Getting better

[SingaporeGuy]

Hello all my SA friends..

Is there any one out there who are getting better or maybe cured from SA?

Well, I have, at least getting much better to at least 65 %. Life is much more enjoyable, you have friends, you chill out, your mind is clearer..communicate better, joking and stuff etc..

Its like a new lease if life..the feeling is superb. you are no longer trapped by your own irrational imaginations.

what i have found out is that, as long as your mental thingy is healthy, meaning, you dont have this "SA" thoughts, all will go well. you become relaxed, you dont have to apply those relaxation techniques to relax u..

what these relaxation techniques do is to actually assist you with CBT. a lot of times when we try to apply cbt when we interact with people, we just cant do it, for a simple fact...we get nervous, jittery, irrational thoughts get into the mind, and we say "I cant do it"

the relaxation techniques actually calms your mind, making it easier for you to apply cbt and so on..

the way to cure is to practice practice practice..practice talking, practice positive thinking..

I know its hard, i have gone thru SA's worst nightmare which includes depression, inablity to get out of the room, crying non stop, suicidal thoughts 24 hrs (if I hadnt had faith in my god, i would have been dead by now..eek)..

I have a lot to talk abt this, and i will continue next time..

Btw, is there anione thats getting better?

 

[Anonymous]

hi,

I'm very glad that you are on the road to recovery. What you have said makes perfect sense and should be an inspiration to anyone who feels that their life will always be black and desparate existence.

I think you are right when you say the key is practise, practise, practise.

I look forward to reading more of your experience.

 

[GettingThere]

Good posting Singapore Guy.

I think that it gets easier as we get older and endure more. Aside from learning techniques to deal with it and philosophies as well, I think that the whole experience makes us more humble and as we become so we have less pride to deal with and hence lower levels of SA problems.

Thats my personal take on it.

 

[MrMr]

great to hear your getting better and feeling good about your social life.could you maybe post some details about the treatments you received or self help you used.what worked and what didn't and how long it took for different things to work.maybe tell us about some of the difficulties you had with sa and how they are now.we would all be really interested in your full story,as it's one of real hope for the rest of us.i think this is one of the best aspects of this site,the posts from people who have had success and share it with us,it give us great hope for the future.best of luck with your future,it seems to look really bright.

 

[SingaporeGuy]

HELLO!

Thx for the positive response man..I will recall significant events that has led to the improvements

Snippets of my SA life

When I was in high school when I was 14, I was one of the most popular guys there. I did not have SA at all. I was the joker among the jokers and everyone simply loved me. Those were the days. I was a leader in some peer support group when I was 15.

My say

I think my SA started when I was 15. I was the leader, yet I could not lead. I felt useless and had to depend on other leaders to lead the group. Such an event went on and on and it was like a snowball effect. Each event led to a more demoralizing state of mind.

When I was 15 I could not talk, suddenly i found out. I would stutter, be nervous and I thought I had not even spoke to a girl that year, really. I did not know there was anything wrong with me. I thought I was shy.
My brother was in the same class as me. He's a complete contrast of me. hes a joker, a man of assertion.

With him around, I was more confident of myself. I did not expect things was going to get worst when we parted after high school graduation.

Damn..

 

[SingaporeGuy]

I still remember when i was 15 and 16, i realise now i was not normal like the rest of my school mates.

they were chatty, while i was quiet, i felt i was not worthy of their friendship.

i feel they are constantly judging me by the way i dress up, the way i look.

i could not sit alone in a corner without having my head constantly thinking. I would think people would say "O gosh, this guy's a loser, sitting alone here, no friends..boohoo..sad"

and when people tried to befriend me, I would think " arr..hes just another sympathetic soul that sympatise me for being a loner"

it was hard..

i just did not know i had SA. i did not have internet access and no source of research. i couldnt even go to libraries to borrow books. O welll, I ccouldnt even enter the library.

OK, when me and my bro parted...

I thought it was a new beginning. it started out well the first few weeks. i met a friend whom i thought would have stuck with me for at least a few weeks and we could be buddies.

i was wrong. i talked to him that day and he ignored me to respond to a question by that talkative guy. I thought, "man, i am useless fool, he doesnot like me, im thrash!". that was what went through my mind.

we drifted apart, my confidence got low and lower, created enemies who did not understand me, and for the 2 years of that education, guess how many friends I have made...


