Ben Shephard

It’s recently come to my attention that I’ve not been acting myself again since the new year. I know what the root cause of this was but it wasn’t until Janine pointed it out yesterday that I realised I have a problem with anxiety. I’ve had to stay at home on my own today because I needed to think things through and do some reading and quiet a few pennies have started to drop today. The situation I’ve been in since the new year isn’t something I’ve experienced before and it’s not really something I can talk about easily on here so I’m going to go with the ones I can talk about openly and have had lots of experience of before which is social anxiety and phobia.

last year I made a new years resolution which I wrote about on here and part of that was to start attending Linux user group (LUG) meetings. There are Linux user groups all over the world which are just groups of people with a common interest in Linux and open source software who meet up maybe once a month to socialise and talk about their common interest. There is a LUG in most towns and cities and around here there is one in Mansfield and one in Nottingham. I never did find the courage to go along though because I felt frightened of meeting new people. This is a pretty recent example but going back I remember when I used to be frightened of just going shopping for groceries. I hated it and when I went to the supermarket I’d keep my head down and not look at anyone and try not to talk to anyone if I could avoid it. One of the things that used to scare me the most about shopping was bumping into people I haven’t seen for years because I felt awkward and never knew what to say. Even if I’d bump into someone from work who I spent every day with and knew really well I’d panic because I was in unfamiliar surroundings and never know what to say to them.

Going back even further I remember not being able to talk to certain people whom I felt uneasy around for various reasons. One was a director at a company I used to work for who would say good morning to me in passing in the corridor and my reply would just come out completely garbled which at the time I didn’t understand why. On several occasions I was completely unable to speak to him. He must have thought he’d hired a right nutter

On another occasion my sister took me to a Slimming World meeting which she went to quiet regularly as she thought it might help me lose weight but once I got there and was sat in a big circle with everyone else I panicked and by the end of it I decided not to go again which I don’t think my sister was very impressed about but I was too scared of being in that kind of social situation again.

I’ve found this condition pretty easy to live with because most things I can run away from quiet easily. My life has changed somewhat since meeting Janine and I have come to realise that this kind of thing might prove more of a problem for me since there are all kinds of new situations that I’m being thrown head on into which is no bad thing. It’s my choice to do this but relationships aren’t easy and some times there are things that could cause me problems such as meeting the family which I think I’ve dealt with surprisingly well given the problems I’ve had in the past. Now I’ve realised this is an issue I need to try to improve things but the question is how to go about it. I think if I go to the doctors they will probably prescribe me a course of mind altering drugs of the kind I’ve had before for depression but I know from experience these things can be addictive and can cause more problems than they solve. I’ve asked my doctors advice in herbal treatments before but doctors it seems don’t study or have any interest in herbal and potentially much less dangerous medicines. My doctor told me I should go to a shop that specialises in such remedies and ask them as they would know more they him. This is perhaps a problem with modern medical practice. Herbal remedies have been used for thousands of years and there seems to be little understanding of their effectiveness compared to commercial alternatives. I think is because there is less money in herbal medicine so all the studies are conducted with commercial drugs and the companies that produce those are good at marketing them regardless of how good they are compared to herbal alternatives.

The other options out there are things such as cognitive behavioural therapy but I’m unsure how that would work at the moment but it’s something I need to look at. I’d prefer to try and deal with this without outside help if I can so I might invest in some self help books or something.

It would be nice to hear from others who suffer with similar issues or those who have seen me in such a situation before or even anyone who has something to say on this subject. Feel free to drop a comment on this post or email me via my contact page or what ever.

Ben

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