Living with Social Anxiety

Today is World Mental Health Day 2015, so today I'm going to be writing a post concerning that issue: my deal with social anxiety.

What's really annoying is that pretty much everyone I come across just thinks I'm shy, which is why I don't talk as much as others. They fail to realise that I'm living with anxiety. Most of these things are overlooked by others because they don't know what living with anxiety is like. I'm not sure how many of you reading this also have anxiety or maybe another mental health illness, but whether you do or don't, please carry on reading as I'm hoping to open your eyes and make you realise that there could be someone who you know (friends, people you go to school with, work collegues, etc) trying to live a normal everyday life like you but feel like their mental illness gets in the way.

I pretend to be confident. I don't want people to think I have anxiety so when I'm with friends, I try and act like the person I want to be to hide my anxiety. I put on a smile to try and hide the fact that inside, I'm freaking the hell out.

They say that playing sport is supposed to help people become more confident. I guess that it sometimes helps me and whenever I'm playing it, my anxiety seems to slip away. But I don't feel I'm as confident as they say I could be on paper.

I hope I'm not the only one who can't ask people simple things; such as asking them to pass the glue. I'll sit there for 5, maybe 10 minutes trying to figure out how to ask them. Some days I just hope and pray that we can take our books home so I can glue in the sheets there; just to save me from asking someone to pass the glue.

If I said that to someone in school, they'd probably laugh at me and say I was being stupid. And I'd agree with them. Because most of the time it feels like I am. But writing this today makes me realise that I'm not stupid. It makes me realise that I'm living with a real-life mental illness and there's nothing that I can do about it to make it go away.

Some people hear the word 'illness' and just presume that you could go to the doctors and get some medicine or something to help cure it. But with mental illnesses you can't. I bet none of these people actually take time out of their day to research mental illnesses and read stories from people who live with them. Because they don't have to live with it. Because they don't know what it's like.

Sometimes my anxiety gets to the point where if my dad tells me that all my family are going to my gran's and that I need to go to, I try and make excuses to get out of it. I sometimes make the excuse that I'd rather to revision or homework than see my family. I reckon that there could be about 15-20 of us in one room (family) and I think that's the thing that freaks me out most. Sometimes I'm too scared to go to my gran's if it's just me and my brothers because I'm scared that some others will be there.

And that's just during the day. At night I often cry myself to sleep because of either something to do with my anxiety that day or if I know I've got to do a presentation the next or even just the fact that I feel like I can't be a normal teenager because I've got anxiety.

I wish I could tell people about my anxiety. Maybe then they'd be able to help me. Or maybe they'd laugh at me because I have anxiety and the fact that it's a mental illness that they probably know nothing about.

I hope that this post might have opened your eyes the slightest in what it's like for someone living with anxiety. Obviously, these are the smaller things I've had to deal with and there are some much bigger but I don't feel like the time is right to write about them. Maybe I will some other day.

If you, like me, also have anxiety or another mental health illness, please don't be afraid to comment below about how you have to deal about it.

Or if you have any worries, please don't be afraid to dm me on twitter @teenagelifebeth and I will try and help you in the best way possible.

Love, Beth xx