My social anxiety ACTUALLY has social anxiety.

(F20, UK) I’ve social anxiety for years, I had slight symptom relief from antidepressants but I’m having discontinuation syndrome atm so they’re back.

One thing I’ve always hated, and something my therapist seemed quite taken aback by when I told her, was when I said that I’m even scared of feeling the anxiety itself bc of how truly awful it feels, it’s like torture.

I couldn’t even leave the house today to go and pick up that same medication that actually gives me some relief. Because knowing how much terror I would feel when I left genuinely didn’t feel worth it.

My wonderful boyfriend offered to go and get them for me, which I’m very thankful for.

But I don’t want to be on antidepressants for life. They don’t stop my social anxiety, they just make me care less about it. I’ve tried therapy, I’ve been in therapy since I was 11 years old, it did nothing.

I think I forgot how bad my situation was before I got on sertraline, since I’ve been on it for a short while now (5 months). I delayed my time picking up my meds bc I simply couldn’t be bothered yesterday or the day before. Why? Well I did try to weigh up the risks, but at the time, I literally couldn’t fathom that an emotion could be so extreme bc I hadn’t felt it to such an extreme extent in months.

So I did ask myself, “but what if I get super anxious?”, and my dosed up head was all like “what does ‘anxious’ mean😃😄❓🙋‍♀️”