I Don’t Know How To Stop Letting My Social Anxiety Dictate My Life!

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes

Hello Doctor,

I’m a huge fan of your articles. They have been helping me through some tough times in my personal life. I don’t want this to be too long, I’ll try to be as thorough as I can within reason. For most of my young life, I’ve had immense social anxiety at middle school, high school, and college and beyond. I was very much in my head at all times, especially when it came to engaging with women or just making friends of a certain caliber or perceived value for me in my mind. I have always fantasized about becoming famous and blowing everyone out of the water with my skills and talents so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the BS that comes with socializing, trial and error, and the anguish that comes from all the failed attempts to connect with people.

I had this chip on my shoulder as far back as high school, when I discovered my passion for making music. I wanted to be a rapper, still do, to some extent. I figured my social anxiety is crippling, but one day I’ll be famous and it’ll all be worth it, and this was my excuse to not try for a very long time consistently. I was afraid of being judged, I was afraid of being embarrassed, I was afraid of being really killed, rejected. I carried this fear with me well into my adult life. I studied at an art school for undergrad and I majored in film. I’ve always had creative aspirations deep down. I wanna be an actor, a painter, musician, everything! It sucks to have so many dreams because it’s hard to focus just on one. I have put off these dreams for a long time for reasons I can’t fully describe, but the main thing has been fear. I want to be an entertainer through and through, but up until this point, I haven’t really exercised that passion in real life. I am starting to warm up to it now, but the reality is, it’s been tough for me to balance out those dreams and also figure out how to actually sustain and make a living. I’ve had the same retail job since I graduated college for the past 10 years. Albeit it’s a good job with good benefits, so to speak, it’s no longer fulfilling me and it feels like it stifles my confidence. Now I’m more nervous when it comes to dating.

In the past two years, I went and did a master’s program for animation to jumpstart my creative journey once again. This was not too long after my father passed away during the summer of 2021, which was a major blow. Though interestingly enough, for the first 6 months after his passing, I found myself having surprising success with dating, but it was short-lived once I started grad school and all dried up. I feel like I’m starting from square one all over again. I have good friends who are all on their own way optimistic, upbeat people who are pursuing things and in theory should be inspiring to be around them enough.

That said none of my friends really openly and directly help me with my dating life. They support my pursuits from afar, but they don’t actively take part in trying to help me, and I wouldn’t expect them to at this point because it’s my responsibility. I don’t do anything consistently, and I should. Something is always holding me back. It’s easy to blame depression; my addictions to weed or procrastination or what have you, and that’s all a part of it, but ultimately, I’m not in the position of trying to make excuses for myself anymore. But you know, even something as simple as going to a bar, alone or with friends, I’m putting myself under immense pressure to connect hook up etc, make up for lost time as it were. My self-worth is very much tied up in it, and I’ve had ideation over the years out of the deep frustration. I’m in therapy and it’s going well, though even at 33 I find it excruciating to push through all this inner resistance. I feel like a complete failure whenever I go out. There are so many beautiful happy vibrant women out there, and I am constantly overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy because of my lack of accomplishment, as it were. And I know logically that doesn’t hold up because as many of your articles suggest, that is more something in your head and anything else. That said, I can’t seem to shake it off. I can’t shake off this feeling that the only way for me to have a happy life is as if I become this prolific artist of some kind that people recognize and praise and want to sleep with. And I realize that’s not a sustainable way to go about the world, but I’m scared to let go of it.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for all that you do,

Artist In Waiting

First of all, AIW, if what you’re saying in your letter is literally true, I don’t think this is about procrastination or social anxiety. If you’re literally dealing with free-floating fears of being murdered – not just hyperbole, but actual fears that someone will kill you – then you’re think you’re dealing with a full-blown anxiety disorder and you should be looking into more than just talk therapy. And even if those fears of being killed are just exaggeration for effect… well, you should probably be talking to your therapist about going to a physician or psychiatrist for anti-anxiety medication. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, even EMDR can all be very effective, but sometimes the issue is that you’ve got issues with your neurotransmitters and serotonin reuptake.

Now that having been said, I’m glad you’re in therapy, AIW, because what I’m about to do is the opposite of therapy: I’m going to take that dream of yours and stomp all over it with my big stompy Doc Martins of Reality, with the extra thick treads.

Here’s the truth: what you’re hoping is never going to happen, because you’re hoping for something that doesn’t exist. What you’re describing is a magic bullet that’s going to insulate you from any rejection and inspire other people to be so turned on that they’ll do all the work for you. And there just ain’t no such animal. There isn’t anyone, alive or dead, who is so creative, so talented, so beloved that all they would have to do is just appear and let the other person take them by the hand and lead them through every part of a relationship. Even at the height of Lisztomania, when Franz Liszt’s audiences would go into Maenad-like ecstatic frenzies, nobody was saying “sit back and let me do all the heavy lifting”.

