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Social anxiety - trigger


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Up until December I had a great previous 18 months – real success with my OCD, my OCD themes are relationship and orientation (I posted a very positive post in November) .

Over Christmas I went back to my family for 2 weeks (I live abroad) After 3 or 4 days of being at home I fell into a pretty severe anxiety spiral that I was not able to stop, (however not thinking about my my usual OCD themes - just massive anxiety with close friends /family - almost like depression but it was fear based so i believe anxiety) the anxiety did not let up at all until I returned back to my usual home, it ruined the final 10 days of my Christmas break.

Since that period of stress my OCD has come back pretty severely throughout the whole of January, my social anxiety is bad as well. I have an appointment with a therapist tomorrow.

My thought process now is that the social anxiety was a sign there is something I am hiding, something I am battling with inside, something I need to come to terms with, that then sets me off and I am losing hours and days on this thought trail, its impacting my work, and my ability to interact with others.

On the other hand, maybe my social anxiety is just a learned response over many years of having anxiety that I need to ‘un learn’ which some CBT will help, however my feeling when I look back is that any CBT would have been powerless against the strength of the anxiety over Christmas.

Need to establish if there is a big secret, or if my OCD themes are a red herring and I should just focus on raising self esteem, building confidence etc

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Guest Jane_29

I can relate to a lot of the things you say here, because I had what looked like severe Social Anxiety for a while until we realised it was just a slightly unusual OCD obsession. I remember wanting to get away from people, not being able to talk to people, or be around friends incase they said something 'immoral' - my OCD was starting to tell me that if someone made a joke about something 'immoral' then I would be triggered by their words to do it immediately and commit a terrible act. So I avoided everyone. I even contemplated moving far out to the countryside and trying not to see anyone at all! (crazy I know, but I'm sure everyone on this forum can understand that's just what OCD does to you).

So maybe it's best to just target the OCD itself, clarify in your own mind what the actual obsession is, and work on tackling that. Maybe the associated social anxiety will naturally come down as you get the other symptoms under control? Ruminating that there might be a mystery 'hidden' idea in your own mind sounds like a classic OCD obsession and I can see how it would affect your socializing. I mean, there's loads of reasons why OCD might make someone socially anxious. We're worried people might see/hear us doing compulsions and judge us, for one. We get obsessive ideas that we shouldn't talk to certain people or talk about certain topics. We can't concentrate on what people are saying because we feel so anxious. Etc. MANY reasons.

If you feel the CBT isn't enough, perhaps you could consult your doctor about medications? Or see if there's a health issue underlying the sudden flareup (for example, some folks with mental health disorders like to have their doctor check their Vitamin D levels, especially in the winter, as it's easy to get low in it and low levels can have mental symptoms)?

I feel for you because it sucks so much to be feeling like you've really put the OCD behind you, like you've got it under control for a year or more...then something unexpected happens and suddenly the symptoms are real bad again. You just want to tear your hair out in frustration! Like 'HELLO? WE ALREADY FIXED THIS PROBLEM?' :D Ugh, so annoying.

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Stop trying to figure out why you had a flare up back home. It won't do you any good but it will keep you stuck. Try to forget about it and move on with your life. Watch out for ruminating over it. It's very easy to get into the ruminating trap and you don't want to go there. Leave it all alone.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Feeling pretty close to coming out now, unbelievable stressed and down. This is more than just OCD, but the OCD makes it much harder, think my OCD is brought on by the stress of this, if i accept myself I think the OCD will also quieten, my other obsessions were nothing like this, this has been 5 years on and off now, driven by real feelings causing these fears

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