When I look back at the many years that I dealt with social anxiety during the holidays (specifically, Thanksgiving) and how I dreaded the inevitable pressure to eat at the table with everyone else, I can actually say thank you to my old self.  Yes it was hard but look how far we’ve come.  Yes, it felt like I couldn’t do it but I made it through, year after year.  I used the discomfort as my motivator.  I would say, I have to work on this because I can’t live like this for the rest of my life.  It gets better.

(I feel like I repeat this often, but social anxiety is different from shyness.  I’ve dealt with both.  I am not 100% over my anxieties because a certain level of anxiety is simply just being human, but social anxiety is no longer a crippling factor for me. So I digress…) It gets better. Continue reading →