(MIND) My life with social phobia......

What i am about to write contains some vivid recollections of some unpleasant, personal things from my past that I rather not relive at all. But social phobia is the third most serious mental condition in the world and it has similar effects on people's lives around the world. It knows not colors or creeds. In US e.g., there are support groups and access to latest medication or therapy. However resources are limited locally. My efforts will be worthwhile if i can help elevate at least one person from unnecessary pain which it did me. Understanding something is always a good, first step...

There was a lot bitterness down this road for me. Life time frustrations, heartaches, mistakes, personal tragedies, blame, anger and a seemingly futile 20 year old fight against this disease called social phobia. I told myself I would only write about it once I came out of it. But then I was thinking, I did come a long way. No lifetime experiences ever goes to waste. I did learn something. I learnt life goes on with all its ups and downs for everyone. I learnt I wasn’t the only one suffering. Everyone has their own problems, even worse than you can imagine. Its how you deal with it that makes the difference. I learnt there is one thing I’m grateful after all these years, all this life lessons have helped me cope with life better. Though I did not get what I wanted, I did get some things I needed. Like how one of my dearest uncles wisely observed, people going through personal traumas compensate themselves in one way or another. Like how a blind person who learns to hear better than everyone else… I guess my limitations in connecting with the outside world had enabled me to be a better observer and made my writings to speak for me better.

My battle with social phobia goes back nearly 20 years. I like to explain it a little. Some people confuse it with stage fright and the normal nervousness you feel in environment you are not comfortable with. It is more than that. It is a fear, an uncontrollable fear of meeting people that is not normal and that works on a self-triggers and autopilots. On your worst days, you can’t even face your own family. Somewhere in your life, you had allowed your survival instincts- the fight and flight reaction- go on overdrive. And it stays that way whenever you even feel the slightest bit ‘threatened’ in your own ‘fear barometer’. A person with social phobia cannot respond to calls 'to snap out of it’ or ‘just forget it!'. Because if they can, wouldn’t they….do’h!! Come on.. this thing messes with your life, your relationships, your career, your family…and its there every single second of your conscious life and you think you don’t want to grab it by the throat and hammer it on its head if you can!!

I used to feel so frustrated when people tell me it’s nothing and that I should take some deep breaths (which actually worsens it for me) or imagine the people in front of me were vegetables (I mean, come on), imagine talking to your boss and imagining he is cabbage and this guy's is paying your salary! It is more than a delicate maneuver around the mysterious mind mechanism. Actually the greatest help you can offer is some empathy and also acknowledging that the problem is real, can help the sufferer a great deal. If you really want to help, try researching it on the net to better understand it because it is rather complicated. And also social phobics often appear aloof, arrogant and their responds and reactions to a normal person would seem rather flippant and high-handed that is actually a form of defence. The result is social isolation from both ways. People don’t feel comfortable associating with them because they are always ‘on the run’ and make you feel you are not there. So it is vice versa. A vicious circle.

I was 16 when it first showed itself..like some ‘thing’ from Twilight Zone. Just entered Form Four. I remember that day very well. It was a language class and the teacher wanted someone to read out a paragraph. Normally I’m the first one to volunteer for such things for I loved hearing my own voice those days. But for some reason that day, I couldn’t put out my hand. Something was wrong. My heart started pounding like I just finished a 100m sprint, my mind was racing I couldn’t think at all, my throat choking, my palms sweaty and I felt my fingers and toes so cold in a middle of a hot tropical afternoon. Suddenly I felt painfully shy, that everyone was watching, a though in my head…”you’re no good!”. And I just couldn’t understand WHY?! I went up to my teacher and confided in her. I told her I felt something was wrong with me. All she said was it was nothing and probably would go away. She asked me to go on reading. My voice was trembling and nearly gave out when I reached the end of the paragraph. I felt my classmates were looking at me funny. I was so humiliated I just wanted to disappear. I went home and told my mother first. She too felt I had nothing to worry about. This 'mind things' hardly had a name then so no one knew for sure. But try as I did, I couldn’t forget because the symptoms kept coming back over and over again.

