever I wanted to initiate a conversation. I could respond to someone when directly engaged in a conversation. Granted, I answered in short sentences or a word or two, didn’t make eye contact and barely answered louder than a discernable mumble. The “Definitions” tab on the home blog page (under the title and description section) provides a little more detailed information. The excerpt below helps to describe what Selective Mutism is like.
“Children and adults with selective mutism are fully capable of speech and understanding language but fail to speak in certain situations, though speech is expected of them. The behavior may be perceived as shyness or rudeness by others. A child with selective mutism may be completely silent at school for years but speak quite freely or even excessively at home. There is a hierarchical variation among those suffering from this disorder: some people participate fully in activities and appear social but don't speak, others will speak only to peers but not to adults, others will speak to adults when asked questions requiring short answers but never to peers, and still others speak to no one and participate in few, if any, activities presented to them.”
--- Wikipedia, “Selective mutism” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_mutism)
The term “selective” may be a little misleading. A person does not select when they will be mute, they have no control of when their mutism will kick in. Think of it as being situational mutism. The situation controls the mutism rather than the person. The “situation” for me was initiating conversation, including asking or answering questions in class. I don’t recall ever asking a question of a teacher in class. If I ever had a question I asked the teacher one on one when the opportunity presented itself.
One day in trigonometry class in high school, before the class started, a couple of friends of mine were talking about a homework problem that they didn’t know how to solve. One of them finally asked me if I knew how to solve it. I showed him how to solve the problem but I didn’t realize that the teacher was watching us. When the teacher reviewed the homework and asked if anyone figured out how to solve this particular problem, I sat silent. My friend, after giving me a sufficient amount of time to answer, raised his hand and answered the question. As I was walking out of class the teacher stopped me and said “you need to have more confidence in yourself because you are very smart”. Confidence wasn’t the problem though. I knew that I figured out how to solve the problem, I knew that I had the right answer. I also know now that had she called on me to answer the question I would have done so. The difference was whether I brought the attention of the class onto myself or whether the teacher brought the attention of the class onto me. My mutism would not allow me to put myself at the center of attention.
I’ll mention one more thing about SM before I let you go. In future blogs I will add life experiences to emphasize what I am about to say. At the beginning of the SM discussion above, I mentioned that SM destroyed my self-esteem. I had never heard of SM until two years ago. I knew while growing up that I was capable of speaking. But at those points in time in my life when I had something I wanted to say and all I had to do was move those words from my brain to my mouth and I literally could not do that, it devastated me. How could I not speak when I knew that I knew how to speak? It was at those times that I listened to my negative voice and I sometimes wondered “was life really worth all of this pain?”. The answer was always “yes” but it sometimes took a while to get to that answer.
Peace,
Bill
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