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If you’d met me at any point in my twenties, you’d have probably thought I was quite sociable—extroverted, even. I spent most weekends going out beneath the lilac-pink lights of clubs like or else rolling around a park with anywhere between two to 20 people. On my 25th birthday, I went to New York alone on a whim, and ended up at a Halloween house party with tens of strangers. On my 26th, I did the same thing and spent the entire time with various Tinder matches on different rooftops. I was never the stereotypical loner, which is weird, because I always felt like one on the inside.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy hanging out with others—it’s more that the whole thing made me incredibly anxious. Mostly, I’d rely on alcohol to relax in big social settings. And if I was sober, I’d spend the majority of interactions waiting until it was polite to go home. I hated the idea that I might say the wrong thing, which caused me to shut down in large groups, which meant that I was never really present with others. For a while, I considered the idea that I might be autistic, but those around me asserted that this couldn’t be the case. “But you’re so sociable,” they’d say. “An autistic person would never stay in so many random Airbnbs,” someone said once. I often wondered how I’d managed to dupe all of these people.
Then, around 30, a few years post-pandemic, something changed. I wish I could pinpoint what it was. It’s not that I no longer felt socially anxious, it’s more that I could no longer be bothered to feel socially anxious. It was draining, and for what? Therefore, over time, bit by bit, the sensation sort of drifted away.
I also started employing this strange mental exercise whenever I was around people. I’d remind myself that they were also rattling around their own minds, and therefore what I did or said really didn’t matter—it’s like a video game! I often recalled Jemima Kirke’s famous adage, “I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much.” At the heart of my social anxiety, I realised, was an assumption that others were studying me in great detail, which is absurd, obviously, and quite self-involved. But also, even if they were, why did it matter? Essentially, I trained myself to care less—and it worked.
As I’ve entered my early thirties, I’ve become a much less socially anxious person. Not all the time but for the most part. People love to tell you this will happen, and it does. “Youth is wasted on the young!” they bark at you in your teens and twenties, and you rightfully ignore them, until one day you’re 30-something and it slowly dawns on you that you wish you hadn’t spent your entire twenties worrying and worrying and worrying, because now you’re no longer worried and you wasted all of that time.
Had I not been socially anxious, I now wonder, would I have made longer-lasting connections, and more of them? Might I have drank less, or spent less time online, or been able to say ‘no’ more, or ‘yes’ more, depending on what it was I wanted? My social anxiety didn’t hold me back in obvious ways—as I said, I was always out and about. But drunken escapades with strangers are one thing, and actually connecting with friends is another, and I was far more comfortable with the former at the expense of the latter.
Of course, I’m speaking like a wizened old woman with no life left in her, which is—hopefully!—far from the case. I’m excited to embark on this newish journey of being able to speak to people without wanting to shrivel up, and I’m looking forward to connecting with people without internally just thinking of myself.
Social anxiety robs you of curiosity; it’s self-centred by design. Even though it feels focused on everybody else, it stops you from being fully present with those right in front of you. It took me years to feel present, and now that I’m here, for now at least, I’d quite like to take a look around.
This article first appeared on Vogue.co.uk
Also read:
6 signs of social anxiety that are easy to mistake for ‘shyness’
Feeling anxious? Here’s how to manage it
Why you’re waking up with anxiety and how to start each day less frazzled