1


the rest were aquaintances...

 

[Anonymous]

my SA varies greatly from horrendous days, suicidal thoughts, non stop crying etc to days when i could be any other teenager, happy, lively loud and confident. althuogh these good days are getting rarer and further apart i do treasure them. However theyre like a tease, showing me what i can have and who i could be, and then my sa makes me fail, and so i hate myself more and more...
i'm glad you are getting better, we need people like you, stories like yours. They are sometimes to only ray of hope people have.

 

[SingaporeGuy]

Thats good to hear Fred..

Yes, I will never let SA bring me down...

I know we all can do it!

But i also have to think of others..

Unlike me, some people live in places where gangsters and lowlives dominate, thus hard or be motivated to beat SA. It can be almost impossible to overcome it in places like this..i can understand this.

Some live in areas where there is constant pressure to perform. you are not given enough time and space to refelct and relax etc, thus eliminating SA is near impossible.

there are many more factors that contribute to the degree of difficulty to eliminate SA.

So, i will truely understand.

I will continue my story later..

Aniway, is there really no one who has actually got better? hmm...

 

[Parttimer]

I"m flooding the forum again no doubt that pisses pple off. ah well.
Anyway Singapore guy you were saying that you're getting better, that u now have a few friends that you chill and joke around with. Man that really is great. I think thats what alot of us pple with SP crave. To be around pple who know you and be totally comfortable around them and share jokes and stuff.

 

[MarCPatt]

I am getting better, not completely cured, but am a lot better. Now I am able to work and be around people without freaking out too much. Hopefully I can get to a point in my life where people do not make me so nervous any longer, when I do not care so much about how they view me.

 

[Anonymous]

HI MarC !
Good to see you around but even better to learn you are making progress!

Keep up the GREAT work!! :wink:

 

[SingaporeGuy]

Great Positive replies GUYS!

Apprecciate it.

I believe you can do it, parttimer. I think SA sufferers just need a "thing" that will spur them on and be motivated..

the "thing" that used to spur me on when I decided enough was enough. My mother was really saddened by my sudden change in attitude. she did not even know me. she could not converse with me, couldnt be at ease around me, but the thing that punched me right up the ass was when she cried..

she said "boiboi, y are u behaving such a manner, you donnoe that u r killing me inside. wad happened to u!?"

she cried profusely, with mucus and snort around her lips and nose. I could not bear it longer.

For the 1st time in my life, I cried and hugged her real tight. I was shocked i did that, but emotions got me over.

Deep in my heart, I told myself, that i will NEVER EVER going to hurt her like that again...

And that was the turning point of life....

But was it.....?

 

[Anonymous]

great to see someone who's pretty much beat this.please continue to add your full story,it's inspiring me.

 

[SingaporeGuy]

Indeed that was the turning point of my life..

But b4 i tell u wad happen next, i will explain a bit more what happened before.

a year b4 that incident, i already knew i had SA. i tried a lot of techniques, applications to mitigate the symptoms.

I search into websites..

for example, when i read about breathing properly, i tried many ways on how i could do it properly. One of the ways was to bloat my stomach. i had always tried to keep a flat stomach, so i could look slimmer, i was vain. bloating made me more comfortable. i thought by doing so, it kept my breathing at a proper pace....

i also realised that whenever i looked at people, it was like a deer looking into the flashlight, if u get what i mean. so i tried lowering down my eyelid, put little pressure on the eyes etc..

Little that i knew that by doing these techniwues, u r actually relaxing certain parts of your muscles, which helps heaps for anxious people. i had dofferent understanding of this technique last time.

u might think everything went on well...

Hell no...i had always have this problem..whenever a technique was learnt, and when u tried it at first and it worked, i felt motivated. the technique worked for a few days, before i went to a deep slump and realised the technique did not work for me again. i guess many of my friends here experience the way i did.

after that, i decided to learn a new technique, it worked for a few days, deep slump, new technique, deep slump, and it went on and on like that. it was demoralizing, i told myself "man, this aint gonna werk". there were days when i gave up and there were days when i tried.

those moments of my life, i couldnot meet people, i could not get near people, i had this continuous vicious thought that people were against me, people did not like the way i look, people did not like.... everything was revolving on me and how people detested me. when i looked at those people whom i thought was against me befriending and chilling out with others, i got pissed off, jealous.

