It's Not Social Anxiety - It's Something Deeper

So, I've spoken about this before, why some people have social anxiety. This is not why everyone who has social anxiety has social anxiety. There are different reasons, but there's one reason why certain kinds of people have social anxiety, and it's not what you normally think. It's actually because these are highly sensitive people who actually feel like empathetically, energetically are picking up on what's going on around them and therefore being in a social setting is really draining. The way that I described it once is it's it's like being in a room with a hundred different radios that are each tuned to a different channel and they're all playing full blast. That's what it feels like to a highly sensitive person or a certain type of highly sensitive person when they're in a room full of people. So, there's this huge price to be paid just for going out and about and being among people, just being in a crowd of people. Um, you come back home and you feel completely wiped just like, you know, you feel like you ran a marathon and it's just from the uh exhaustion of having that much human energy around you and the the the stimuli just that you're picking up on. It's processing it all, you know, just processing all that stimuli. Now, if you if you're looking at me like I'm crazy right now, you're like, "What are you talking about?" Okay. Yeah, most people don't have this experience. Most people don't feel like that when they're among people. But there are a bunch of us who do feel like that. And I'm just explaining sometimes with social anxiety. It's not that like, oh, I'm I'm nervous how people are going to judge me or I don't know if I'll have anything interesting to say. It's more like, okay, I'm going into the battle zone. I'm going out among people and I know I'm gonna come home and from going to one wedding I'm gonna come home and I'm gonna literally need to sleep for two weeks. Like I'm going to be in bed like I just got hit with a with a massive flu. Okay, because I I spent five hours at a wedding. Okay. Um now one thing to do about that is if you realize you're such a person is to start to prioritize and strategize. So don't stay for the full full five hours of the wedding, you know. figure out where to show your face and and and wish the uh the bride and the groom well and you know maztov and be in a picture or two and know how to know your limits and and and bow out and not to overextend yourself. Um so that that's one thing. Another thing a little bit it's a little bit of a separate issue but it's related is uh the small talk thing. So a lot of highly sensitive people are also very deep um meaning more inwardly uh directed and gravitate toward like substance depth ideas and when people are coming over to you and like saying a bunch of stuff that's really not practically important like so uh what do you think about the weather? I don't know is my opinion about the weather going to change in what time did you get in like 11:15 on Delta? Does it make a difference? Like is does that make any practical difference? Uh did you catch the game last night? The game's over. You know, like what difference does it make? Right? So now a lot of people think that's like obnoxious. Oh, you're so arrogant. You're better than us. You don't have you think you're so good. You don't have to talk about the weather and the baseball game with us. It's not that I'm better than for sure I'm not better. It's that having to do the mental processing. See, this is this is counterintuitive. You want to talk to me about some deep concept? You want to talk to me about philosophy? I'm actually in my comfort zone. No problem. But you want to ask me about like little, you know, minutia, the tedium of like mundane life. It's like I could do it but the the the the processing that the computer is required to do is just it's exhausting right and then the whole time not only you have to do the mental processing but like you have to have a smile you have to give eye contact it's like oh my gosh so that's why a lot of us uh have what people would call social anxiety because it's really it's an aversion to being out and about among large groups of because it's just this draining experience. Um, you know, when you realize that about yourself, what you can do is you can start to make decisions like, you know, because most people really do value when you show up at their party or at their uh happy occasion. So, you can make that decision. Okay, this is an investment. I'm going to show up. It's going to be really hard for me. It is going to knock me out, but this is what I do for my friends. And you make your appearance and but but you also by the same token, you understand I'm going to leave in 30 minutes. I can't stay all night. It's just it's not going to be good for me or for them. Um because, you know, you're going to overstay your threshold and then you're going to end up being grumpy and you find out a year later someone's going to say you snubbed them. I didn't even know I snubbed them because you were like so exhausted. You were staring off into space and someone called your name three times and they think you ignored them. Okay. So, if you're sensitive like that, yeah, just know that that's what it is. Um if you don't relate to any of this, that's fine. you're probably not still listening to this, but if you do, if you are still listening to this, then you probably are this way or um you have a spouse or a child who's this way. So now you know. Hi there. I hope you're enjoying this. If the videos that we're creating have enriched your life in any way, I would like to ask you to please consider partnering with us to create more content to help change more lives. 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