It's pretty late at night but I just
had the urge to get this down. It was the first day back at university today and while I'm happy that this means I'm another
step closer towards finishing my degree, it's also hard to ignore
that my good ol' mate, Mr Anxiety, is popping his big fat unwelcome
head up to say “hello”. I'm sure many of you out there who have
attempted uni degrees know this feeling and have experienced the
anxiety in some shape or form... the soon-to-be looming deadlines and
new classmates and awkward introduction sessions and getting lost
trying to find classrooms and thinking back to the stresses you felt
last semester while knowing that you're going to be feeling them all
over again. I think that's the worst part... waiting for the ball to
start rolling.
Last night I was reading through the
Course Guides for each of my classes and I started feeling extremely
nauseous.. now this, I'm not sure is “normal”. I had to put on an
old episode of Masterchef just to get my mind off things (not my
proudest moment, but it worked). For me, personally, the concern
comes not from the assignments or the workload, all that stuff is
stressful but I know I can cope with it. What really gets my heart
thumping is when I learn that I am required to partake in a class
presentation. I suffer from a fear of public speaking as a symptom of my social anxiety, and knowing
that I have a presentation coming up, even months away, will make me
sweat and panic. Whenever I think about it I can quite literally feel
my heart start to pound in my chest. And so then I immediately start thinking of
ways to get out of it – maybe I can put this subject off for one
more semester, maybe I can pull a sicky on the day of presentation,
maybe I can get a doctor's certificate to say that I cannot do
presentations for medical reasons (desperate times, people). These
thoughts, at their worst, sometimes even lead me to conclude that I
should just drop the university degree all together. They're my
lowest moments.
I usually manage to talk myself out of
these states of panic. I reason with myself that the amount of time
that I have to spend making these presentations will amount to about
an hour of my total life. While those minutes will be terrifying,
they will pass. I also tell myself “just don't care what other
people think”... “life is short”... “conquer your fears” etc
etc. These rationalisations work.. temporarily.. sometimes.. but their
effects seem to be short-term.
One of the most frustrating things for
me is not knowing how to communicate these feelings. I think that for
anyone who doesn't suffer from these forms of anxiety, these concerns can come off as sounding a bit petty or immature. I've tried
to talk to George about it, for instance, but as is to be expected
from someone who hasn't experienced social anxiety, he doesn't quite
understand. “The presentation will come and go”, he says. And he is right. But
that doesn't help my immediate feeling of anxiety. I'm dreading THAT
moment that hasn't gone yet. It is still looming. Sometimes I've
tried reading online forums from other people who suffer this phobia,
thinking that at least these people will understand, but these forums
just usually work to make my anxiety worse – almost like it's
putting new ideas into my head and establishing additional reasons or
justifications to be fearful.
My brother also suffers from social
anxiety, and I have taken comfort in knowing that he knows how I
feel. It acts as a reminder that there isn't something wrong with me
per se, and that I'm not crazy or immature or losing my mind. It
helps me realise that, like all forms of anxiety, this has something
to do (a lot to do) with the way I am wired. I am a very introverted
person (that probably goes without saying at this point). I'm a
perfectionist. I'm extremely hard on myself. I'm also quite an
observant person, in that I spend too much time analysing people and
too much time thinking about what other people are thinking. And I
care too much about what other people are thinking. While I think
this makes me quite an empathetic person, I also think it makes me
quite a paranoid person. So when I'm standing up in front of a group
of people, all these factors combine to create something that is
completely overwhelming. I'm not concentrating on what I'm saying.
Rather, I'm thinking about the fact that there are 40 people in this
room and everyone is looking at me and I have no idea what they're
thinking. That absolutely frightens me.
So what is to become of this semester?
Well, I'm not too sure. But I'm going to give it my best shot.No
medical certificates and no missing class. If I'm ever going to be
desensitised to this fear, I need to keep confronting it. And I hope,
if any readers out there have experienced something similar to this,
you know that you are not alone.
