I was talking to someone a few months ago who I didn’t know super well.
As we talked, I felt like my lung channels were narrowing, making it harder to breathe.
I was hyperfocused on what they were saying but surely missing important non-verbal details.
It felt like there was a heavy ball in my stomach pulling me down into the earth, where I could disappear and honestly just….rest for a thousand years.
I felt like everything I was saying was fucking stupid and every movement I made was being watched carefully for any signs that I was an imposter. I had to be careful. Very careful.
Ah yes, good ol’ social anxiety.
I always wondered why in some social situations I had no problem at all – felt totally at ease, happy, excited to be there – having interesting conversations with new people who felt like friends in no time. And why other times I felt like I was going to shit my pants and die.
I realized, for a teeny tiny moment, in that conversation with that human I
mentioned above, that there was a program running in the deeeeeeep recesses of my mind, causing the constriction. I heard a voice: “you are stupid” “what are you doing” “no one likes you.”
This voice (that I’m usually unaware of because again….it’s so DEEP!) was literally sending me into a sympathetic nervous system response (fight/flight/freeze/fawn). The hypervigilance, hyperfocus but unaware of important non-verbal details, the sweating, heart racing, frozen-ness. The inability to remember what my favorite book is or a good show I’ve been watching recently. This is a typical stress reaction – the same kind we humans get if we are being chased by a lion.
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