Social anxiety is hard to navigate at the best of times, but made even worse in December when the festive season brings an increase in parties and get-togethers. Photo / 123RF
After trying therapy and medication for years, I’ve finally overcome my crippling fear of socialising.
For as long as I can remember, social anxiety has ruled my life. It started in primary school. I was always uncomfortable around people, especially big groups of people I didn’t know well. I worried about small things constantly and was easily upset.
I was lucky that I had always had friends – other quieter, usually shy girls like me – but when I went to university in a big city away from my home town, everything changed. The pressure to be fun and happy, to meet new people constantly, to sit in massive lecture theatres or go out partying in huge nightclubs – it was all too much for me.
Luckily (I thought at the time) I was old enough to drink, and that would give me the confidence I needed to socialise and make friends, but on the inside I was still terrified of social situations. By the time I had graduated, I had given up on going out at all.
Then when I moved to London, alcohol was more easily accessible than ever before. In my first marketing job there was a booze cart that would come around at 3pm on a Friday so people could have a wine or a beer at their desks, and at Christmas parties my colleagues would physically put a drink in my hand if they thought I hadn’t had enough.
So of course I used alcohol to cope with festive office parties: I was terrified to say no to my colleagues and risk seeming too stiff and serious. But at the same time, I dreaded the crushing “hangxiety” that would inevitably follow a night of boozing. The blackouts I’d have, caused by mixing alcohol with the anxiety medication I was prescribed at the end of university to cope with exams, made everything worse.
I’d start to fill in the blanks with awful things I told myself must have happened. I wasn’t a happy drunk – it seemed like alcohol would turn on a switch, and I’d start crying or feel a huge amount of anger or sadness, which often ruined the night. The work Christmas do became my worst nightmare, and I dreaded December every year.
You might ask what it was that I was so scared of all the time. When I reflect, I know it’s really a fear of rejection and abandonment. Growing up, my dad was incredibly distant and cold. I had a strong sense of defectiveness, that I wasn’t good enough as a daughter or as a person, and that other people would never accept me for who I was because of it. I last spoke to my dad in 2017, when I was in my early 20s and my parents divorced, so those feelings went unresolved. It was like he still had power over me.
All of this came to a head during the Covid lockdowns. I was prescribed a low dose of anti-depressants to help me cope with the intense fear I had of leaving the house. I never missed a single day of work, but once the world reopened, it would take me hours to gear myself up to go in. I was terrified of getting on the Tube, and the thought of speaking to people in the office was daunting.
Before then I had tried talking therapy for a year with one therapist after speaking to two others who weren’t a good fit. In all, I had about 300 hours of talking therapy, and it did little to help. I started to feel like a failure, and I constantly had tightness in my chest. I felt physically sick most days.
Eventually I realised that I needed to cut alcohol from my life. For years I’d been drinking to seem happy, bubbly and social at big events – and it had worked, people told me that I seemed so confident if I didn’t take it too far – but I realised I had only been masking the problem.
Sometimes it could be destructive. At my mum’s house-warming party, thrown to get to know all the new neighbours after we had left my dad, I was so overwhelmed and nervous I drank enough to be sick all over her new carpet. I felt so guilty and awful that she had needed to look after me the next day.
I became a bad friend too, unable to pay full attention when I was drunk or when I was sober, because of the fear I felt either way. It didn’t help that I’d leave texts and calls unanswered for weeks as just reading my phone became too much.
I quit alcohol for good in May 2022, when I was 26. My boyfriend, Jerome, was hugely supportive of my decision. Having seen how talking therapy did so little to help me, Jerome suggested I see a hypnotherapist. He had sessions with one years ago, and told me about how it had helped him to overcome his own traumas and see life differently.
I went online to do my own research and came across a hypnotherapist called Chris Meaden. Before I had my consultation with Chris a month later in June 2022, I decided to come off of my beta blockers and anti-depressants, because I thought this would help me give being hypnotised a real go. I knew nothing about hypnotherapy before then, but I did have a real sense it could be the thing to help me.
I was right. In my consultation, we went through everything that was troubling me, including the relationship I had with my dad, and then Chris would have me close my eyes and visualise one of the events that had made me really worried and sad as a child. While I did that, I’d move my eyes from side to side, as if I was watching tennis, and I’d tap my face or rub the outside of my arms. All of this is a technique called havening. The idea is to create a ‘haven’ for yourself and to break your brain’s association between whatever happened and fear or danger.
After just the first of my four sessions with Chris, my social anxiety became so much easier to manage. It wasn’t that I no longer felt scared of rejection, or felt anxious in social situations. It was as if those feelings were like a door, and it had been moved much further down a corridor in my head than it had been before. It was a huge relief, and I felt like I was behind the wheel in my own mind again.
I’ve just spent a weekend in Berlin for my job with a group of total strangers. I took the flight there alone for the first time, and I can honestly say I felt totally fine throughout the trip. I’m not an extroverted person, and I’m never going to be the life of the party. Fortunately, I don’t have to be: my new colleagues never make my sobriety a problem and with my new sense of control, office parties are a breeze. I go to the events I feel genuinely excited about and swerve the ones I don’t, without feeling overwhelmed with guilt and fear about what people might think.
I do still feel some social anxiety, but 99% of the time it’s only related to situations where I don’t know many people in a big group, and I’m also the only sober one at a night where drinking is planned. When I feel that way, I’ll go to the bathroom and practise Chris’s havening techniques, which usually calm me down enough to relax and have fun. But if that doesn’t work, I give myself permission to leave and tell people that I don’t feel well or that I’m too tired. It’s all about deciding which situations I want to be in, and I would rather prioritise my health.
Giving up alcohol has improved my sleep, which helps keep my anxiety levels low enough that I haven’t needed medication since I gave it up. I take better care of myself, and carve out time for the things that make me happy, like baking and going to the gym. I have a great social life by my own standards: you won’t find me in a club on a Saturday night anymore, but you will find me at home with my boyfriend and friends, tucking into a great meal and laughing with the confidence I had always wanted.
I don’t fear the December party season anymore. When the anxious voice in my head tells me that disaster awaits, I remind myself that I don’t need to feel scared: I say, bring it on.
Tips from hypnotherapist Chris Meaden
When we have an anxious thought, our brain and nervous system gear up to respond to a “perceived threat”. The amygdala, which powers your brain’s emotional response system, is on “red alert” and we need to act fast to let it know it’s a false alarm.
So here’s a simple technique that you can use to quickly calm your nervous system.
Begin humming a tune to yourself (it can be anything you like). The vibrations will stimulate the vagus nerve, which helps your body relax. With the distraction of humming, you’ll also find it much harder to continue the negative internal dialogue in your mind, which downgrades the irrational thoughts and provides a sense of calm.
While humming, gently stroke your arms from shoulder to elbow in long, soothing motions, or rub your palms together. This promotes the production of serotonin and oxytocin, “feel-good” hormones, while encouraging calming delta brainwaves, which we experience in deep sleep.
Notice any balancing calming shifts in your body. You might feel a sense of “grounding”, calm or connection. Say out loud (or in your head): “All is well now, all is well”, or “Calm, relaxed, safe”.
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