Hi everyone! Welcome or welcome back to The Teen Safe Zone, where it's safe for teens to be themselves! In today's post, we will be discussing having social anxiety as a teenager. Social anxiety is a very hard thing to live with, especially having it in your most crucial years of your life as a teenager.
I feel that Gen Z teens are dealing with more social anxiety than any other teens in previous generations because: 1. We are so used to interacting through text messages or social media and not face-to-face interactions like previous generations. 2. Due to a global pandemic, we kind of grew up in a time and age where being distant from people is our new normal. Being forced to do online school from home and not have any more interactions with your classmates is tough. Now that things are slowly going back to "normal", we're having a hard time interacting again. In today's post, I will be sharing my story of what it's like to have social anxiety as a teenager.
My Struggles With Social Anxiety:
I would say that I was always a "shy" person, but never has it been as extreme as it is now in 2022. Unlike many people my age, I started online school in 2018 long before the pandemic happened for many reasons, and I don't regret it. However, I will admit that being home more often and not having an option to physically talk to my classmates outside of our 50 minute session per class has taken a toll on how comfortable I am interacting with people.
My social anxiety was not a "slow" process like some people's; instead, it took me about 3 1/2 years of being in an online school to notice that I wasn't as comfortable around people as I used to be. And when I noticed it, it hit me like a truck. I suddenly started panicking when I was in large crowds of people, and that's not something I typically did. Usually, I would walk past and avoid eye contact with people, but now I literally can feel my entire body shaking out of control when I'm around a lot of people. The feeling started becoming so uncomfortable, that I sometimes get scared of leaving the house and wonder if I'll "have that feeling" today.
I thought that it was something silly that only I struggled with, but a few days ago I was texting my friend, and I realized that I wasn't the only person dealing with this. We explained it to each other as losing your "social battery". Some days you come out of your home with a full "meter," then somewhere down the line you suddenly become exhausted and eager to go back home.
How It Affects My Life:
Having social anxiety has definitely taken a toll on how I view life, and not in a good way. Just last year, I used to be so eager to leave home and go on a road trip, but now I'm already premeditating how I'm going to survive it and all of the one million bad things that can possibly happen along the way. My "social battery" can sometimes last up to around 3–4 hours, but sometimes it can be as little as 30 minutes.
It's crazy to think that I was so much more confident in large crowds of people as a pre-teen than as a teenager (which should be completely backwards in my opinion lol). I really want to work on being comfortable around a lot of people again, but I don't exactly know where to start, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments.
Having social anxiety as a teen makes me feel like I'm not able to "live life" because it causes me to bail out on things before I even get the chance to start. For example, as mentioned before, I love road trips, but now I'm low-key terrified of them because of the thought of being so far away from home. It scares me even more to think that eventually there will be a day where I have no choice in the matter of doing a road trip sometime in my life (like a road trip to college in a few years). I understand that these are my "golden" years of life, but it seems like I'm just wasting them because I don't go out to live that "experience". Comment down below if any of you have similar experiences.
Well, I hope you all enjoyed today's post! If you want to contact me about anything, please visit the "Contact Us" page on this blog where we can privately talk! NEW POSTS EVERY SUNDAY! - Lexi
WANT MORE ADVICE?
I can totally relate to everything in today's post! It's crazy to think that so many other people deal with this and it's not just a "me thing" you know? It's so weird having a "switch" from being completely fine around large crowds of people, to just one day you're not. It's so scary because it's something you don't really have control over. Just like you said "I wonder if today I'm going to have "that feeling again". We shouldn't have to live our lives like this 😩
I love how transparent you are on this blog!
Hope you all enjoyed today's post! Comment down below if you have any similar experiences.