How SA has ruined my life

I lost my girlfriend of 4 years due to my social anxiety. I could afford losing everything else but not her. She was my support, she was everything I had and i lost her....hate myself for having SA now. Its ok (well at least till a point) that i lost friends lost out on fun etc because of SA but when you lose your life's hope it will depress you to such an extent there will be no future whatsoever.

To everyone who has SA : I'm 26 now and have lost everything due to SA. If you have SA then please snap out of it. Or else one day you'll lose whatever you have. If you are young you can at least gain a lot by beating your anxiety. It's late for me now, but for everyone else just try and snap out of it, you don't want to be in my position at my age.

Here is what i went through in my teens and early 20's

• Getting scared to go to the shop on the other end of the road
• Running away from parties..not going even when invited
• Scared to go out of my apartment at night
• I would never go to other people's houses.
• would stay at home for days 5 to 10 days continuously
• Joined a library...but didn't go there for 5 to 6 months
• would get bullied easy and would never fit in

Wondering if anyone else can tell me if they had such similar problems?

Then i didn't know better and didn't have anyone to help. Parents used to ridicule me for not going out and i would not be able to defend myself. You yourself don't know that you're suffering so its really crazy.

I had an anxiety attack in front of my girl and all she could was tell me to go see a shrink....i so wanted her to hold my hand. I lost her soon after...

And her loss has put me in so much depression that i see no future for myself. Don't know why i had to be unlucky enough to have SA--it absolutely ruined my life

Hi, i'm really sorry to hear about what you've gone through. First thing, you are 26 and you give the impression that you'r life is over! You are still young...Sorry to sound so cliche!

Well snapping out of something like this is not something we can easily do, if we could just snap out of it i don't think websites like this one would exist, and i hardly think that any of us choose to be the way we are.

I can apply to some of the things you described;

#I used to be scared to go to shops alone when i was younger but not anymore.
#When i had rare invites to parties in the past i always found an excuse o'r more often just didn't turn up.
#I never do go to peoples houses, i even don't visit my sister often.

The thing i can do and i am proud of is that i can go on planes alone to foreign countires.

Eh, you are way too young to give up. Recluse is right. There are people much older than you are who still fight day after day against their fears and seemingly immutable convictions. You can still make your life better and perhaps even enjoyable. There's plenty of time. - Anyway, I can identify with your story.

This might sound offensive, but if a girl leaves you just because you have a mental disorder, she is not worth your time. A girl who truly loves you will help you overcome your problems, one step at a time, and not run off at the slighest sign of trouble.

Ashiene, true but that's unrealistically idealistic. A relationship must not diminish the quality of life of either involved. If his mental disorder caused the girl unhappiness and less enjoyable a life than she had prior to being with him, it's very understandable she left. This is not worthlessness, it's her having a healthy stance on life.

[...] not run off at the slightest sign of trouble.

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At the slightest sign - if you call the problems he and others have, and the behaviours those problems manifest themselves in 'slight', then I wonder why anyone today has to live with such a debilitating mental condition. I guess the anxiety attack he had in front of her was sufficient a sign for her to stay away.

I wouldn't want a woman - or any person I like - to spend her life with me, if it were to cause her sadness and unhappiness.

I empathise with your story. I too have been so low as to consider suicide on more than one occassion. The truth is though that YOU are in control of your life. Whilst you are not to BLAME for these things that happened to you or to your reaction to them, you definitely are RESPONSIBLE for how you decide to move forward.

Start to look for inspiration about how you can turn your situation around. Read quotes about people who have turned their lives around. Read books and watch movies. Saturate your mind with thoughts of how your life will look, sound and feel now that you are a new person. Think of the lessons you can take from this experience that will make you a wiser more compassionate human being.

Take it easy

Ashiene said:

This might sound offensive, but if a girl leaves you just because you have a mental disorder, she is not worth your time. A girl who truly loves you will help you overcome your problems, one step at a time, and not run off at the slighest sign of trouble.

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I agree with you.

Forget about the girl who left u for just having SAD. I agree with recluse and Ashiene Your partner is suppose to help u out during troubled times, not ditch you. You can definitely find a better one, just keep ur head up and u r only 26, thats freaking young.

There is a special someone out there for everyone. I like to think that marriage vows “Through sickness and in Health” is a direct understanding when entering a relationship. If not, then it is just a sham. True, I have never had one, and maybe I am clueless on the subject. However, I would like to believe that someone out there could stand my social fears. In the real world, this is probably very unlikely. Ambition drives most relationships. My brother wants to get married, but he never talks about the love, and he is single. He just wants a trophy wedding. If there was a woman out there, in the real world, who truly knew me and wanted to spend the rest of her life with, she would be an angel.

Kind of the same thing happened to me once.

If you have one person that is your whole world.. and that person disappears from your life, you loose everything. Including your mind.

NEVER become completely dependent on someone else.
Expect that people will eventually leave you, because it's a good chance they will.

Social anxiety and depression changed my life. Either you gradually get better or sooner or later you'll learn to live with it.

My advice is this:

1. Figure out what you really like to do and what interests you.
2. Go somewhere you'll find like-minded people.
3. Socialize.
4. Make friends.
5. Live your life to the fullest.

That's what life is. If your depression doesn't go away after a while, you need to get some serious therapy treatment or drugs to make life livable.

...

A relationship must not diminish the quality of life of either involved.