Now come to think of it, I think my symptoms started even a few months earlier during the school holidays after my SRP exams. I did fairly well but did not get the straight ‘A’s. That was a disappointment especially when you saw how disappointed the teachers and your family were. It was also after my first meeting with my long lost father that didn’t turn out well. And I was having some teenage issues with the whole family-you know that phase where everything your family did was uncool. And I lost a lot of weight in the next month…nearly 20kg, I became obsessed with my weight and started starving myself a lot…mainly because my teenage emotions were also in full steam and I was falling in and out of infatuation with cute guys in school. I guess my churning hormones were over the lids. So i had a lot going on there in my growing mind with not much discretion.

I had my first experience with depression then. Depression and social phobia are bosom buddies, in case you didn’t know. I remember one night I was feeling so low, very, very low….don’t ask me why. No one knows why they are depressed. That’s why shrinks around the world make millions out of it!! So it was happening to me. I just wanted to die, and that was all I could think off. The other idiotic side of my teen brains was saying, Hey! That could be fun! To find out whether there was life after death. And that thing called ‘reincarnation’...every one was talking about...i thought maybe it’ll be fun to come back as a dog or something. I don’t know how I did it, but I found a bottle of old pink pills belonging to my grandma (sorry, grandma, don't worry i'm wiser now) and swallowed three quarters of it. Later I found out it was blood pressure pills. No one knew. After I swallowed it, I went to feed my cat…yes, of all things. . I was bending down to put the food on the dish, when I felt the first spasm…I felt so so drowsy, I just wanted to sleep…i felt my limbs give way.I woke up suddenly and I saw the cat had finished her food and was staring at me strangely…the empty dish at my eye level…. oh, I was lying flat out on the ground by the front door. I got up and I went in and nearly bumped into grandfather as he just came out of his late night shower. Everything was blurring again and all I thought what a stupid fool I was and I told myself….get to the bed, get to the bed!” And I felt myself stumbled and crash through the plywood walls (thank God it was only plywood! The cracks are still there today, my sore souvenir of stupidity ). The next moment I felt this awful sensation in my heart area. Like a big fist punched me there and was trying to pull my heart out! And I saw myself hurtling into blackness. Then I heard my mother’s shout and my grandmother’s scream. Oh God! I didn’t expect this. I was back. I heard the panic in their voices as my mother rushed from the room to pick me up and my grandma cried out my name. “What happened, what’s wrong, Girlie, wake up??” and my mother was tapping my cheeks and saying,.”I think her blood pressure is too low..she always had low BP!! Let me make some milk! I felt so ashamed of myself for putting them through this as they struggled to pick me up and get me to my bed. I was out like a lighting. I only got up late noon the next day. And I continued sleeping for nearly 48 hours. I guess I was lucky my body was young and strong and flushed out the toxins. I didn’t breath a word of what I did. My mother concluded it to low BP. I just kept wondering what if I never came out of that blackness. Was I lucky or not, I thought. I never told anyone about this till 10 years later.

Though this secret ‘adventure’ took my attention of my depression the next few days, it came back in full vengeance. I remember coming home from school and gorging on 3-4 different sticks of ice-cream (carbo-addiction) and sitting in front of the altar and bowling my eyes out for no particular reason. I felt stupid. Confused. Frustrated. So I threw myself into reading, spiritual, fictions, non-fictions, you name it….I read the whole family library three times over. That was therapeutic for the time being.