"ITS NOT FAIR! NOT FAIR!. y r they friending them instead of me!? y dont they like me!? whats wrong with me!?"

then i thought the human population were ignorant selfish bastards. i blamed people for not knowing about SA, i blamed them for not knowing how to deal with people like me etc..

to recall back those incidents now, i realised 1 thing..the thing that made me weak, the thing that pulled me down...

self pity..

 

[Anonymous]

please continue to add to you story

 

[SingaporeGuy]

ok i wont go into details over my past..

its history..

ok..

that fateful day was the semester break..as usual, at every semester breaks i would do research on my illness etc..

i was reading every books..on how i could be confident, about positivity..and all sorts..

i thought all these would help me heaps..

now to think of it, i did quite a big mistake..

never did i really do a reading up RELAXATION..breathing techniques..

to recall, i think that was one of the fundamentals..that i did not think would be useful and proved to be critical..

okok, back to the story..

on that fateful semester break..i met with a friend's friend..

when he suddenly talked about things that i was really interested in..like self motivation, positivity..etc..

i thought there was no one that thought like me, the way i think..when actually there was..it was him..

my mentor, my life saviour..

but the twist is that, he did not even realised he had done a great favour to this once hopeless person..

that was the turning point of my life..

 

[Chilling__Echo]

SingaporeGuy, you always have something inspiring to say! i'm glad you're on this board. i feel like i've made alot of progress, more than i'd thought. mine started in 8th grade, now a freshman in college sometimes i can muster up the courage to speak in class, when before i couldn't even stand to be in a group of more than 2 or 3, especially speaking. as others have said, i still have my good and bad days but i get through it glad to knwo that so many others are improving

 

[SingaporeGuy]

gd to hear that u r healing bro..social phobics can make it..though painfully tough..

i shall continue my story...

since the day i met this guy, i felt a surge of motivation.

in my darkest days, i could not even look at someone, let alone speak..when someone tried to talk to me, i would freeze, anxious and everytime that happened i would go home, analyze, get depressed, and a whole rollercoaster disaster happened..

after meeting him, there was one thing that changed me. my mindset.

his positivity was infectious that i became positive too.

from then on, i told myself.."i wanna be like him..a strong willed person.."

from there, it started.
but my positivity was a forced action.

i forced myself to be positive. i forced myself to say that i could do it. even though deep in my heart i felt like giving up as i could not cope with the pain and anguish.

days and days of forcing..

it was a gradual effect. in my worst days, i had only 1 friend..after the the whole mindset thingy changed, the number of friends I had increased, 1 by 1 it did.

it dint feel natural intially. your mind wants to be positive, but deep in your heart u have the feeling that u r not able to make it, u still feel useless..

even so, i kept forcing myself, kept forcing, at times my head hurts.

i still remembered the day when my mentor brought me to a gathering. SA people should know how it would feel. o my god, i felt i could burst, felt like running away..

i could not keep calm..but i forced myself to stop negative thoughts...

a new lesson that i had learnt, an imprtant one indeed..

the ability to stop Negative Thoughts..

negative thoughts, they are ones that would normally bring an SA fall to their knees easily..

things went smoothly for me eh?

things aint that simple yet.....

[to be continued...]

 

[Hype1010]

Since I started my job last week, I've noticed that I'm getting ever so slightly better (Not even close to near normal but it's a start). It's quite hard to question my progress though because I haven't been exposed to any real bad social situaitons in a while.

 

[IcanDoIt]

arrgghh..had been browsing through the forum, and i realised i had missed what i was supposed to say..

at that time i realised negative thoughts were bringing me downhill. that was one of the major culprits..

it was an extreme force to choke that negativity, in fact it was hardcore..

in the initial stages, everything was associated with the word force..u force yourself to be positive, you force yourself to to talk, to look into the eyes..etc..

it was totally mentally and physically draining, so intensed that i wanted to give up. everything seemed so forced, even people could realise it...and i was quite tensed too..shaky and stuff..

there were a few bouts of depression going on here and there, and that sucked..

and the next i did was to eliminate depression before my SA..

and that was the start of a beautiful journey..