Moreover, being rich and famous isn’t a cure for anything other than “not having money” and “enjoying having a private life”, nor is being a successful, talented and accomplished celebrity going to remove the possibility of being judged or rejected, or even from completely shitting the bed on social occasions. Entertainers are often among the most anxious people simply because their jobs are entirely dependent on people liking them. They have to face judgement constantly at every level – from the bookers and talent agents, the casting directors and artist juries to the media and audiences. It’s baked in to the job description.

Chris Evans – Captain America himself ­– has been very open about his at times crippling anxiety. Brendan Fraser destroyed his body in attempts to prove that he was more than just some pretty boy pretending to be an actor. And there’re more “awkward celebrity encounter” stories that come out on a daily basis than I can count.

(And that’s before we get to how late-stage capitalism has systematically eliminated everything that makes it possible for artists to sustain themselves on their art – from low-cost housing to affordable health care, venues to perform in or exhibit in to quite literally stealing all of their work to train “AI” so that capital doesn’t have to actually pay the artist for their work.)

What you’re hoping for is a fantasy, a cheat code to life and those do not exist. There is no life where you are going to interact with other people where you’re not going to be dealing with the risks of other people’s judgement and rejection. If you want to avoid any risk of being judged or failing to connect with someone, get a dog. A dog will love you no matter what, and frankly, we don’t deserve them.

I bring this up because, honestly, I don’t know if you’ve realized just how much you’ve been hoping that the Success Fairy is going to come down to bless you with not just creative talent but a career and direction and also absurd levels of financial and social success. I don’t know if you realize even how diffuse this dream and ambition of yours actually is. You talk about all these creative goals you have, you list many different and distinct artistic disciplines that you supposedly want to do, but don’t focus on any of them. You single out performance art, like rapping or making music as being your passion, yet the steps you take are for film making animation – a career where you’re going to be a cog in the creation 99.999% of the time, not the face and name attached to the final output. While people can and do often have multiple outlets for creativity – I know multiple authors who also compose and perform music, actors who also paint, painters who also write poetry – it seems to me that you didn’t pursue animation because it was your passion so much as you picked something at random from a list.

I mean, if music is your passion and you want to be an entertainer, have you so much as tried out for the church choir? Or even gotten up and sung karaoke with your friends? Why did you decide to take a masters in animation instead of learning to play a musical instrument or composition and music theory or voice lessons? Why not take a poetry class or two or a creative writing course?

And look, I get it. I spent literal decides of my life trying to be a comic artist and illustrator – with occasional forays into painting, animation and photography – before I ultimately realized that wasn’t where my talent or my passion lay. But I write damn near constantly. Even if I’m not working on a column or a particular project, I’m jotting down ideas into a file for later use.

Are you doing any of that? Are there notebooks full of scribbles that you hope to turn into paintings? Is there a morgue file full of snippits of dialogue or plot outlines on your computer? Measures of notes that might someday become a composition, sitting on a sheet of musical notation? Anything at all?

I’ll be honest with you: I’m kind of doubting it. I think that’s in no small part because you’re wedded to the idea of CREATIVITY!!!! and FAME!!!! more than you are actually creating or producing or putting something out into the world. That means you have to open yourself up to that very same judgement and rejection that you’re hoping that your nascent talent and skill will insulate you from. There is no true act of creation that doesn’t require making yourself vulnerable to the judgement and opinions of others. Even being a loudmouth with an advice column means that you have to open yourself up and be ready for the folks who might take one look at your work and decide to rip it to shreds.

Putting art into the world requires that you actually put your blood, sweat, tears and soul into. You could shove all the prompts into a glorified autocorrect program all you want and call yourself an artist, but all you’re going to get is going to be hollow and dead inside because none of it actually comes from you. It won’t be your art. Hell, it won’t even be art. It will just be the output of someone else’s computer program, trying to find the statistical average of other artists’ work.  

And being an artist or pursuing your creativity doesn’t require that you do so in public. Even if your anxiety is so high that you don’t think you could put it out there for other people’s consumption, there’s literally nothing stopping you from learning an instrument and just noodling around at home for an audience of you, any more than there’re any obstacles stopping you from taking a painting class and just filling a spare room with finished canvases. Henry Darger famously created an entire, gloriously wild and weird world in a series of sketchbooks and collages that nobody ever even knew existed until after people were clearing out his old apartment after he died. But it seems like none of it means as much as being recognized for it and rewarded for it.