Then another change took place. I moved school. And it was a stressful change because I went from an easy going, rather thrilling environment of a co-ed school right into the rigidity and no-nonsense environment of an all-girls convent. I hated the convent so much that even today I can’t bring myself to look at the building when I pass by. So many whimsical nights I spent wishing the building to be bombed the next day and all the matronly sisters ….oh well… let’s not go there!!
Under the strict glare of matronly eyes, my symptoms got worse. I developed facial tics. Facial tics is more advanced symptoms of social phobia where the facial muscles especially the cheek and around the mouth area tremble visibly as you speak. And you are unable to smile or speak clearly. I remember going to a bank one day and there was something wrong with my signature and two bank staff were talking to me. I was so nervous my tics came in full swing. I still remember the looks in their faces…a kind of bewilderment, sympathy and embarrassment. I could have died then. But I survived.

By then, I was scrouging bookstores and reading up books on self improvement though I still didn’t have a name for my condition. All I managed to come by was stage fright and public speaking. Social phobia was hardly known here 20 years ago. Then one day, I came by a book on anxieties and there was this small chapter on ‘social phobia’ . I hit bull’s eyes. I was so happy that I was able to identify it at last and I was not alone. The book was too expensive for me to buy so I would go there every few days just to read up the book. The book mentioned about cognitive behavioral therapy... something that is foreign here even today. There is no so such support group locally. I looked at other cures. Sources were limited. My aunts helped me to a counselor, a lecturer in psychology and a psychologist with 15 years of practice. None even came close. They didn’t even mention phobia. In fact one put me on beta-blocker which was dangerous considering my low BP status and even claimed that I could be some substance abuser judging by my yellow stained eyes which was actually a genetic condition. What made it really horrible was that I poured my heart out to this lady and all she did was judge me by her own half informed 'expertise'. She could've at least told me she didn't know anything about it. After that experience, I quit the professionals for the next 10 years. I couldnt bring myself to trust them anymore. But today I understand, it was practically unheard of those days.

When I finally discovered the internet, it was like finding my way back home. I realized that there were thousands of others around the world going through my same problems, they had the same experiences with doctors and I came to understand that this was quite expected because research on social phobia is still on going and the cures are mostly at test and trial state. Some may respond, some may not. And you have to choose which works for you medication, therapy , mind reprogramming, many others. But locally, your resources were still limited. But I learnt to take it easy a bit after this revelation.

What pained me a lot and really tested my power to overcome my personal bitterness were the unnecessary personal tragedies I drove myself to accommodate this disease. I couldn’t bring myself to finish my education because I dreaded class room environment, to participate in classroom activities, speak up, make presentations (this was the ultimate hell for me) and mingling with new classmates. I tried going back many times but every time I chickened out right before some major events requiring me to step in front of the class. I normally skipped the orientations but I couldn’t avoid the credit requirements.
When I started working, I initially chose low profile jobs that was also painfully low paid. But I had no choice though I was frustrated. Then by some twist of fate, I got offered some great career opportunities which I daringly took on because it was too good to refuse. Then came the socializing and building rapports with big bosses and that scared the wits out of me. We all know, if you want to advance in a company you have to start blowing your trumpet and sucking up to the boss. I failed both requirements. Besides my co-workers had problems communicating with me because I was always so flippant and never bonded with anyone. (I couldn't even bond with my own family like even my cousins, always coming out rather unapproachable or unlikeable!!)

In desperation, I even tried keeping one good paying front office job with an established college by downing half of bottle of vodka everyday before going to work just to find the guts. I was good at my job, only thing I couldn’t keep the façade anymore. It is not easy to hold your breath and talk to people at the same time…in case people found out. I felt some people suspected and I quit. It was humiliating and I feared I was gearing myself up for kidney failure. I cried myself to sleep every night.

Funnily, I read recently in a social phobia website of a lady who did the same thing before she attended college everyday. She’d keep a bottle of vodka in her bag and whenever she needed it she would slip to the toilet and take a quick slug!! I found it really funny and i was laughing hysterically when i read her story because it brought me so much relief ...and also later...self-forgiveness for my mistakes!! I had felt so alone and so ashamed of it for so long.

