Struggles to Human

Let's talk plainly about social anxiety.

Personally, I find it frustrating.
Yes, also debilitating at times, but frustrating.

For me, I gt so angry with social anxiety because social anxiety feels selfish to me.
There's an event, usually very casual, that's designed to be fun and easy and you, because you just can't handle it and just can't help it, make it about you.

At the same time, I recognize that it isn't something that I can think myself out of, though I have indeed tried.

There have been some methods of coping that I have learned and have imparted to other of my socially anxious friends. Things such as going to check out that restaurant/school/baseball field/shopping mall before you have to go there with a friend or date.
Things like searching on the internet for a campus map if you're visiting a university friend or a museum or a hospital.
Knowing the name of the person you're dropping by to see: "Hi! I'm here to drop off materials for Angie Smith".
Doing anything to get acclimated to the new surrounding.

For me, a lot of my social anxiety is over-stimulation.
I can handle brand new location if I'm with someone I'm very comfortable with.
Or, I can handle a brand new person if I'm in a location I'm comfortable in.
I can even handle brand new location with brand new people so long as I have one solid person I know.

It's when everything is new, everything is unstructured, everyone is new that my ears drown and I can't hear what anyone is saying to me and I can't differentiate shapes and shadows and my heart starts racing and my nails start sinking into my palms and I have missed that gap in time where I can recover and cope and have disappeared into the dark place where I need to run away and cry and find solitude and silence.

It's embarrassing. It's selfish. And yet, at the same time, it isn't intentional even a bit, which is a key aspect of selfishness I think. More than anything, we'd like to feel like we were a part of the wallpaper, able to observe without the pressure of engagement. Able to exist without being noticed too much but still kind of noticed. Noticed enough.

It's a struggle I sometimes feel I've learned to manage.
And it's a struggle that still knocks me completely flat and bepuddled when it isn't on my radar to prepare for.