So I have to wonder if the reason why you’re still holding yourself back on any of this is because you don’t actually want to be a famous and talented artist, so much as you just don’t want to have to face the possibility of rejection and having to be open and vulnerable to others.

All of which is to say: the problem you have isn’t the problem you think you have. You talk about your lack of accomplishments making you feel ashamed to talk to those wonderful, beautiful women, but I think it’s because you feel like you need accomplishments because otherwise you have to go out and hope they like you for being you. And let me tell you: hoping that your accomplishments will do the work for you is a recipe for misery and even greater insecurity. It doesn’t provide a stable foundation for your self-esteem or sense of worth, and the first person who doesn’t like it will kick it over like a tower of blocks, no matter how many other people tell you that you’re a genius.

I think what you really need to focus on is learning to love yourself, to figure out who you are and be that person to the best of your ability. Self-worth comes from self-love and self-compassion, not from accomplishments. If you don’t love yourself for being yourself, everything else is going to have all the emotional heft and strength of wet tissue paper, and every doubt and insecurity you ever face will blow through it like a meth’d out trucker at the wheel of an 18-wheeler.

Now, as I said at the start: if you weren’t exaggerating for effect, then it sounds to me like you’ve got a serious anxiety disorder that needs to be addressed, and that should probably be your first order of business. But the next step should be learning to create that core foundation of self-love that isn’t contingent on what you “do” or achieve. Without that, you’re building a skyscraper on sand, with no support, and it will fall over; it’s only a question of when, not if, and how much it’ll take with it when it goes.

Start looking within and find the core of who you are, without those magic bullets that’ll save you from your lack of self. They never help. But when you find yourself and love yourself the way you should be loved? You won’t need them.

Good luck.

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Hey Doc,

Been reading you for a while, I respect and value your opinions and insights and would like your input.

I’m 28 and I I’m in an incredibly privileged situation with my living at home arrangement, which I’m quite thankful for. I graduated college right into COVID and worked from home for two years, and the situation just panned out wonderfully. The house is huge, I have an exceptional relationship with my parents, who also encourage me to stay to keep saving money (of which I have amassed an impressive chunk for my age, that I invest), live 15 minutes from my job, have space for my own gym equipment, the list goes on. I’ve been capitalizing on the situation to get in good shape and advance my career with professional certifications.

I used to feel humiliated to be living at home, but I found a new perspective. I live as an independent adult with a free room (I contribute with upgrading and buying new household appliances like washer/dryer/fridge, helping pay for fixes/repairs, a share of utilities/internet, and other things that the whole house uses), and don’t have my parents lifting a finger caring for me in any capacity; so, no mommy doing my laundry or dishes or any man-babying. My friends who have all moved out lament that they aren’t saving a dime. Their paychecks are being devoured by rent and essentials to the effect that they can either go out to dinner once a month or buy a few shares of stocks. While I am thankful that I can amass wealth in such comfort and enjoyment with my family, and have a thankful perspective on it, there is one thing that they can do in their own place that I will not do here: sex.

I would not be ashamed to bring a woman home, but I will not, under any circumstances, fuck under the same roof as my mother. Not because she forbids it in any way, it’s beyond skeevy to me to think that she could accidentally hear something, and the thought of having to sneak around / coordinate with any potential woman to do it while Mom isn’t in the house makes me feel like a teenager and is incredibly emasculating. The way I want to sexually express myself (and any potential girlfriends want to sexually express themselves) is not possible in my current living situation and I very much want a relationship so I can get the wheels turning on the prospect of having a family.

My alternative would be to move out to a place that’s either 2+ hours away from my job (and still taking a huge chunk of my pay but I’d still be able to save something), or one that would consume a grand majority of my pay, just like my friends leaving me nothing to save. I think that the responsible thing to do, especially in times of severe economic uncertainty and rising inflation, would be to stay where I am and keep socking away money/investing if I ever want to own a home instead of being doomed to rent. However, I want to find the woman who I will spend the rest of my life with, and I want her to have a desire for physical intimacy similar to mine. My last girlfriend was in college where we were very physically intimate and really having lots of fun being as loud, wild, and uncaring as possible; not gonna happen within a mile of my mother, disgusting.

So, the question I have been pondering is: would it be worth it to move out and forgo the current financial and other benefits just to have my own place just so I can bang? Ultimately, a family is my goal, and having a strong financial position is critical to that. But I want the woman who I spend the rest of my life with to have a desire for physical intimacy similar to mine and there’s no feasible way to foster that while living at home. So, I either have to forgo happiness for security, or security for happiness. I have discussed this with my mom, and she’d be happy with me bringing any girlfriend here, but she couldn’t deny that it would be “a fucked-up kind of weird” to know that I was having sex, to which I agree. My dad’s response was “so what? your mother and I fuck all the time here.” which I appreciated but it fell hollow because he sang a much much MUCH different tune when it was my sister having sex with her boyfriend here (whom she moved into an apartment with and is now barely saving any money) and oddly enough my mom didn’t care one bit about that. My sister didn’t give a crap about what my dad thinks but I can’t shake the ick that I have.