Then I got another great job in another big organization as a personal assistant to a general manager of huge departmental store with 13 branches all over. My boss was a gem so that helped me keep my symptoms down a little but I dreaded attending meetings and meeting the big bosses. I remember I was asked to organize a surprise birthday party for the No.1 boss and I did everything but when the time came I hid myself in a store room till everything was over. When I came out, everyone was asking me what happened since the No. 1 wanted to meet the person who threw him a great party!!

I thought of quitting and going back to work as a bar waitress. I did some waitressing job some time back in a club and it was the only place my phobia didn’t attack me because the lights were dim and off my face and I knew I was around drunkards who didn’t even know I existed. But I made a greater mistake, I turned to the spiritual and looked for answers in all the wrong places. I was clueless at that time, guess I was too desperate…it was only after five years later I realized that I had actually joined a cult.

It was hard to reconcile with myself when I think how a seemingly unknown disease has taken out so much of my life. That's why I tend to respond rather strongly when well-meaning people tell me my symptoms are nothing. God, I had to compromise so many things in my life because of it, how can it be nothing??

Even my relationships were totally dictated by it. When I was 21, I met someone I was so in awe…very respectable, very successful but when he finally proposed I balked out because I knew I could never be able to do the social hostess duties as his wife. He was a advertising man with a local newspaper and he was always out in the public eyes. I had been careful to meet him only after office hours when i can grab some social drinks and I managed to keep my symptoms down. I had avoided all day function with him when the sun was in my face with so many excuses. That was really difficult, walking away from him and I didn’t even dare to share my problems with him in case he didn’t understand. After that first real heart-break , I went into a transitional relationship with someone I felt I was completely safe. Someone who was a nobody, somebody who wasn’t doing anything with his life, someone I thought could never hurt me. Only that I never suspected that would lead me to the most treacherous period of my life. By then I had started short-selling myself finally, I didn't care anymore. I let this dumb disease take over my life. It was all the way down from there. I was too tired to fight anymore. Personal crisis after another.

I was really beginning to believe that I was cursed somehow. This transitional guy lead me to join the cult. In my desperation, I through myself at their mercy and i ended up losing everything I had. All my savings, nearly 300k of potential earning because I worked free for them, 5 years of my life..I lost my dignity, my self worth, questioned my own judgment and myself….and nearly lost the most dearest thing in my life…my child. That brought me back to reality and I realized that when I started fighting for my child from the control of the cult leader, I gained courage from somewhere in me. Social phobia became second place. The hell I was going to let a stupid brain disease take away the most precious thing in my life. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care whether the facial tics came or the fears came, they came and went, yes, but I kept my child’s face in my mind and opened up to my family, faced the media, higher authorities, met government officers, police, immigration, welfare, lawyers, judges, reporters and a group of cult people who ganged up to prove I was insane and incapable to save their asses. When I finally got my child…I also got back something else, my own self worth. I no longer considered myself a victim.

I’ve come a long way since then. A kind of peace came over my heart…like the fresh smelling air after a bad rainstorm. I knew I had undergone the worst. Now I dont’t give a damn I have to live with this dumb disease the rest of my life…because it is no longer a standard by which I measure myself. I share my personal failures with all the those people with social phobia in this world. When i read through their experiences, I realised some even went through worse things than me..like not being able to leave their house for years. I am still open to all therapies and medication and I’m full of hope that a total cure will come my way very soon. I learnt not to think about why things happen and how things happen and what is to be blamed or who is to be blamed. Its complete waste of time and energy and it leads you nowhere. I learnt to focus only on how to recover from this.

I've been very fortunate to work with a wonderful American lady who is transpersonal hypnotherapist and the therapy effectively eradicates unpleasant memories with self-acceptance and love. It is like a spring cleaning for the body, mind and soul.
A program by an American psychologist who also suffered from social phobia for 20 years is effective for overcoming anxieties. He came out of it. That gives me hope. My life-time depression is gone for good and it's amazing to get up in the morning and feel good about life. My program requires me to take a first step and that is, not to be ashamed that I have social phobia. I don't want to feel ashamed anymore. It feels good actually…..to move on.