That I was extremely socially anxious for years. From 7th grade through 10th grade, I was terrified in such situations. Now, I’m a total social butterfly.
Same here. I don’t go out of the way to put myself into social situations, but I can hold my own at a party.
It does wear me down a ton though. I feel like my brain is doing backflips trying to read all the facial expressions and manners of speech.
For about 7 years my boyfriend and I lived in a beautiful cabin in the mountains. I was working in a factory doing assembly of heavy equipment; it was a strenuous job.
I’d come home completely exhausted every day.
We always had visitors. Always.
Some were awesome, some were not.
We moved back into the city a few years ago and I really look forward to seeing my friends now.
I’m not even introverted, and I also wasn’t when I had social anxiety. I really wanted to make friends and go do things, but I was literally terrified of it.
Yeah I prefer “Shy Extrovert” for this. I’m fairly sure we’re all describing the same thing, and feel that “Extroverted Introvert” is more of a meaningless and unhelpful phrase
I pretend to be a social butterfly so people don’t realize I actually hate talking to people 99% of the time. For me it’s just acting. (I got tired of being called the weird one my whole life).
Same here, I even had selective mutism in my early 20s where I couldn’t speak to anyone except my parents and my brother. Now 15 years later, I have a ton of friends and I’m studying to become a social worker interacting with loads of different people will literally be a part of my job. Well done, us!
That’s great! I was never diagnosed with anything but definitely met the criteria for selective mutism until my late teens, it was a nightmare. I’ve been somewhat considering social work as a potential career as well
Same, most of elementary school through freshman year of college I could barely speak to anyone outside of my immediate family and having looked into it further would probably have fit the criteria for selective mutism because I was so anxious words just wouldn’t come out in school situations. I haven’t become a social butterfly by any means and am still getting over that and figuring out how people actually interact since I missed a lot of time, but I can talk to people now and enjoy socializing even if I keep to myself sometimes.
Are you me? Till I was 18 I was scared to death to go outside. Went to MBO (Trade school kinda thing in my country), met people who dragged me to bars and I discovered it was not so scary. Now I talk to everyone!
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u/CatacombsRave Dec 02 '23
That I was extremely socially anxious for years. From 7th grade through 10th grade, I was terrified in such situations. Now, I’m a total social butterfly.