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Klytus.....She didn't have a better life before me. She was so scared of public speaking that she wanted to leave a job we were both working at rather than face it. I had no problems with public speaking and i tried encouraging her and loved her inspite of it. She didn't do the next job because she didn't want to do Sales which meant selling and sometimes coming across an irritated customer. Never did i think low of her.

If his mental disorder caused the girl unhappiness and less enjoyable a life than she had prior to being with him, it's very understandable she left.

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When we met we were each other's best friends, we enjoyed each others company and went to a lot of great places...something she didn't have before. She used to complain i dont put our photos on a social networking site...but i never put any photos....i just felt that our photos are personal but she thought that i didn't love her.

I guess the anxiety attack he had in front of her was sufficient a sign for her to stay away.

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This was at the end of a day and i was so tired. We were supposed to meet and she was really rude on the phone. When we met i was breathing heavily and she actually walked away instead of holding my hand. All i wanted was some love. My SAD used to come into effect when she wanted to go these parties where all these rich/hip people go and i had a huge inferiority complex. Yes i had social anxiety, but when you lose someone close to you, someone you love, someone whom you've always supported no matter what.....it hurts.

In retrospect, it would have been so much easier to go to those parties and save my relationship rather than suffer the pain of break up which I'm going through right now.

If she let you go only because of that she wasnt worth anyway,you deserve someone better.

Looks like the girl wasn´t worth it anyway. When she needed at the beginning you helped her but when she got better and you run into problems she was rude and left.

I think you just have some crisis, this is normal. You cannot be that hopeless if you can do public speaking and find a girlfriend. If you could find this one, chances are you manage to find someone else as well.
What do you think triggered your anxiety attacks btw? Maybe it was even the gf?

I can never relate to people who have girlfriends or boyfriends. To me, finding a partner is as likely as reaching the stars.

It's probably a good thing, so you can learn to stand on your own two feet. Learn from it and move on. The pain will ease. Seriously, never rely on someone so much, it's not good for either person.

anders055 said:

Klytus.....She didn't have a better life before me. She was so scared of public speaking that she wanted to leave a job we were both working at rather than face it. I had no problems with public speaking and i tried encouraging her and loved her inspite of it. She didn't do the next job because she didn't want to do Sales which meant selling and sometimes coming across an irritated customer. Never did i think low of her.



When we met we were each other's best friends, we enjoyed each others company and went to a lot of great places...something she didn't have before. She used to complain i dont put our photos on a social networking site...but i never put any photos....i just felt that our photos are personal but she thought that i didn't love her.


This was at the end of a day and i was so tired. We were supposed to meet and she was really rude on the phone. When we met i was breathing heavily and she actually walked away instead of holding my hand. All i wanted was some love. My SAD used to come into effect when she wanted to go these parties where all these rich/hip people go and i had a huge inferiority complex. Yes i had social anxiety, but when you lose someone close to you, someone you love, someone whom you've always supported no matter what.....it hurts.

In retrospect, it would have been so much easier to go to those parties and save my relationship rather than suffer the pain of break up which I'm going through right now.

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Hmmm, bit different from the OP, eh?

She's a woman, its not hard for them to get the wrong idea.

And plus, by the gist of your above post she sounds pretty shy, almost like she had a mild panick attack when you did. Was it in public?

Oh, and BTW, there are plenty of fish in the sea. But ofcourse you wont care until you actually catch one.

Thats how it goes right?

anders055 said:

I lost my girlfriend of 4 years due to my social anxiety. I could afford losing everything else but not her. She was my support, she was everything I had and i lost her....hate myself for having SA now. Its ok (well at least till a point) that i lost friends lost out on fun etc because of SA but when you lose your life's hope it will depress you to such an extent there will be no future whatsoever.

To everyone who has SA : I'm 26 now and have lost everything due to SA. If you have SA then please snap out of it. Or else one day you'll lose whatever you have. If you are young you can at least gain a lot by beating your anxiety. It's late for me now, but for everyone else just try and snap out of it, you don't want to be in my position at my age.

Here is what i went through in my teens and early 20's

• Getting scared to go to the shop on the other end of the road
• Running away from parties..not going even when invited
• Scared to go out of my apartment at night
• I would never go to other people's houses.
• would stay at home for days 5 to 10 days continuously
• Joined a library...but didn't go there for 5 to 6 months
• would get bullied easy and would never fit in

Wondering if anyone else can tell me if they had such similar problems?

Then i didn't know better and didn't have anyone to help. Parents used to ridicule me for not going out and i would not be able to defend myself. You yourself don't know that you're suffering so its really crazy.

I had an anxiety attack in front of my girl and all she could was tell me to go see a shrink....i so wanted her to hold my hand. I lost her soon after...

And her loss has put me in so much depression that i see no future for myself. Don't know why i had to be unlucky enough to have SA--it absolutely ruined my life

Click to expand...

I faced much the same things, other than never having a girlfriend, and actually going out at night because then no one could see me or see very less of me. So you aren't alone.

Frankly, I don't believe that you can hope for a girl/woman to understand you forever and ever. For how long do we court our partners, 1 year? 2 years? 3 years? How can you hope for self-sacrifice from someone whom you have known for only a handful of years!

But any way, SA has ruined my life quite a lot. But that's OK. A neutral observer will tell us that we have many decades of life before us. And therefore a chance to actually live it.