So, which is it doc? Move out? Stay put? Get over it? Or if you can devise a brilliant solution or offer some sagely advice, that would be most welcome.

-Man on an Emission

OK, I’m sorry for the knee-jerk “not what you’re actually asking about” response here but I have to say it: the reason why your parents felt differently about your sister having sex with her boyfriend vs. you having theoretical sex with your theoretical girlfriend is mostly inherent and unconscious sexism. Boys are “supposed” to be going out and fucking, girls are supposed to be “pure” and knowing that one’s precious daughter is getting defiled under one’s roof is the sort of thing that sends people of a certain mindset into very weird Freudian apoplexy.   

But that’s not the issue here. The issue here is that you want to bang but don’t want to do so at home which is legit. I will admit that I don’t necessarily share that issue, but I also spent far more time in my teenage years trying to bring girls home and find opportunities to bang. To be perfectly honest, I feel like part of the fun of being young and in love is trying to find places to make out and have sex without getting caught; it required both creativity, ingenuity and a healthy appreciation of risk. The effort it took ­– and the respective levels of risk of being caught – added spice to the whole affair and was part of what kept everything exciting and wild, especially at that age when just having any sort of sexual contact was new and thrilling and terrifying.

So the question then becomes: what’s going to be more important to you? Having a girlfriend and a sex-life without the complication of bringing a girl to your parents’ house, or not spending money? Because this is a money-soluble problem.

But let’s put a pin in that for a second, MOE, and let me ask you something else: what are you saving for? You’re putting all this money aside and presumably investing it, but for what purpose? There comes a point where, unless you’re a dragonborn and hoping to accumulate a hoard, that the money is going to be spent. So what’s the goal of those savings besides just the act of having it? Being able to brag about those diamond hands to other folks on investing subreddits? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against your building up your savings – far from it! But I think it’s worth thinking about whether it’s a much higher priority than a relationship, especially when not saving as much seems to bother you.

Let’s assume, for the purpose of this discussion, that you’re saving up to start a business. Ok, cool. Do you have an actual number in mind? How close are you to that number? How long would it take if you were to get an apartment somewhere and your rent and utilities meant that you wouldn’t be able to keep putting away that same chunk every month? Would you be able to make up the difference if, say, you put the money you’ve already saved into an S&P 500 index fund? Would the growth be so impacted that way that it would kick that end goal an additional decade down the line? Five years? Less? Is a romantic and sexual relationship less worthwhile and meaningful than reaching that goal at this particular timeline? Or would you see the benefits – a loving partner, a healthy and active sex-life – to be an equitable exchange for what you’d be giving up? That’s something I think you should put some serious thought into.

The next thing I think you should consider is that you’ve given yourself a false choice here; you’ve got more options than “live a celibate life at your parents’” and “not be able to save as much (or any) as I do now”.

It sounds like you’re looking at this from an angle of having a place all to yourself – either at the cost of an increased commute or not being able to put aside as much every month. But if you were to split the cost of a place that’s closer to work with a roommate or two (or three or four), I think you’d find that you could split the difference between a convenient commute and not paying exorbitant levels of rent quite handily. Now, you’d still have to deal with having roommates who’d know you and your future girlfriend were banging out… but that’s something that young people have been dealing with since the invention of cities. I think getting over the worry that other people know you’re fucking would be nicely counterbalanced by cheaper rent and having a place of your own in that particular cost/benefit analysis.

But let’s say that none of those possibilities work for you; it’s your parents’ house or your own place by yourself, nothing in between, and you decide that you aren’t willing to give up building your savings because reasons. You can still live with your parents and have a sex life… you’ll just have to learn the lessons of cheaters and/or poly and ethically non-monogamous people who can’t host. In your case, this’ll mean either dating someone who has her own place and doesn’t mind that the answer to “your place or mine” is always going to be “hers”, or using apps like Hotel Tonight and AirB&B to find love nests for when you want to have your trysts somewhere besides her place. But that’s going to cost a pretty penny too, since overnights at a place that’s going to be a cut above the local no-tell motel will add up to a de facto monthly rent in short order.

At the end of the day, you’re going to have to give something up – whether its how much you’re saving, having a girlfriend or your aversion to having sex under your parents’ roof. It’s just a question of which matters more to you. Once you figure that part out, you’ll have your answer.

Good luck.