I am 39 years old and have dealt with social anxiety for about 20 years now. I also have a mild tic disorder and that makes me even more self conscious in public. I would love to find some people who are also dealing with this so we could get together and hang out and maybe go out sometime and support each other in getting over this crap!!! I am so sick of having no friends and not going out and just being too afraid to go anywhere.

The thing that annoys and frustrates me is that I deal with people ok one to one but when it is more than that or a group situation my mouth seems to dry up and my head goes into shutdown mode. I then just want the ground to open up or to find the nearest exit or escape route.

VT

I have learned (with great difficulty) over the many years certain tactics to help me overcome it... or at least temporarily reduce negative symptoms of this phobia, such as loneliness and depression.

Rule #1: I make it a point and a habit to not get ---- up on any one issue or person for too long... especially if they are, well... "hanging me up". Lol.

Rule #2: I focus on what I CAN do at the moment (not what I am unable to do) as much as possible, even if that just means browsing through countless profiles of other people and "hugging" "smooching" or messaging them just so I can say to myself: "well, at least I could be brightening up someone else's day with this." Personally., that really makes me feel better the more I do that.

Rule #3: (this has been MOST difficult for me to apply) I really really try not to hold grudges. I have learned from extremely painful personal experience that it only makes everything that is wrong 100 times worse. I say to myself: "they are human too, they have their own issues that they deal with in their own way, that's all it is".

Rule #4: I have always been good at this and I use it to better my overall understanding of people and the universe as much as I can, whenever I can: listen, observe, take mental notes, and leave those notes "on the shelf" in the back of your mind for future analysis. (analysis only once you have a clearly peaceful and balanced mind, and some time to spare... I always make sure I have plenty of time to spare, because a lot of that "free time" can and does end up being spent doing all the wrong things: worrying, stressing out, being sad, angry, etc... hence all the problems in the world, lol)

Hope this helps! I'm probably forgetting a whole bunch of other possible "rules"... lol, but I guess I'll just mention more later if and when they come to me. :)

Why is it so hard?

forget trying to meet a girl, i can't even handle being around my own family. I just ran from my niece's graduation party.. too many people, most of them i know and love, others that i haven't seen in 10 years and have missed- didn't matter. all that did matter was that i had to get out of there.

What's it going to be like in another 20+ years? After all my older relations have passed on.. i haven't really made any solid relationships with my younger relatives, my nieces and nephews.

I'm going to be a lonely old man.

Just joined a few days ago.While searching,most of the Members don't seem to have logged on for 3 months or more.Anyone out their? :?:

The social phobia ( Eye Phobia ) needs your help.

I'm a Chinese boy born in 1983, no friends, no one understand me!
In the year of 2000, I was suffering from a kind of mental problem called social phobia. Maybe to me we can call it eye phobia.
I dodn't know why. I can't control my eye. I can't focus my eye before persons. I can't see a person normally especially before

girls. So they may misunderstand me. Then I searched from net and learnt I'm suffering from kind of mental problem-- Social phobia.

Eye phobia is a kind of social phobia.
In 2002 I graduated form a college and started finding job. Can you belive what I came across? All the officers said:No! You're not

suit for our position. Everyone thought me as a thief because I couldn't stop looking their pokes in fact I did not wish to look.

I really cried in the job market.
I went to the interview again and again, and failed again and again. I dodn't know what to do. Even my father looked down up on me.

I still remember he said to mewhat can you do!!!!But they really dodn't understand me. You know I want to earn money too.
Then I studied website making.I wish I can earn money from net. It dosn't need work face to face, and can make money. But I can't

ignore the fact that there's few people in my site.
Mental Health Forum ( www.jioulang.cn ) is made by me. I really hope more and more people to go to my site and post the articles

about mental. Please help me! My site is (removed). It's the kind of site about Mental Health.
Welcome any one to copy this posts to other website.
Thanks very much.

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I dont know wheather this is the right forum to put this topic but here goes.
I am a very lonely quiet man late 40s. Who would be interested in making frindships in my area cheshire with non smoking members. I have tried the chat rooms but i cant seem to make conversation. If any member from the cheshire area gets intouch i will always reply

I often ponder on why words could be so hard to say, like each and every word spoken is somekind of matter of life and death. I am not sure if at one time I was just shy, or if back than it was just the beginning of what has grown beyond just being shy but now a fear to socialize. I am not sure even how to label it, some call it shyness, some call it a mental disorder, some call it anxiety, some call it social phobia, some call it a chemical imbalance, and some call it - well let's just say I heard worse. But heck to be honest I really don't care how I am labelled, which sounds kinda contradicting being that I don't care what words people use to label me, yet at the same time it's words that I struggle to put a voice to and I don't even know the reason of my own fear of it all. Ah, well just words. :wink: